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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 ...
Reed, Robert
(1956- ) US author who began publishing sf with "Mudpuppies" as by Robert Touzalin for L Ron Hubbard Presents Writers of the Future (anth 1986) edited by Algis Budrys; the story gained the $5000 grand prize awarded in the Writers of the Future Contest for that year. Reed has since gradually become prolific and highly admired as an author of short fiction, assembling some of ...
Dick Barton Strikes Back
UK film (1949). Hammer Film Productions. Directed by Godfrey Grayson. Written by Elizabeth Baron and Ambrose Grayson, based on a story by Ambrose Grayson. Cast includes Sebastian Cabot, Jean Lodge, James Raglan, Don Stannard and Bruce Walker. 67 minutes. Black and white. / Dick Barton – Special Agent was an extremely popular BBC Radio show that ran 1946-1951, with 10 serialized stories running over 711 15-minute episodes (plus a Christmas ...
Ellis, Lindsay
(1984- ) US film director, online content creator, journalist and author whose first novel, Awoken (2013) with Elisa Hanson and Nella Inserra, all writing as Serra Elinsen, is a spoofish paranormal romance whose protagonist falls in love with all things Cthulhu (see Cthulhu Mythos; H P Lovecraft). Her first solo novel Axiom's End (2020) extracts some ...
Fergusson, Adam
(1932- ) UK politician, journalist and author, Conservative member of Parliament 1979-1984, a strong supporter of Britain's membership in the EEC. Of his nonfiction, he is best known for When Money Dies (1975), narrative description of the effect of hyperinflation on the 1920s Weimar Republic. His first novel, Roman Go Home (1969), is a mildly fantasticated Satire on the Roman Empire's abandonment of Britain in the ...
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 ...