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Thursday 21 May 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.
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Markwick, Edward
Working name of UK lawyer and author Edward Markwick Johnson (1851-1925), later his legal name, active in the last quarter of the nineteenth century; his sf novel, The City of Gold: A Tale of Sport, Travel, and Adventure in the Heart of the Dark Continent (1896), direly invades H Rider Haggard territory, taking its protagonists into a scientifically advanced Semitic Lost World in Africa with ...
Gosse, Edmund
(1849-1928) UK scholar and critic, best known for his initially anonymous autobiography, Father and Son (1907); exceedingly prolific as a reviewer and belletrist for many years. Of sf interest is his novel, The Secret of Narcisse: A Romance (1892), set in the sixteenth century in the French town of Bar-le-Duc, where the protagonist, a sculptor, manufactures (see Inventions) a Robot which much resembles a ...
Sound of Thunder, A
Film (2005). Franchise Pictures presents a Scenario Lane/Jericho production in association with Crusader Entertainment. Directed by Hyams. Written by Thomas Dean Donnelly & Joshua Oppenheimer and Gregory Poirier; story by Donnelly & Oppenheimer, from "A Sound of Thunder" (June 28 1952 Collier's Weekly) by Ray Bradbury. Cast includes William Armstrong, Corey Johnson, Ben ...
Kelley, Thomas P
(1905-1982) Canadian prizefighter, circa 1927-1929 under the name Tommy Kelley, and author, by his own description "King of the Canadian pulp writers", mostly of adventure fiction and "true crime", under his own name and a variety of pseudonyms, including Gene Bannerman, Roy P Devlin and Valentine Worth. Some of his novels are of sf interest. I Found Cleopatra (November 1938-February 1939 Weird Tales; cut 1946; text restored 1977) is a ...
Jarvis, Simon
(circa 1963- ) UK academic and poet who is of sf interest for Jerusalem Deleted (2015), a book-length narrative poem (see Poetry) set mostly in a Near Future Post-Holocaust Britain, as perceived during the Fantastic Voyage of its narrator through broken lands and Cities. An earlier work, ...
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 ...