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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 ...
Rivas, Manuel Antonio de
(circa 1707-? ) Mexican Franciscan friar and author of one Proto SF short story. In his time, his surname could also be written Ribas. The only biographical information Rivas appears in depositions opened against him by the Inquisition of New Spain (see Mexico) between 1773 and 1778. It seems probable that he was born in New Spain at the beginning of the eighteenth century, because in a 1777 letter he declared ...
Snatcher
Videogame (1988). Konami. Designed by Hideo Kojima. Platforms: MSX (1988); PCEngineCD (1992); MegaCD (1994); PS1, Saturn (1996). / Snatcher is a menu driven graphical Adventure game with some real time combat sequences. Designed in Japan, it draws heavily on the style of Blade Runner (1982) and 1980s sf ...
Green, Martin
(1927-2010) UK academic and author, in US from 1952. Some of his early studies of the linkages between culture and literature – like "Science and Sensibility" and "Science Fiction" (in Science and the Shabby Curate of Poetry: Essays About the Two Cultures, coll 1964), and Children of the Sun: A Narrative of "Decadence" in England after 1918 (1976; rev 1977) – express a remote interest in Genre SF, as filtered through ...
Stirling, S M
(1953- ) French-born author in Canada from childhood; he took out US citizenship in 2003. He began publishing work of genre interest with Snowbrother (1985), the first volume of the Fifth Millennium fantasy sequence, which continued with The Sharpest Edge (1986) with Shirley Meier, The Cage (1989) with Meier, and Shadow's Son (1991) with Meier and Karen ...
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 ...