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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 ...
Bradley, Charles M
(1864-1944) US author of a Depression-inspired Utopia, Me-Phi Bo-Sheth (If the Gods So Decide): An Undated Manuscript (1934), in which, among other advances, the day has ten hours. [JC]
Busby, F M
(1921-2005) US communications engineer, long-time sf fan (from 1950) and author; co-editor with his wife Elinor Busby of the 1950s-1960s Fanzine Cry of the Nameless (see Cry), which won a Hugo award in 1960, producing some of this early work as by Renfrew Pemberton. He began publishing sf stories with "A Gun for Grandfather" for Future Science Fiction in Fall 1957 ...
Dr Mabuse, der Spieler
Film (1922; vt Dr Mabuse, the Gambler 1927). Ullstein/UCO Film/Decla Bioscop/UFA. Directed by Fritz Lang. Written by Thea von Harbou, loosely based on Norbert Jacques's Doktor Mabuse, der Spieler (1920; trans Lilian A Clare as Dr Mabuse, Master of Mystery 1923). Cast includes Alfred Abel, Bernhard Goetzke, Rudolf Klein-Rogge, Aud Egede Nissen, Paul ...
Stars
The stars have always exerted a powerful imaginative fascination upon the human mind. When they were thought to be mere points of light in the panoply of heaven, it was believed by astrologers that the secrets of the future were written there, and various cultures wove their Mythology into the patterns of various constellations. Not until 1718 did Edmond Halley (1656-1742) demonstrate that the stars were not "fixed", and not until the late 1830s were the distances ...
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 ...