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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 ...
Home-Gall, Edward R
(1897-1974) UK author, son of William Benjamin Home-Gall; he was the most prolific of all authors of work for the Boys' Papers after Frank Richards (usual pseudonym of Charles Hamilton [1876-1961]), producing an estimated 35 million words; it is not known how much of his magazine work, much of it pseudonymous, was of sf interest. He was responsible for two Human Bat tales: ...
Galier, W H
(? -? ) Australian author of whom nothing is known beyond A Visit to Blestland (1896), whose protagonists involuntarily embark upon a Fantastic Voyage when their ship is torn from the ocean by a mysterious tempest; they land upon the planet of Blestland, a Utopia inhabited – Galier's brand of belated Proto SF here segues into the supernatural ...
Davis, Phil
(? - ) US author of a Technothriller, Nemesis (1979), whose hero keeps ultimate Disaster at bay. [JC]
Truman Show, The
Film (1998). Paramount Pictures presents a Scott Rudin production. Directed by Peter Weir. Written by Andrew Niccol. Cast includes Jim Carrey, Noah Emmerich, Ed Harris, Laura Linney and Natascha McElhone. 103 minutes. Colour. / Truman Burbank (Carrey) discovers that his entire life has been lived in a 24/7 reality television show, and that his idyllic Florida community is a vast enclosed soundstage in which everyone else is an actor. / Niccol's ...
Nicholls, Peter
(1939-2018) Australian editor and author, primarily a critic and historian of sf through his creation and editing of The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction [see below]; resident in the UK 1970-1988, in Australia from 1988; worked as an academic in English literature (1962-1968, 1971-1977), scripted television documentaries, was a Harkness Fellow in Film-making (1968-1970) in the USA, worked as a publisher's editor (1982-1983), often broadcast film and book reviews on BBC Radio from 1974 and ...