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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 ...
Bunch, Chris
(1943-2005) US screenwriter and author, in the latter capacity almost exclusively of series; his first two series – the Sten sequence of Military SF adventures beginning with Sten (1982) and ending with Empire's End (1993), and the Anteros fantasy sequence – were both written with Allan Cole. The first of these at least is thought mainly to express Cole's way with things, ...
Churchill, Winston S
(1874-1965) UK politician and author, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1953; influential advocate of legalized Eugenics programmes, such as he (with others) expounded in the Mental Deficiency Act of 1912, with "deficiency" being defined in both medical and moral terms. His only novel, Savrola: A Tale of the Revolution in Laurania (May-December 1899 Macmillan's Magazine; 1900), is a ...
Journey to the Seventh Planet
Film (1962). Cinemagic. Directed by Sidney W Pink. Written by Ib Melchior and Sidney W Pink, based on a story by Sidney W Pink. Cast includes John Agar, Annie Birgit Garde, Mimi Heinrich, Bente Juel, Louie Miehe-Renard, Peter Monch, Ulla Moritz, Carl Ottosen, Ann Smyrner, Ove Sprogøe and Greta Thyssen. 77 minutes. Colour. / Having found no signs of life on the planets Mercury, Venus, ...
Damned, The
Film (1961; vt These Are the Damned). Hammer/Swallow. Directed by Joseph Losey. Written by Evan Jones, based on The Children of Light (1960) by Henry L Lawrence. Cast includes MacDonald Carey, Shirley Ann Field, Alexander Knox, Viveca Lindfors and Oliver Reed. 96 minutes, cut to 87 minutes (UK) and to 77 minutes (US). Black and white. / Made in the UK by expatriate US director Losey, this film so dismayed the distributors, ...
Clute, John
(1940- ) Canadian critic, editor and author, in the UK from 1969; married to Judith Clute from 1964, partner of Elizabeth Hand since 1996. He began to publish work of genre interest with an sf-tinged poem "Carcajou Lament" in Triquarterly for Winter 1960 [ie Autumn 1959]; he began consistently publishing sf reviews in his "New Fiction" column for the Toronto Star (1966-1967), and later in ...