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Tuesday 21 July 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 20 July 2026
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Allbeury, Ted
Working name of UK crime/spy-fiction author Theodore Edward le Bouthillier Allbeury (1917-2005), much of whose fiction takes its authentic tone from the fact that he was in the British secret service during World War Two; he also wrote as Richard Butler and as Patrick Kelly. Some of his spy thrillers edge into Near Future venues, though his only sf novel proper is All Our Tomorrows (1982), which depicts a UK occupied by Russia after it has declined ...
Nines, The
Film (2007). Destination Films/Jinks-Cohen Company. Written and directed by John August. Cast includes Hope Davis, Elle Fanning, Melissa McCarthy, Ryan Reynolds and Octavia Spencer. 100 minutes. Colour. / Perturbations in reality intrude on an actor, a television showrunner, and a Videogame auteur (all Reynolds), whose worlds interlock without overlapping; all three Identities are revealed as ...
Agriculture
It is not a subject that naturally lends itself to dramatic storytelling, but agriculture is nonetheless the activity that has long been the primary source of food for humans, and it will likely remain essential, in one form or another, in the future. Thus, some sf writers who look beyond heroic adventures to more broadly consider the future fate of humanity have addressed this mundane but vital profession. Sf stories about agriculture can be roughly categorized as follows: depictions of ...
Calder, Ritchie
(1906-1982) Scottish journalist, academic and author, active from 1922. He is of relevance to sf for his life-time advocacy of the science-driven creation of a peaceful future (see Futures Studies), from a left standpoint which, always moderate, never led him into any of the twentieth-century ideological bearpits into which the left (and the right) toppled so grimly and so often. His first book, The Birth of the Future (1934), is significant ...
Kirby, Jack
Pseudonym of US comic-book illustrator Jacob Kurtzberg (1917-1994), who was known as Jack Kirby from about 1940, though he does not seem to have taken that name legally; other early pseudonyms include Jack Curtiss, Curt Davis, Ted Grey, Lance Kirby and Fred Sande. One of the giants in the Comics industry, he began his more than fifty-year career in 1936 working on newspaper comic strips for the Lincoln Newspaper Syndicate; briefly, in 1939, he worked for Fleischer ...
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 ...