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.
Site updated on 25 July 2024
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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 ...
Levin, Bernard
(1928-2004) UK journalist and critic best remembered for his vast output of often polemical and/or satirical newspaper essays, notably in The Times 1971-1997; nine volumes of selections, a small fraction of the total, appeared in book form. Levin's nonfiction A World Elsewhere (1994) is a popular survey of, and meditation upon, the various myths and dreams of Utopia – from ancient legends of Atlantis to ...
Skyrealms of Jorune
Role Playing Game (1985). SkyRealms Publishing. Designed by Andrew Leker, Miles Teves, Amy Leker. / SkyRealms of Jorune is a work of Science Fantasy, set on the eponymous planet in the distant future, long after it has been colonized by humanity. The tone is reminiscent of the Planetary Romances of Jack Vance, and also of the various ...
Rushdie, Salman
(1947- ) Indian-born author, in the UK (and elsewhere) from adolescence, and long a UK citizen. His fame derives not solely from the illegal fatwa, or death "sentence", proclaimed against him by the Islamic theocracy of Iran for The Satanic Verses (1988), which caused his near-death in 2022; but also, and far more importantly, from all his previous work, beginning with the complex and witty, legend-like Grimus (1975), a ...
Board Game
Term used to describe games played with physical pieces on a (generally flat) board or map, as with Chess. Clearly this definition can overlap with that of Wargames; this encyclopedia has categorized games descended from the board and counter Wargame Tactics (1954) designed by Charles Roberts and sharing its preoccupation with realistic simulation as Wargames, and all ...
Robinson, Roger
(1943- ) UK computer programmer, bibliographer and publisher, active in UK Fandom for many years. The Writings of Henry Kenneth Bulmer (1983 chap; rev 1984 chap) is an exhaustive Bibliography of one of the most prolific sf writers, Kenneth Bulmer, and Who's Hugh?: An SF Reader's Guide to Pseudonyms (1987) is similarly exhaustive in its ...