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 ...
Pešek, Luděk
(1919-1999) Czech artist and author, whose first novels (about social inequalities; not sf, but listed below for convenience) were published in Czechoslovakia in the late 1940s, but from 1968, after being exiled by the communist regime, he lived in Switzerland, his books being first published in German translation; they have been widely translated into other languages. His astronomical paintings are well known, and have been featured in National Geographic; one appeared as the cover art ...
Secret Masters
A familiar aspect of sf Paranoia is the sense that small, anonymous and unreasonably powerful cabals – sometimes individuals (see Godgame) – secretly control or manipulate the world. Seemingly omnipotent groups of Villains are commonplace in both conspiracy theories and sf, the most famous instance being the Bavarian Illuminati whose alleged influence is deliriously recomplicated in Robert ...
FlashForward
US tv series (2009-2010). Phantom Four Films for ABC. Created by Brannon Braga and David S Goyer, based on the novel Flashforward (1999) by Robert J Sawyer. Producers include Braga, Goyer, Samantha Thomas, Jessika Borsiczky, and Vince Gerardis. Writers include Braga, Goyer, Sawyer, Lisa Zwerling, Scott M Gimple, and Seth Hoffman. Directors include Goyer, Bobby Roth, Nick Gomez, John Polson, and Constantine Makris. Cast includes Joseph ...
Chu, Wesley
(? - ) Taiwan-born actor and author, in US from an early age, whose Tao sequence, comprising The Lives of Tao (2013), The Deaths of Tao (2014) and The Rebirths of Tao (2015), combines Technothriller riffs with a knowledgeable rendering of a traditional sf topos: Forerunner Alien beings called the Quasing who ...
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 ...