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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 ...
Space Comics
UK Comic (1953-1954); vt Captain Valiant. 32 issues, numbered #50-#81. #50 titled Captain Valiant; #51-#52 titled Space Comics presents Captain Valiant, #53-#81 Space Comics Captain Valiant. Arnold Book Company. Art and scripts by Mick Anglo (see Marvelman) and Denis Gifford. 2-3 strips per issue. Cover in colour, strips in black and white. / "Tough veteran of space travel and hero of campaigns on ...
Dirty Pair
Japanese animated tv series (1985); original title Dāti Pea. Based on the stories by Haruka Takachiho. Nippon Sunrise. Directed by Norio Kashima and Toshifumi Takizawa. Writers include Toshiki Inoue, Toshimichi Okawa and Michiru Shimada. Voice cast includes Saeko Shimazu and Kyouko Tonguu. 26 25-minute episodes. Colour. / The Lovely Angels are Kei (Tonguu) and Yuri (Shimazu), highly trained Trouble Consultants ...
Guo Xiaolu
(1973- ) Chinese-born author and filmmaker, in London from 2002, whose early work occasionally touches on sf (see Equipoise). Born after the Cultural Revolution and graduating from the Beijing Film Academy, her prose presents a twenty-first century that both is and isn't the wondrous future promised by the earlier sf of China. Guo's work can hence be parsed as China's answer to the "Gernsback Continuum" espoused by ...
Bing, Stanley
Pseudonym of US television executive, humorous essayist and author Gil Schwartz (1951-2020), a columnist for Fortune magazine for many years following a decade at Esquire. His first novel, Lloyd: What Happened: A Novel of Business (1998), in which a world-transforming project is never actually described, shies just short of the fantastic. Bing is of sf interest for the Near Future Immortal Life: (A Soon to Be True Story) ...
Robinson, Roger
(1943- ) UK computer programmer, bibliographer and publisher, active in UK Fandom for many years. The Writings of Henry Kenneth Bulmer (1983 chap; rev 1984 chap) is an exhaustive Bibliography of one of the most prolific sf writers, Kenneth Bulmer, and Who's Hugh?: An SF Reader's Guide to Pseudonyms (1987) is similarly exhaustive in its ...