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Sunday 14 June 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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Duffy, Maureen
(1933-2026) UK author, active from around 1950, several of whose books focused on London, including Capital (1975), a complex set of era-switching meditations – including a Neanderthal man's thoughts about the future – on the deep mythos of the city. The novel influenced Michael Moorcock's Mother London (1988) (as the author acknowledged clearly), and similar later works by Iain ...
Berger, Yves
(1931-2004) French author, editor and literary journalist whose Alternate History novel, Le sud (1962; trans Robert Baldick as The Garden 1963), is set in an antebellum Virginia. One other novel of possible genre interest has not yet appeared in English: Le monde après la pluie ["The World After the Rain"] (1998) sees eight characters fleeing the End of the World who find ...
It Happened Tomorrow
Film (1944). United Artists. Produced by Arnold Pressburger. Directed by René Clair. Writers include René Clair, Lord Dunsany, Helene Fraenkel and Dudley Nichols. Cast includes Linda Darnell, Edgar Kennedy, Jack Oakie and Dick Powell. 85 minutes. Black and white. / Romantic comedy about a newspaper reporter (Powell) who idly wishes out loud to know about newsworthy events ahead of time (see ...
Scholes, Robert
(1929-2016) US academic and sf critic. One of the better-known US theorists in structuralism, he is the author of a number of books on literary theory. In its sustained argument that the essential storytelling element in fiction contradicts any prejudicial inclination to think of the realist novel as more than a phase, The Nature of Narrative (1966; rev vt The Nature of Narrative: Revised and Expanded 2006) with Robert Kellogg (1928-2004) contributes to a fuller ...
Panic in Year Zero!
Film (1962; vt End of the World). Alta Vista, American International Pictures. Directed by Ray Milland. Written by Jay Simms, John Morton, story by Simms, based (without credit) on the stories "Lot" (May 1953 F&SF; vt "Panic in Year Zero" in Space Movies: Classic Science Fiction Films, anth 1995, ed Peter Haining) and "Lot's Daughter" (October 1954 ...
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 ...