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Wednesday 9 July 2025
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 7 July 2025
Sponsor of the day: Andy Richards of Cold Tonnage Books
Scott, Ridley
(1937- ) UK film-maker who has worked mostly in the USA. He began his career as a set designer for the BBC, including work on the adaptation of John Brunner's "Some Lapse of Time" (June-July 1963 Science Fantasy) for the first season of Out of the Unknown (1965). After making a name directing a series of stylish, inventive television commercials, ...
Elton, James
A House Name of the John Spencer and Co imprint Badger Books. The only sf title to appear under this byline was The Quest of the Seeker (1958) by W H Fear. [DRL/SH]
Balsdon, Dacre
(1901-1977) academic, historian and author, who signed his nonfiction as J P V D Balsdon, Fellow of Exeter College, Oxford 1927-1969; his sf novels are humorous Satires on contemporary mores, little allowance being made for technological, social or behavioural change. The most imaginative, Sell England? (1936), is a Dystopia set 1000 years hence in which the UK is inhabited solely by a decadent aristocracy, while the other ...
Krohn, Leena
(1947- ) Finnish author whose first novels were composed for younger readers, an example being Ihmisen vaatteissa: Kertomus kaupungilta (1976; trans Bethany Fox as "The Pelican's New Clothes: A Story from the City" in Collected Fiction 2015), whose young protagonist experiences a magical City through his relationship with the eponymous talking bird. Krohn's focus on multivariant experiences of urban life [for Beast ...
Kamikaze 1989
Film (1982; vt Kamikaze; vt Kamikaze '89). Regina Ziegler/Trio/Oase/ZDF. Directed by Wolf Gremm. Written by Robert Katz, Gremm, based on Mord pa 31 (1965; trans as Murder on the 31st Floor 1966) by Per Wahlöö. Cast includes Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Boy Gobert, Nicole Heesters, Günther Kaufmann and Franco Nero. 106 minutes. Colour. / In the Germany of 1989 people have no problems. They are ...
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 ...