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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 ...
Grimsley, Jim
(1955- ) US playwright, academic and author some of whose plays have been assembled as Mr Universe: And Other Plays (coll 1998), which includes Math and Aftermath (first performed Seven Stages, Atlanta, Georgia, April 1988) and The Lizard of Tarsus (first performed Seven Stages, Atlanta, Georgia 31 January 1990). Other plays of sf interest include The Earthlings (first performed Seven Stages, Atlanta, Georgia, January 1984) and ...
Far Frontiers
US magazine in pocketbook format; it could also be regarded as an Original Anthology series. Quarterly, published by Baen Books, edited by Jerry Pournelle and James Baen and (uncredited) John F Carr; seven issues, from Far Frontiers (anth 1985) in January 1985 to Far Frontiers Vol VII (anth Winter ...
Barnes, Colin F
(? - ) UK author whose first series, the Techxorcist sequence beginning with Artificial Evil (2012) is set in an artificial world-dominating domed City (see Keep); renamed, the essential overall story seems to continue in the Code Breakers sequence beginning with Code Breakers: Prequel (2014 chap) and Alpha (2014), placed in the same ...
Postal Worlds
Games such as Chess have been played by post since at least 1824, when the members of the newly formed Edinburgh Chess Club challenged their London counterparts to a correspondence match, and probably much earlier. These games, however, were played in alternating turns between individual participants, each of whom had a board displaying the current state of play. The concept of a game in which several players submit their orders for a turn to ...
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 ...