SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Wednesday 9 July 2025
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 7 July 2025
Sponsor of the day: Andy Richards of Cold Tonnage Books
Vampire, The
Film (1957; vt Mark of the Vampire). Gramercy Pictures. Produced by Arthur Gardner, Arnold Laven, and Jules V Levy. Directed by Paul Landres. Written by Pat Fielder from her original story. Cast includes John Beal, Coleen Gray, Dabbs Greer (Dr Will Beaumont) and Kenneth Toby. 75 minutes. Black and white. / Small-town doctor Paul Beecher (Beal) is entrusted with an experimental Drug developed from the blood of vampire bats by a colleague, just before ...
Mighty Peking Man, The
Hong Kong film (1977). Original title Xīngxing Wáng; vt Goliathon; vt Colossus of the Congo. Shaw Brothers Studio. Directed by Ho Meng Hua. Written by Ni Kuang. Cast includes Ku Feng, Evelyne Kraft and Danny Lee. 90 minutes. Colour. / A Hong Kong businessman (Feng) plans to capture the Peking Man, here a 50-foot ape (see Apes as Human), who had been seen in the Indian Himalayas a few ...
Jungle Captive
Film (1945; vt The Jungle Captive). Universal Pictures. Directed by Harold Young. Written by Dwight V Babcock and M Coates Webster from a story by Babcock. Cast includes Phil Brown, Jerome Cowan, Rondo Katton, Otto Kruger, Vicky Lane and Amelita Ward. 63 minutes. Black and white. / A sequel to Captive Wild Woman (1943) and Jungle Woman (1944), with no members of the original casts; even the ...
Heslop, Val
Working name of Valentine Voltaire Heslop (1894-1946), Australian author whose Lost Race tale, The Lost Civilization: A Story of Adventure in Central Australia (1936), is set in an Underground world beneath Australia inhabited by a technologically advanced white race, a monarchy descended from both Ancient Egyptians and Mayans. Telepathy is in ...
Santa Claus Conquers the Martians
Film (1964; vt Santa Claus Defeats the Aliens). Jalor Productions. Directed by Nicholas Webster. Written by Glenville Mareth, based on a story by Paul L Jacobson. Cast includes Vincent Beck, John Call, Donna Conforti, Leonard Hicks, Bill McCutcheon and Victor Stiles. 81 minutes. Colour. / In an effort to cheer up the children of Mars, who have learned about Santa Claus by watching television programmes from Earth, the Martian Kimar (Hicks) resolves to ...
Nicholls, Peter
(1939-2018) Australian editor and author, primarily a critic and historian of sf through his creation and editing of The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction [see below]; resident in the UK 1970-1988, in Australia from 1988; worked as an academic in English literature (1962-1968, 1971-1977), scripted television documentaries, was a Harkness Fellow in Film-making (1968-1970) in the USA, worked as a publisher's editor (1982-1983), often broadcast film and book reviews on BBC Radio from 1974 and ...