SF Encyclopedia Home Page
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 ...
Dan Dare – Pilot of the Future
UK sf Comic-strip character, distinguished in appearance by his long chin and by the zigzag on the outer end of each eyebrow. Dan Dare was created by Frank Hampson for the weekly boys' comic Eagle, in which – with the sobriquet "Pilot of the Future" – he appeared with his Lancashire batman Digby from 1950 until the comic's demise in 1969. Hampson supervised a team of artists, model-makers and photographers to ...
Latham, Rob
(1959- ) US critic and editor, best known for his criticism of the New Wave and for his work as an editor for the journal Science Fiction Studies. / Hoping to become a professional science fiction writer, Latham attended the Clarion Science Fiction Writers' Workshop at Michigan State University in 1985. During the summer of 1986, ...
Alternate Reality Game
Term used to describe a type of Videogame which shares much with the fictional Godgames described in such works as Robert Shea's and Robert Anton Wilson's Illuminatus! trilogy and Thomas Pynchon's The Crying of Lot 49 (1966). There is a notable resemblance between many examples of the form and the (perhaps ...
Athey, Henry
(? -? ) US author of an sf novel, With Gyves of Gold: A Novel (1898) with A Herbert Bowers, both writers remaining untraced, though both may have been based in Missouri. A young man, experimented upon by a modestly Mad Scientist, develops the paranormal ability to travel by astral means to another planet, where he observes the operation of a Utopia ...
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 ...