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Tuesday 28 April 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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Morris, Desmond
(1928-2026) UK ethologist, zoologist, surrealist painter and author who remains best known for popularizations of sociobiology, arguing in The Naked Ape: A Zoologist's Study of the Human Animal (1967) that human behaviour could be usefully studied (though not comprehensively defined) through ethological comparisons with our primate relatives. He is of some sf interest for his only novel, Inrock (1983; exp 2013), whose young protagonist enters a surreal ...
Atomic Kid, The
Film (1954). Mickey Rooney Productions/Republic Pictures. Produced by Rooney. Directed by Leslie H Martinson. Written by Blake Edwards, Benedict Freeman, and John Fenton Murray. Cast includes Whit Bissell, Elaine Devry (credited as Elaine Davis), Mickey Rooney and Robert Strauss. 86 minutes. Black and white. / A pair of uranium prospectors, Barnaby Waterberry (Rooney) and Stan Cooper (Strauss) are stranded in the Nevada desert when their vehicle breaks down. They stumble upon an ...
Kasner, Michael
(1941-2008) US author who served as a US Army captain in Vietnam and wrote under various names, including Rick Mackin for the Chopper Cops Near Future police procedurals beginning with Chopper Cops: Fire Storm (1990) and ending with Chopper Cops: Sky War (1991), and Don Pendleton, the latter after the real Pendleton sold his name as a House Name, contributing ...
Peck, Wallace
Pseudonym of the unidentified US author (? -? ) of The Golden Age of Patents: A Parody on Yankee Inventiveness (1888 chap), which describes a series of spoof Inventions, sometimes with an effect of Satire, though some Yankee inspirations are narrated as tall tales. The illustrations are amusing. [JC]
Anti-Utopia
A term sometimes used to denote the dark opposite of Utopia, as surveyed in this encyclopedia's entry Dystopia (the term normally used here). For example, James Blish in The Issue at Hand: Studies in Contemporary Magazine Science Fiction (coll 1964) as by William Atheling Jr describes The Space Merchants (July-August 1952 Galaxy as "Gravy Planet"; rev and ...
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 ...