SF Encyclopedia Home Page
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.
Site updated on 25 July 2024
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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 ...
Sansal, Boualem
(1949- ) Algerian engineer, government official and author. His books have been banned in his native land (where he continues to live) since 2006, apparently for their ruthlessly secular and internationalist approach to complex political, moral and religious dilemmas, an angle of vision signalled in his first novel, Le Serment des barbares ["The Barbarians' Oath"] (1999), a detective novel in which Algeria is seen still locked in the abyss of its colonial ...
Wonder Woman
Dark-haired US Comic-book Superhero – the first female example of major and lasting importance (but see Miss Fury for discussion of earlier candidates). Dressed in star-spangled blue shorts and a low-cut, strapless red top with a gold eagle motif, red high-heeled boots and a gold tiara, she also wears gold, bullet-deflecting bracelets which, if chained together by a man, become "bracelets of ...
Hawkins, Peter
(1926- ) UK bank clerk whose first sf sale was "Life Cycle" for New Worlds in Spring 1951; his 14 stories under his own name all appeared in that magazine and in Science Fantasy over the following decade. He published a routine sf adventure, The Plant from Infinity (1954) as by Karl Maras, a House Name. [JC]
Destination Moon
Film (1950). A George Pal Production/Eagle-Lion. Directed by Irving Pichel. Written by Robert A Heinlein, Alford "Rip" Van Ronkel, James O'Hanlon, based loosely on Rocket Ship Galileo (1947) by Heinlein. Cast includes Warner Anderson, John Archer, Tom Powers and Dick Wesson. 92 minutes. Colour. / Destination Moon, the first of George Pal's many sf productions, ...
Clute, John
(1940- ) Canadian critic, editor and author, in the UK from 1969; married to Judith Clute from 1964, partner of Elizabeth Hand since 1996. He began to publish work of genre interest with an sf-tinged poem "Carcajou Lament" in Triquarterly for Winter 1960 [ie Autumn 1959]; he began consistently publishing sf reviews in his "New Fiction" column for the Toronto Star (1966-1967), and later in ...