SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Wednesday 11 March 2026
Welcome to the Encyclopedia of Science Fiction, Fourth Edition. Some sample entries appear below. Click here for the Introduction; here for what we mean by Science Fiction; here for the masthead; here for some Statistics; here for the 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 9 March 2026
Sponsor of the day: The Telluride Institute
Kantor, MacKinlay
(1904-1977) US author best known for such works outside the sf field as Andersonville (1955), a long novel set during the US Civil War, the area of his deepest concern. That war is also the setting for If the South Had Won the Civil War (22 November 1960 Look; 1961; exp as coll 2001), the Alternate-History thesis of the title being a favourite crux for US writers in the genre; the ...
It Happened Here
Film (1966). Rath/Lopert. Directed by Kevin Brownlow, Andrew Mollo. Written by Brownlow, Mollo. Cast includes Honor Fehrson, Fiona Leland, Pauline Murray and Sebastian Shaw. 99 minutes, cut to 93 minutes. Black and white. / Alternate-History stories are rare in sf cinema. This UK film is an exception; it shows what might have happened had Nazi Germany successfully invaded the UK (see Hitler Wins). Shot in a ...
Colbeck, Alfred
(1858-1933) UK Methodist minister and author active from before 1900 as an author of magazine fiction, mostly for boys; When the Earth Swung Over: A Strange Story of the Mysterious White People of the Napo (1926; vt When the Earth Swung Over 2022) is a Lost World tale set in South America, where the survivors of the sinking of Atlantis have established a civilization. [JC]
Theater Five
Radio series (1964-1965; vt Theatre-Five; vt Theater 5). ABC-Radio Network. Directors included Ted Bell, Harry Nelson and Warren Sommerville. Writers included Lillian Anderson, Sherman Dryer, Richard McCracken, Robert Newman, Saul Panitz, William N Robson and Lawrence Weinberg. Announcer and host: Fred Foy. 260 20-minute episodes, of which 256 episodes survive. / A late effort by ABC to revive US radio drama, ...
Pelham, David
(1938- ) UK illustrator, and art director of Penguin Books 1968-1980. Although his work in sf illustration necessarily took second place to his professional duties at Penguin, he designed some fine covers in that period, notably those for the 1970s Penguin editions of J G Ballard's novels and Anthony Burgess's A Clockwork Orange (1962). He uses the airbrush effectively and his smooth, ...
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 ...