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 ...
Webb, Sharon
(1936-2010) US nurse and author who began publishing sf with a poem, "Atomic Reaction" for The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction in May 1963 as by Ron Webb, and whose first story, "The Girl with the 100 Proof Eyes" (July 1964 F&SF), also as by Ron Webb, appeared a year later in the same journal. She began to produce fiction regularly only from the end of the 1970s, after about a decade in nursing, experience which figured in the ...
Xiang Kairan
(1889-1957) Chinese author of several influential novels and essays, some as by Pingjiang Buxiaosheng, which dragged the genre of Wuxia out of the dreamtime of the nineteenth century, and towards a more modern form with nationalist and patriotic leanings. Dubbed "the father of martial arts fiction" by the Oxford Handbook of Modern Chinese Literatures (2016), Xiang was enmeshed in the radical movement to create a new and modern ...
Destinies
US "magazine" in paperback-book format published by Ace Books, edited by James Baen, 11 issues, November 1978-August 1981, last issue undated. The list of contributors to all sections of the magazine – which could equally be thought of as an original-Anthology series – was impressive. Book reviews were by Spider Robinson, with Orson Scott ...
Nude on the Moon
Film (1961). Moon Productions. Directed by Raymond Phelan and Doris Wishman. Written by Raymond Phelan and Doris Wishman. Cast includes Lester Brown, Marietta and Walter Meyer. 83 minutes. Colour. / While waiting to hear whether the government will finance his proposed rocket to the Moon, brilliant young Scientist Jeff Huntley (Brown) inherits three million dollars from his uncle and tells his colleague and mentor, the ...
Langford, David
(1953- ) UK author, critic, editor, publisher and sf fan, in the latter capacity recipient of 21 Hugo awards for fan writing – some of the best of his several hundred pieces are assembled as Let's Hear It for the Deaf Man (coll 1992 chap US; much exp vt The Silence of the Langford 1996; exp 2015 ebook) as Dave Langford, edited by Ben Yalow – plus five Best Fanzine Hugos ...