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Sunday 9 August 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.
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Black, Ian Stuart
(1915-1997) UK author and scriptwriter for television from about 1950, including episodes for Invisible Man (1958), Adam Adamant Lives! (1966), Star Maidens (1976), and most notably three Doctor Who episodes, each of which he novelized: "The Savages" in 1965 as Doctor Who: The Savages (1986), "The War Machines" in 1965 as Doctor Who: The War Machines (1989), ...
Nathan, Robert
(1894-1985) US author active from around 1915 when he began to publish nonfantastic stories as by Richard Florance in The Smart Set; he was eventually responsible under his own name for forty-two novels beginning with Peter Kindred (1919). The Barly Fields (omni 1938), an omnibus of representative work, mostly sentimental fantasies, contains The Fiddler in Barly (1926), The Woodcutter's House (1927) – in which the phrase ...
Hossain, Saad Z
(1979- ) Bangladeshi author whose first novel, Baghdad Immortals (2013; vt Escape from Baghdad! 2015), treats the world of Iraq after the fall of Saddam Hussein as a surreal nightmare (see Imperialism; Satire; War); the tale traces the appalled and appalling "antics" of its two protagonists as they attempt to smuggle a torturer out of the land he has helped ...
Hamilton, Edmond
(1904-1977) US author, married to Leigh Brackett from 1946 until his death. With E E "Doc" Smith and Jack Williamson, he was one of the prime movers in the development of US sf, sharing with those writers in the creation and popularization of classic Space Opera as it first appeared in Pulp magazines from about 1928. His first story, ...
Wise, Robert
(1914-2005) US film director, who began his career as a film-cutter at RKO Studios and by 1939 was a fully qualified editor. He worked on Orson Welles's Citizen Kane (1941) and also – at the studio's insistence when the director was safely out of the country – directed a few scenes in Welles's The Magnificent Ambersons (1942). He then worked with the Val Lewton unit at RKO, first as editor, then as director. He made three ...
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 ...