SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Monday 13 January 2025
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 6 January 2025
Sponsor of the day: Conversation 2023
Washington, S H L
(1910-? ) UK author of works of family history whose first publication, on the title page of which he is stated to be thirteen, is The Temple of Mystery: A Tale of Adventure (1924), a Lost Race tale with clear echoes of H Rider Haggard, set in a City occupied by Ancient Egyptians which may contain prehistoric beasts. [JC]
Z.P.G.
Film (1971; vt Zero Population Growth UK). Sagittarius/Paramount. Directed by Michael Campus. Written by Max Ehrlich and Frank DeFelitta. Cast includes Oliver Reed, Geraldine Chaplin, Diane Cilento and Don Gordon. 97 minutes. Colour. / Set on a future Earth afflicted by massive Pollution, this film was a product of a period when (perhaps not before time), the question of ...
Mysterious Wu Fang, The
US Pulp magazine, seven issues September 1935 to March 1936, monthly, published by Popular Publications; edited by Edythe Seims working for Rogers Terrill. Intended to capitalize on the popularity of Sax Rohmer's Dr Fu-Manchu (featured in films and a radio series of the period; see Fu Manchu), The Mysterious Wu Fang showed the "Dragon Lord of Crime" seeking ...
Man from Planet X, The
Film (1951). Mid-Century Films. Directed by Edgar G Ulmer. Written by Aubrey Wisberg and Jack Pollexfen. Cast includes Raymond Bond, Robert Clarke, Margaret Field and William Schallert. 70 minutes. Black and white. / As the wandering Planet X approaches Earth, an Alien (actor unknown and uncredited) from the planet lands his Spaceship at the place where his world will come closest to Earth, in rural Scotland. This location ...
Rouff, Marcel
(1877-1936) Swiss-born French author of a Future History, Voyage au monde à l'envers (1 October-15 November 1920 Mercure de France; 1923; trans Brian Stableford as Journey to the Inverted World 2011), whose aviator narrator, having disappeared from a Europe convulsed by World War One, finds himself in Australia two millennia hence, which he ...
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 ...