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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 ...
Pizor, Faith K
(1943-2021) US historian, proprietor of a children's bookstore, and editor, with T Allan Comp, of the useful compilation The Man in the Moone and Other Lunar Fantasies (anth 1971; vt The Man in the Moone: An Anthology of Antique Science Fiction and Fantasy 1971), in which nine Moon voyages from 1638 to 1841 appear. These include works, most in excerpted form, then not otherwise readily accessible to the ...
Lost Planet Airmen
US film (1951). Republic Pictures. Directed by Fred C. Brannon. Written by Royal K Cole and William Lively. Cast includes Mae Clarke, Tristram Coffin, James Craven, I. Stanford Jolley and House Peters, Jr. 65 minutes. Black and white. This was an abridged version of the 12-part (167 minutes in total) Republic Pictures Serial Film King of the Rocket Men (1949), though slightly reworked (see below). / Reporter Glenda Thomas (Clarke) is ...
Sonny Boy
Japanese animated tv series (2021). Madhouse. Directed and written by Shingo Natsume. Voice cast includes Hiroki Gotō, Aoi Ichikawa, Ai Kakuma, Chiaki Kobayashi, Saori Ōnishi and Aoi Yūki. Twelve 24-minute episodes. Colour. / The world around a school vanishes, leaving it marooned in darkness with 36 baffled pupils. Matters are complicated by their developing Superpowers – ...
Phillips, Roland Ashford
(1884-1969) US author, who worked under his own name and some unidentified pseudonyms; of sf interest is Golden Isle (1925), featuring a yacht which converts into a submarine (see Inventions), and which carries its owners to a Caribbean Island at the heart of which a Lost World is discovered. [JC]
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 ...