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 ...
Welcome to Blood City
Film (1977). An EMI/Len Herberman Production. Directed by Peter Sasdy. Written by Stephen Schneck, Michael Winder. Cast includes Keir Dullea, Samantha Eggar, Barry Morse and Jack Palance. 96 minutes. Colour. / This UK/Canadian coproduction is one of the earlier movies to take Virtual Reality as its theme (but see also Welt Am Draht [1973]). A group of Amnesiacs find themselves in ...
Humour
There is a false belief that sf and humour do not mix. Certainly sf has produced many bad jokes – Arthur C Clarke's Tales From the White Hart (coll of linked stories 1957) is entirely devoted to them – but from the beginning it has also produced many good ones. Much sf humour takes the form of social Satire, and stories of this kind are discussed mainly in that entry. While the discussion below naturally ...
Science Fiction Critic, The
US Fanzine (1935-1938) edited by Claire P Beck (1919-1999), 14 issues, published bimonthly; #1 only, November 1935, was titled The Science-Fiction Review; last two issues merged with Phantastique edited by William Miller Jr. Contributors included Clyde F Beck (the editor's brother), John Carnell, Hugo Gernsback, Robert A W ...
Rock, James
Almost certainly the pseudonym of US inventor and author Clinton A Patten (? -? ), who patented his design for a monorail in 1893, and in whose name Thro' Space (1909) is copyrighted. "James Rock" tells his own story: a neighbour's Invention of an Antigravity substance allows the two to undertake a Fantastic Voyage, first to Paris, then to the ...
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 ...