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Wednesday 18 February 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 18 February 2026
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Cole, Robert W
(1869-1937) UK photographer (having changed his mind after studying law at Balliol, Oxford, with a view to becoming a barrister) and author who was active during the first decade of the twentieth century. His first and best novel, The Struggle for Empire: A Story of the Year 2236 (1900), takes the Future War story to its logical, grim conclusion. The Anglo-Saxon Federation – ostensibly a Utopia with ...
Folingsby, Kenneth
The possible pseudonym of a probable Scotsman (? - ) whose Scientific Romance Meda: A Tale of the Future (1891) – though the events it recounts turn out to be a dream experienced during a four-month trance – remains of some interest for the imaginative scope of the 5575 CE Utopia depicted, in which large-headed brainy "Scotonians" are fed by ambient electricity, ...
Empire of the Ants
Film (1977; vt H G Wells' Empire of the Ants). MGM Studios, Cinema 77, American International Pictures (AIP). Directed by Bert I Gordon. Screenplay by Gordon and Jack Turley, very loosely based on "The Empire of the Ants" (December 1905 Strand Magazine) by H G Wells. Cast includes Joan Collins, Robert Lansing. 82 minutes. ...
Nilsson, Peter
(1937-1998) Swedish astronomer and author. Nilsson grew up on a small farm in Möcklehult, a small rural community where the family moved in 1948. His father was a miller, carpenter and farmer, and after elementary school Nilsson started working, but had also begun reading widely and dreamt of becoming a writer and of studying the stars. He began taking correspondence courses and in 1959 graduated from secondary school. After military service, he enrolled at ...
Olshaker, Mark
(1951- ) US FBI officer (retired 1995) and author of several Technothrillers; of sf interest is Einstein's Brain (1981), in which aspects of the brain of Alfred Einstein are implanted by neurosurgery into a scientist, a writer and a rabbi (see Identity Transfer), leading to a form of gestalt capable of continuing Einstein's work in the 1980s. [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 ...