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 ...
Royal, Matthew J
(1863-1900) Canadian teacher and author of The Isle of the Virgins: A Romance (1899; cut vt The Unknown Island; Or, The Isle of the Virgins 1905), a Lost Race Utopia set on an Island where women – descended from ancient Romans – dominate; men are allowed to mate only within the framework of a game (see Games and Sports) run by their ...
Mister X
Created by Canadian designers Dean Motter and Paul Rivoche, this cipherlike character – bald and with sunglasses, black overcoat and suitcase – appeared in illustrations and on record-album covers in the late 1970s before plans were made to publish a comic. The Mister X comic was promoted with several gorgeously designed posters 1981-1983 without in fact appearing. Eventually Rivoche was taken off the strip and the project was handed over to Jaime, Gilbert and Mario ...
Vyse, Michael
(? - ) UK teacher, painter and author, latterly resident in France, whose only known books both appeared in 1980. The tales assembled in The Outer Reaches (coll 1980) seem previously unpublished, but knowledgeably and competently run a wide gamut of sf and fantasy, most of the stories being moderately pessimistic about the prospects for planet Earth. Overworld (1980), a Dystopian ...
Time Travelers, The
Film (1964). Dobil, American International Pictures. Directed by Ib Melchior. Written by Melchior, from a story by Melchior and David Hewitt. Cast includes Merry Anders, Philip Carey, Preston Foster and John Hoyt. 85 minutes. Colour. / Melchior is best known as a screenwriter – e.g., Robinson Crusoe on Mars (1964), ...
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 ...