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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 ...
Clare, John
(? - ) Canadian editor and author of a Near Future spoof, The Passionate Invaders (1965), in which, 100 years after the last invasion, a group of Canadians known as the Snainef (i.e. Fenians) invade the United States. [JC]
Cameron, Verney Lovett
(1844-1894) UK naval officer, explorer and author; after Henry Stanley had found David Livingstone in central Africa (and lost him), Cameron mounted a second expedition, which found the explorer's body. He was subsequently the first European to cross Africa east to west. In contemporary terms, his explorations were comparatively enlightened: he did not shoot animals, except for food; and he did not murder Africans. Most of his early work consists of nonfiction descriptions of his travels; after ...
Red Faction
Videogame (2001). Volition. Platforms: Mac, PS2, Win (2001); Phone (2003). / Red Faction is a First Person Shooter, set on Mars and often suggestive of the less sophisticated scenes in Total Recall (1990). Its linear story follows the adventures of an oppressed miner (the player character) who becomes involved in a rebellion ...
Nahum, Maurice
(1916-1994) UK publisher and editor who was Samuel Assael's junior partner in the John Spencer and Co publishing enterprise (1946-1983), best known or most infamous for its Badger Books (which see) imprint. Assael and Nahum co-edited three of the four 1950s Spencer sf magazines given separate entries in this encyclopedia: Futuristic Science Stories (1950-1954) under the pseudonym ...
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 ...