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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 ...
O'Mahony, T P
(1939- ) Irish journalist and author, working in the former capacity 1967-1989 as religious affairs correspondent for The Irish Press. He is of some sf interest for The Vatican Caper (1981), about the assassination of the imaginary Pope Patrick I, and for the more ambitious The Lynch Years: A Political Fantasy (1986), which circumambiates the life of the real Irish politician Jack Lynch (1917-1999) with material evocative of tall-tale ...
Véron, Pierre
(1831-1900) French journalist and author, some of whose sketches and tales are of sf interest, including those assembled as The Merchants of Health and Other Fantastic Stories (coll trans Brian Stableford from various sources 2015). The title story – originally published as Les Marchands de Santé (1862) – is a Satire on the medical profession set on a fantasticated planet; ...
Ackerman, Elliot
(1980- ) US soldier, journalist and author, whose eight years' service as an American Marine (much of it spent in Afghanistan) is reflected in his nonfantastic first novel, Green on Blue (2015). Waiting for Eden (2018) focuses on savagely wounded survivors of the war in Iraq through the first-person narration of one who did not survive [for Afterlife here and Polder below see The ...
Message from Moonbase Alpha
Film (1999). Kindred Productions. Produced by Tim Makett. Written by Johnny Byrne. Cast includes Zenia Merton. 7 minutes. Colour. / A short fan-produced coda to the cancelled Television series Space: 1999 (1975-1977), set in the year 2024. Surviving members of Moonbase Alpha are evacuating to a habitable planet they have named Terra Alpha, as the base's life support systems have degraded to the point where they can ...
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 ...