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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 ...
Wilson, Grosvenor
(1866-1948) US poet and author in whose Future History, The Monarch of Millions, or The Rise and Fall of the American Empire (1900), a 1950s America is strictly organized according to wealth, with the Emperor richest of all; the sciences have advanced remarkably but the people remain potentially restive, and young Demos from Alaska is able to topple the old plutocracy. Unfortunately – despite this cosmetic democratization – the ...
Fantastic Story Quarterly
US reprint Pulp magazine, 23 issues Spring 1950 to Spring 1955, the title changing after Spring 1951 to Fantastic Story Magazine; published by Best Books, a subsidiary of Standard Magazines. Sam Merwin Jr was editor until Fall 1951, being succeeded by Samuel Mines and then by Alexander Samalman for the last two issues. / Most of the reprints were from ...
Chikyū Bōeigun
Film (1957; vt The Mysterians; vt Earth Defense Force). Toho/MGM. Directed by Ishirō Honda. Written by Takeshi Kimura, based on a story by Jojiro Okami. Cast includes Akihiko Hirata, Kenji Sahara and Yumi Shirakawa. 89 minutes. Colour. / This Japanese sf Pulp epic is about Alien invaders, their own planet destroyed by nuclear Holocaust, who land in Japan seeking women for breeding ...
Brooks, Max
(1972- ) US scriptwriter and author who became known as a writer for Saturday Night Live in 2001-2003; his The Zombie Survival Guide (2003) – a nonfiction Satire of survivalist tracts, containing "documentary" scenarios based on Zombie attacks from pre-history to the present – is as engaging as its title. He is best known for World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War ...
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 ...