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Wednesday 11 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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Inner Space
In sf Terminology, an antonym to "outer space". The term was probably first used in the sf field by Robert Bloch in a speech at the 1948 Worldcon, but was not widely disseminated at that time. However, in "They Come from Inner Space" (5 December 1953 The New Statesman) – an essay he later included in Thoughts in the Wilderness (coll 1957) – J B ...
Williams-Ellis, Amabel
Nickname and working name of Mary Annabel Nassau Williams-Ellis (1894-1984), UK editor and author born Mary Annabel Strachey and under that surname an early member of the Bloomsbury Group to which her cousin Lytton Strachey (1880-1932) also belonged. After her marriage in 1915 to Clough Williams-Ellis (1883-1978) she used his surname, collaborating with him on some nonfiction works, most interestingly on Ecological threats to the environment; and participating with ...
Eisenberg, Larry
Working name of US author Lawrence Eisenberg (1919-2018), for many years Co-Director of the Electronics Laboratory at Rockefeller University. He began publishing sf with "The Mynah Matter" for Fantastic Stories (see Fantastic) in August 1962 as Lawrence Eisenberg, and became known for his comic sequence of stories about Emmett Duckworth; many of these were assembled – some published for the first time – in his only collection, ...
Clarke, Joan
(?1921- ) UK author, mostly for children; she is not the Canadian author, Joan Clark. Her books of sf interest include The Happy Planet (1963), set in a Ruined Earth dominated by three contrasting societies, one technophilic, one Utopian on pastoral principles, the last composed of Cyborgs. The second "choice" seems to prevail in the end. Foxon's Hole ...
Ramdagger, Geoffrey
Almost certainly a pseudonym used by the unidentified US author (? - ) of Sexualis 1984 (1973), a Sex novel set in a disturbing Near Future. [JC]
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 ...