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Sunday 13 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.

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Kerigan, Florence

(1896-1984) US author of a Lost Race novel for the Young Adult market, The Secret of the Maya Well (1936); it is set in Mexico. [JC]

(1887-1949) Canadian-born author, mostly in the US from the turn of the century, later a naturalized US citizen, one of the most prolific and popular pulp writers over the course of his professional career (circa 1910-1949); of his approximately 1200 short stories, at least 10% were fantasy, Pulp sf or horror; and of his nearly 100 novels, several – e.g., The Star Woman (1924), set in Canada during the fur-trading territorial disputes of the ...

Van Kampen, Robert D

(1938-1999) US businessman and author, whose fundamentalist Christian beliefs, focused on the Rapture, tacitly shape his only sf novel, The Fourth Reich (1997), which Equipoisally creates a Hitler Wins scenario through the recovery of Hitler's soul from Hell and its insertion through Cloning into a human embryo. He soon becomes ruler of all Russia, and as the anti- ...

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 ...

Cosmos: War of the Planets

Italian film (1977; original title Anno Zero – Guerra Nello Spazio; vt War of the Planets; vt Year Zero – War in Space). Nais Film. Directed by Alfonso Brescia. Written by Alfonso Brescia (as Al Bradley) and Aldo Crudo (as Al Crydo), plus the uncredited Maxim Lo Jacono and Jacob Macchi. Cast includes John Richardson. 89 minutes. Colour. / A lump of rock flung from a "stellar explosion" is on collision course with a ...

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 ...