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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 ...
Startopia
Videogame (2001). Mucky Foot Productions. Platforms: Win. / Startopia is a God Game set on a series of derelict space stations which the player must rebuild after an interstellar war. The developers had previously been part of Peter Molyneux's Bullfrog Productions (BP), and the design is much influenced by such non sf Molyneux games as ...
Antigravity
The idea of somehow counteracting Gravity is one of the great sf dreams: it is gravity that kept us earthbound for so long, and even now the energy expenditure required to escape the gravity well of Earth or any other massive celestial body is the main factor that makes Space Flight so difficult and expensive. The theme of antigravity appeared early in sf. In the Proto SF era, Francis Godwin's ...
Planet 51
Spanish/UK/American animated film (2009). Ilion Animation Studios (Madrid) and HandMade Films. Directed by Jorge Blanco, Javier Abad and Marcos Martinez. Written by Joe Stillman, based on an original idea by Abad, Blanco, Martinez and Ignacio Perez Dolset. Cast includes Dwayne Johnson, Justin Long and Seann William Scott. 86 minutes. Colour. / A Spanish homage to Fifties America with an inverted Invasion in which humans are the ...
Moore, Raylyn
(1928-2005) US author, born Raylyn Perrey, who began publishing with "Death is a Woman" for Esquire in 1954. She was married to Ward Moore. Her one novel of genre interest is What Happened to Emily Goode after the Great Exhibition (1978), the Great Exhibition of 1876 being in Philadelphia, which the protagonist visits by Time Travel. [JC/DRL]
Langford, David
(1953- ) UK author, critic, editor, publisher and sf fan, in the latter capacity recipient of 21 Hugo awards for fan writing – some of the best of his several hundred pieces are assembled as Let's Hear It for the Deaf Man (coll 1992 chap US; much exp vt The Silence of the Langford 1996; exp 2015 ebook) as Dave Langford, edited by Ben Yalow – plus five Best Fanzine Hugos ...