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Friday 13 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
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Ottum, Bob
(1925-1986) US sports author and author who began publishing work of genre interest with "She Called Me Frankie" in Science Fiction Quarterly for May 1953. In his surprisingly funny sf novel, All Right, Everybody Off the Planet (1972), inefficient Aliens send a spy among us in human form; the Humour derives from their ignorance of human relationships and from their attempts to ...
Thomson, James
Working name of Scottish poet and author James Thompson (1834-1882), best known for "The City of Dreadful Night" (1874 National Reformer as Bysshe Vanolis; 1975 chap), a long narrative poem whose rendering of an apocalyptic City very much like London contains a profusion of images and tropes that prefigure Steampunk and Urban Fantasy (see The ...
Cool, Tom
(1954- ) US computer technician for the American Navy and, after his retirement, author of three action-oriented sf novels. In Infectress (1997), a terrorist engineers a virus (see Medicine) designed to return Earth to an idyllic pre-civilized state, and makes use of a stolen AI and nanoware (see Nanotechnology) to further this goal; Secret Realms (1998), ...
Jungle, The
Film (1952). Lippert Pictures/Voltaire Theatres, Ltd. Produced and directed by William Berke. Written by Carroll Young and Orville H Hampton (additional dialogue). Cast includes Rod Cameron, Cesar Romero and Marie Windsor. 73 minutes. Black and white with Sepiatone in original prints for the climax, removed from most later prints. / Big-game hunter Steve Bentley returns from deep in the jungles of India as the lone survivor of a hunting expedition which he says was wiped out by ...
Birds, The
Film (1963). Universal. Director Alfred Hitchcock. Written by Evan Hunter, based on The Birds (October 1952 Good Housekeeping; 1996 chap) by Daphne du Maurier. Cast includes Tippi Hedren, Suzanne Pleshette, Jessica Tandy and Rod Taylor. 119 minutes. Colour. / Ordinary birds in a small seaside town near San Francisco (see ...
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 ...