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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 ...
Robinson, Spider
(1948- ) US-born author who became a Canadian Landed Immigrant in 1975, married to Jeanne Robinson from 1975 until her death in 2010. His first story, "The Guy with the Eyes" in Analog for February 1973, inaugurated the long-running Callahan series of Club Stories, which continued into the twenty-first century. He has sometimes written tales as by B D Wyatt. The first ...
Eliot, George
Pseudonym of UK author Mary Ann Evans (1819-1880), none of whose major works engage in the fantastic; her most famous novel, Middlemarch (1871-1872 4vols), is central to any study of nineteenth-century English literature. She is of sf interest for one frequently reprinted and commented-upon novelette, The Lifted Veil (July 1859 Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine; 2000 ebook), which focuses on various forms of ESP, including prescience (see ...
Megamind
Animated film (2010). Paramount Pictures/PDI Dreamworks. Directed by Tom McGrath. Written by Alan J Schoolcraft and Brent Simons. Cast includes Will Ferrell, Tina Fey, Jonah Hill and Brad Pitt. 95 minutes. Colour. / What would happen if the bad guy actually won? In a parody of the Superman origin story, two Alien babies are dispatched to Earth when their respective planets are destroyed. One baby lands in a mansion ...
Hall, George Rome
(1864-1938) UK author of a Future War tale, The Black Fortnight; Or, the Invasion of 1915 (1904), Germany being the invader. [JC]
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 ...