SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Sunday 3 November 2024
Welcome to the Encyclopedia of Science Fiction, Fourth Edition. Some sample entries appear below. Click here for the Introduction; here for the masthead; here for 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 28 October 2024
Sponsor of the day: The League of Fan Funds
Frank, Pat
Pseudonym of US journalist and author Harry Hart Frank (1907-1964) who served as a government official during World War Two, later serving with the UN. Though his three sf novels are well known within the field, Frank was not generally identified as an sf author. His first novel, Mr Adam (1946), exploits the fears of contamination felt in the USA after Hiroshima. All men but one are sterilized by a nuclear Disaster; the experiences of the sole fertile ...
Owen, Walter
(1884-1953) Scottish translator, poet and author; rejected despite several attempts for active service in World War One as he was blind in one eye; he published his early poetry privately as by Gauthier de St Ouen, the only title surviving in general catalogues being The Sonnets of G S O: A Memorial (coll 1940); in 1902 he emigrated to Buenos Aires, Argentina, and apart from occasional excursions elsewhere remained there for the rest of his life; ...
Guardians of the Galaxy
Film (2014). Marvel Studios. Directed by James Gunn. Written by Gunn and Nicole Perlman. Cast includes Dave Bautista, Bradley Cooper (voice), Vin Diesel (voice and some motion capture), Karen Gillan, Lee Pace, Chris Pratt, Michael Rooker and Zoe Saldana. 121 minutes. Colour, 3D (converted). / Five outlaws chasing the bounty on a cosmic McGuffin are cheated of the prize and thrown into a space Prison together; when the orb they ...
Captain America: The First Avenger
Film (2011). Paramount Pictures and Marvel Entertainment present a Marvel Studios production. Directed by Joe Johnston. Written by Christopher Markus & Stephen McFeely, based on the Marvel Comics by Joe Simon and Jack Kirby. Cast includes Hayley Atwell, Dominic Cooper, Chris Evans, Tommy Lee Jones, Sebastian Stan, Stanley Tucci and Hugo Weaving. 124 minutes. Colour, 3D (converted). / Joss ...
Petersilea, Carlyle
(1844-1903) US pianist and author of the Discovered Country sequence, a discursive spiritualist Utopia expounded in The Discovered Country (1889) as by Ernst von Himmel and Oceanides: A Psychical Novel (1890) also as by von Himmel, both novels being republished in 1892 as by Petersilea. The series cannot be called sf as such, but is interestingly specific about the afterlife containing no Heaven or Hell but a Platonic world whose ...
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 ...