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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 ...
Adventures into the Unknown
US Comic (1948-1967). 174 issues. American Comics Group. Artists include Ken Bald, Pete Costanza, Harry Lazarus, Ed Moritz, Paul Reinman, John Rosenberger, Kurt Schaffenberger, Charles Sultan and Ogden Whitney. Script writers include Richard Hughes and Frank Belknap Long. 52 pages until #33, usually with 5 long strips, plus a few 1-2 page short strips and text stories; 36 pages from #34, usually with 3-4 long strips plus one or ...
Magma
French prog-rock band whose albums elaborate a linked sf narrative about Kobaïa, a planet of spiritually enlightened humans who, having left Earth to form a new Utopian civilization, are now apparently attempting to communicate their wisdom to us. Mekanik Destruktiw Kommandoh (1973) is characteristic: musically an arresting blend of atonal classical and jazz influences, all tracks are sung in a weird Germanic-sounding invented language. In terms of ...
Tractor Beam
Term coined by E E Smith in Spacehounds of IPC (July-September 1931 Amazing; 1947) for the Force-Field equivalent of a rope and grappling iron, used to seize and immobilize or haul in objects encountered in space – typically, mineral ores and Spaceships which may be hostile, damaged or simply docking. The tractor beam has been widely adopted by sf ...
Bad Taste
Film (1987). WingNut. Produced, directed, edited and special effects by Peter Jackson. Written by Jackson with additional material by Ken Hammond and Tony Hiles. Cast includes Jackson, Mike Minett, Pete O'Herne, Terry Potter and Doug Wren. 92 minutes cut to 91 minutes. Colour. / Aliens invade a small town to kill humans and use them as a meat-source in a new galactic fast-food franchise, but the Invasion is defeated, in this ...
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 ...