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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 ...
Round Robin
Round-robin stories, in which multiple authors take turns to write sections or chapters of a continuous narrative, generally tend to be games played for the writers' own amusement rather than serious fictional enterprises. Such playful collaborations date back to the nineteenth century. One non-sf instance which had some modest commercial success was the very British mystery novel The Floating Admiral (1931) by "Certain Members of the Detection Club"; there were thirteen ...
Thurlow, David
(1932-2021) UK journalist for various local papers, the Daily Express (for 26 years) and The Times; author of several thrillers and true crime books. His sf novel for Robert Hale Limited is The Sleepers (1980), set in a Near Future Dystopian Britain under control of the extreme Left; the only opposition remaining – which proves successful – is the ...
Clone Master, The
Made-for-tv film (1978). Mel Ferber Productions/Paramount Television for NBC-TV. Produced by John D F Black. Directed by Don Medford. Written by Black. Cast includes Ralph Bellamy, Art Hindle, Ed Lauter and John Van Dreelan. 100 minutes. Colour. / Research Scientist Dr Simon Shane (Hindle) and his mentor Dr Ezra Loutman (Bellamy) are hired, supposedly by the US government, to conduct advanced research on Cloning. Shane soon ...
Rudaux, Lucien
(1874-1947) French astronomer and popular-science author and illustrator whose Sur les autres mondes ["On Other Worlds"] (1937) contains many examples of space art, imagining – in terms of current scientific knowledge – the landscapes of the Moon and other planets of our solar system. His depiction of the Moon's surface as consisting of rolling landscapes with rounded mountains and hills (Rudaux even explained his ...
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 ...