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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 ...
Struck by Lightning
US tv series (1979). Fellows-Keegan Company/Paramount Television for CBS-TV. Based on characters created by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley in Frankenstein (1818; rev 1831). Produced by Michael Friedman. Director Joel Zwick. Writers included Bruce Kelish, Phillip John Taylor, Michael Russnow. Cast includes Jeff Cotler (Brian), Jack Elam, Bill Erwin (Glen Diamond), Jeffrey Kramer, Millie Slavin (Nora) and Richard Stahl ...
Burgess, Tony
(1959- ) Canadian performance artist (under the name Tony Blue) and author in whose first novel of sf interest, Pontypool Changes Everything (1998), a Meme-spread Basilisk destroys victims' ability to make sense through language: then they go mad. It was filmed as Pontypool (2008), and assembled with the more conspicuously surreal ...
Future Boy Conan
Japanese animated tv series (1978; vt Conan, The Boy in Future). Original title Mirai Shōnen Konan. Based on the novel The Incredible Tide (1970) by Alexander Key. Nippon Animation. Directed by Hayao Miyazaki. Written by Satoshi Kurumi, Akira Nakano and Sōji Yoshikawa. Voice cast includes Iemasa Kayumi, Ichirô Nagai, Mieko Nobusawa, Noriko Ohara, ...
Myhre, Øyvind
(1945- ) Norwegian computer engineer and author. Øyvind Myhre is in some ways an anachronism in Nordic sf (and Fantasy) literature. Where most Danish, Norwegian and Swedish writers working in these fields write either in the modernist or humanist traditions of Clifford D Simak and Ray Bradbury, or J G Ballard ...
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 ...