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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 ...
Wallace, King
(? -? ) US author whose sf novel, The Next War: A Prediction (1892), not untypically for its time and place of origin, plays on white racial fears of Black uprisings in the Near Future (see Race in SF). In this case, after failing to Poison all American whites, the Blacks lose the ensuing rebellion and disperse into the hinterlands, where they become ...
Brebner, Percy
(1864-1922) UK author of romantic adventures, under his own name and as by Christian Lys. Early novels by Lys include The Hepsworth Millions (1898), whose hints at supernatural explanations hardly aspire to the Equipoisal, and two novels of greater interest. The Fortress of Yadasara: A Narrative Prepared from the Manuscript of Clinton Verrall, Esq. (1898 Household Words; 1899; vt The Knight of the Silver Star 1907 US ...
Nanotechnology
Item of terminology borrowed by sf writers from theoreticians of future Technology, and increasingly popular in sf from the late 1980s. It seems to have been first used by K Eric Drexler in 1976, and popularized by him in his highly optimistic book on the subject, Engines of Creation (1986). / Nanotechnology – the term loosely combines "nano", the SI (metric system) prefix denoting 10-9, with "technology" – means the technology of the ...
Survivors
1. UK tv series (1975-1977). BBC TV. Created by Terry Nation. Produced by Terence Dudley. Directed by Pennant Roberts, Terence Williams, Eric Hills. Written by Nation (seven episodes in season one), Roger Parkes, Jack Ronder, Martin Worth. Cast included John Abineri, Stephen Dudley, Lucy Fleming, Lorna Lewis, Denis Lill, Ian McCulloch, Tanya Ronder and many others. Three seasons; 38 50-minute episodes in all. Colour. / The ...
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 ...