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Ell. Ell was created by the Russian author Aleksandr Beliayev (Dubel, Hoity-Toity, Icthyander, Kachinskiy, Professor Kern, Professor Wagner) and appeared in Borba v Efire (1928).

At some point in the distant future Europe, Asia, and Africa are a socialist technological utopia. The three continents are ruled by the Pan-European and Pan-Asiatic Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, whose capital is the city of Radiopolis. The Republics are marvels of SCIENCE!, with such technological wonders as cellular telephones, powered winged jet packs, remote-controlled tanks, and x-ray binoculars with ranges in the thousands of miles. Unfortunately, the Republics are opposed by the vile U.S.A., which is ruled by a cabal of corrupt capitalists who have grown fat from the blood and toil of the workers, who have themselves regressed evolutionarily so that they are only capable of functioning at one particular spot in a production line.

Ell is a historian in the Republics, and is with the narrator, a Russian timeslipped from the modern era, as the Republic and the Americans clash, swapping death rays and energy shields, before the narrator awakens from this dream.

* I've included Ell in the Best of the Encyclopedia category because Borba v Efire is a fun read. Not, perhaps, fun if you're of a moderate or conservative mindset, but for those of us on the bleeding edge of progressivism, the novel is an enjoyable work of fantasy. Socialist techno-utopias! Communist SCIENCE! Corrupt capitalists in the US finally getting what's coming to them! Ah, give me more of that, please. Aleksandr Beliayev wrote under the restrictions of 1928 Soviet Communism, of course, so on a certain level I'd assume he was compelled to write Borba v Efire, but if so he certainly did an expert's job of it. 

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