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.
Site updated on 25 July 2024
Sponsor of the day: The League of Fan Funds
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 ...
Mercier, Louis-Sébastien
(1740-1814) French playwright and author best known for his sixty or more plays and for his anecdotal journalism; he was active in the French Revolution, being imprisoned during the Terror. He is of interest for his exceedingly popular Proto SF tale, L'an deux mille quatre cent quarante: Rêve s'il en fût jamais (1771 Holland; trans William Hooper as Memoirs of the Year Two Thousand Five Hundred 1772 2vols UK; French text rev ...
Akira
Animated film (1988). Akira Committee. Directed by Katsuhiro Ōtomo, from a screenplay by Otomo and Izo Hashimoto, based on the graphic epic Akira (December 1982-June 1990 Young Magazine) by Otomo. Animation studio: Asahi. Chief animator: Takashi Nakamura. 124 minutes. Colour. / In its day Akira was the most successful attempt yet to transfer sophisticated, state-of-the-art Comic-book graphics to ...
Testament
Film (1983). Entertainment Events/American Playhouse. Directed by Lynne Littman. Written by John Sacret Young, based on "The Last Testament" by Carol Amen (?1934-1987). Cast includes Jane Alexander, Leon Ames, William Devane, Lukas Haas and Ross Harris. 90 minutes. Colour. / We follow the ordinary, loving, quarrelsome life of one family in a small Californian town, Hamlin. Without warning, all US cities are destroyed by nuclear weapons. Hamlin, not far from San Francisco, is spared ...
Saxon, Peter
Initially the personal pseudonym of UK author W Howard Baker, under which he wrote many titles for Amalgamated Press, mainly stories in the Sexton Blake series before the cancellation of its fourth series in 1964 (see Sexton Blake Library). He then took the name to Mayflower Books, where the series continued, written by him and others under what was now a House Name. The claims of ...
Clute, John
(1940- ) Canadian critic, editor and author, in the UK from 1969; married to Judith Clute from 1964, partner of Elizabeth Hand since 1996. He began to publish work of genre interest with an sf-tinged poem "Carcajou Lament" in Triquarterly for Winter 1960 [ie Autumn 1959]; he began consistently publishing sf reviews in his "New Fiction" column for the Toronto Star (1966-1967), and later in ...