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 ...
Olsen, Geir Arne
(1957-1990) Norwegian underground author, artist and political philosopher, better known under his pen-names Leonard Borgzinner and Leon Latex; his varied works include short stories of a high literary quality, essays on Samuel R Delany and Harlan Ellison, articles on technology versus ecology, punk rock from The Velvet Underground to The Clash, et cetera. Acclaimed editor since his early teens, ...
Arrival, The
US/Mexican film (1996). Live Entertainment, Steelwork Films, Mediaworks. Directed and written by David Twohy. Cast includes Lindsay Crouse, Richard Schiff, Ron Silver and Charlie Sheen. 115 minutes. Colour. / Low-budget Paranoid sf thriller in which the hapless radio-astronomer protagonist Zane Zaminsky (Sheen), working on SETI at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, ...
Du Bois, W E B
(1868-1963) US sociologist, historian, journalist and author; active from the early 1890s, the first African-American to gain a doctorate from Harvard University (in 1895); a co-founder in 1909 of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). He was a central figure for many decades in campaigns for full civil rights. His two best known books, The Souls of Black Folk (coll 1903) and Black Reconstruction in America (1935), remain seminal ...
Meteor Man, The
Film (1993). Tinsel Townsend/MGM. Produced by Loretha C Jones, directed and written by Robert Townsend. Cast includes Don Cheadle, Bill Cosby, Marla Gibbs, Eddie Griffin, Robert Guillame, James Earl Jones and Townsend. 100 minutes. Colour. / Townsend, the film's writer, director and leading actor, is a black comic with an extremely likeable, gentle manner; likeable enough, apparently, for him – he arranged the financing – to obtain many of the leading Black actors in the ...
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 ...