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.
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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 ...
Lionni, Leo
(1910-1999) Dutch-born artist and author, principally of self-illustrated children's fiction, who was resident in the USA 1939-1960 and subsequently in Italy. His quasi-sf book is Parallel Botany (1976; trans 1977), a work of mock popular science describing and illustrating an imaginary kingdom of "parallel" plants which supposedly exist on Earth but have been largely overlooked by Biology owing to various fantastic properties – such as ...
Super 8
Film (2011). Amblin Entertainment/Bad Robot Productions for Paramount Pictures. Produced by J J Abrams and Steven Spielberg. Directed by Abrams. Written by Abrams. Cast includes Gabriel Basso, Kyle Chandler, Joel Courtney, Ron Eldard, Noah Emmerich, Elle Fanning, Riley Griffiths, Ryan Lee, Zach Mills and Glynn Turman. 112 minutes. Colour. / Summer, 1979. Teenage high-school friends are making an amateur ...
Tang Fei
(1983- ) Chinese author and photographer, Beijing-based, whose work seemingly sprang into the Anglophone sphere fully-formed, although her biography hints at earlier stories under other pseudonyms in multiple venues, including fantasy and Wuxia publications. She is also an occasional critic for the Jinji Guancha-bao ("Economic Observer"), a role that has imbued her with a cynical sense of distance towards her ...
Peterson, Lorin
(? - ) US author of Ma Windsor (1983), a Near Future Satire on American mores and politics whose protagonist, being elected the first female President of the United States, causes disarray by making the wealthy ineligible to claim social security, reducing the nuclear Weapons stockpile, and bringing all the soldiers home from their international redoubts. ...
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 ...