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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 ...
Cook, Robin
Working name of UK author Robert William Arthur Cook (1931-1994), resident for some years in France (in order, he intimated, to put distance between himself and gangland acquaintances), where he became well-known for noir thrillers written as by Derek Raymond, taking that name perhaps because other Robin Cooks – the author Robin Cook, see entry below, and the British politician Robin Cook (1946-2005) – had effectively taken over his name; he ...
Nuclear Winter
The possibility that smoke and dust from a large nuclear exchange (as in most models of World War Three) might bring about drastic Climate Change was advanced by scientists in 1982; Carl Sagan was part of a team which conducted computer modelling of atmospheric effects and published the admonitory paper "Nuclear Winter: Global Consequences of Multiple Nuclear Explosions" (23 December 1983 ...
Kasner, Michael
(1941-2008) US author who served as a US Army captain in Vietnam and wrote under various names, including Rick Mackin for the Chopper Cops Near Future police procedurals beginning with Chopper Cops: Fire Storm (1990) and ending with Chopper Cops: Sky War (1991), and Don Pendleton, the latter after the real Pendleton sold his name as a House Name, contributing ...
Quatermass Xperiment, The
Film (1955; vt The Creeping Unknown US). Hammer. Directed by Val Guest. Written by Richard Landau, Val Guest, based on the BBC TV serial by Nigel Kneale. Cast includes Brian Donlevy (Quatermass), Jack Warner and Richard Wordsworth. 82 minutes, cut to 78 minutes. Black and white. / It was this film version of the BBC's television serial The Quatermass Experiment that convinced the Hammer ...
Langford, David
(1953- ) UK author, critic, editor, publisher and sf fan, in the latter capacity recipient of 21 Hugo awards for fan writing – some of the best of his several hundred pieces are assembled as Let's Hear It for the Deaf Man (coll 1992 chap US; much exp vt The Silence of the Langford 1996; exp 2015 ebook) as Dave Langford, edited by Ben Yalow – plus five Best Fanzine Hugos ...