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Saturday 27 July 2024
Welcome to the Encyclopedia of Science Fiction, Fourth Edition. Some sample entries appear below. Click here for the Introduction; here for the masthead; here for Acknowledgments; here for the FAQ; here for advice on citations. Find entries via the search box above (more details here) or browse the menu categories in the grey bar at the top of this page.
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Arthur C Clarke Award
This award has been given since 1987 for the best sf novel whose UK first edition was published during the previous calendar year, and consists of an inscribed bookend and a sum of money from a grant initially donated by Arthur C Clarke. In 2001 the prize money – until then a constant £1000 – was increased to £2001 as a gesture to 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968); it has since risen by ...
Payson, William Farquhar
(1876-1939) US author whose explanation, in John Vytal: A Tale of the Lost Colony (1901), of the disappearance around 1584 of the inhabitants of Roanoke Island (in what would become the state of Virginia) is made into a tale with Lost Race implications. [JC]
Galton, Francis
(1822-1911) UK geneticist, eugenicist and author, grandson of Erasmus Darwin, and a speculative thinker from his early years: The Telotype; a Printing Electric Telegraph (1849 chap [dated 1850]) describes the use of typewriters (not yet invented) to convey messages electrically over long distances. He is of course most important in sf terms for coining the word Eugenics, which he defined as "the science of improving ...
Darnay, Arsen
(1936- ) Hungarian-born author, in the USA from 1953 and a US citizen from 1961. His first sf story, "The Splendid Freedom", appeared in Galaxy in 1974; his first novel, A Hostage for Hinterland (April-July 1975 Galaxy as "Helium"; exp 1976), set the pattern for much of his work: in a Post-Holocaust USA, where floating Cities depend upon ...
Independence Day
Film (1996). Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation presents a Centropolis Entertainment production. Directed by Roland Emmerich. Written by Emmerich, Dean Devlin. Cast includes Jeff Goldblum, Judd Hirsch, Mary McDonnel, Bill Pullman, Randy Quaid and Will Smith. 145 minutes (special edition 153). Colour. / A vast Alien Spaceship enters Earth's orbit on the morning of 2 July. Within hours a ...
Robinson, Roger
(1943- ) UK computer programmer, bibliographer and publisher, active in UK Fandom for many years. The Writings of Henry Kenneth Bulmer (1983 chap; rev 1984 chap) is an exhaustive Bibliography of one of the most prolific sf writers, Kenneth Bulmer, and Who's Hugh?: An SF Reader's Guide to Pseudonyms (1987) is similarly exhaustive in its ...