SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Saturday 23 September 2023
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 18 September 2023
Sponsor of the day: Andy Richards of Cold Tonnage Books
Wager, Walter
(1924-2004) US crime and spy-thriller author who also wrote as John Tiger and (his first and second names) Walter Herman. His borderline-sf political suspense thriller Viper Three (1971), in which escaped prisoners take over a US nuclear missile silo and blackmail the government with threats of a launch that will trigger World War Three, was adapted for Cinema with a somewhat different slant and ending as ...
Skullduggery
Film (1970). Universal Pictures. Produced by Saul David. Directed by Gordon Douglas. Written by Nelson Gidding based on Les Animaux denaturés (1952; trans Rita Barisse as You Shall Know Them 1953; vt Borderline 1954; vt The Murder of the Missing Link 1958) by Vercors. Cast includes Susan Clark, Paul Hubschmid and Burt Reynolds. 105 minutes. Colour. / Adventurer Douglas Temple (Reynolds) guides ...
Spruill, Steven G
(1946- ) US psychologist and author, who has also written as by Steven Harriman and Steve Lyon. In his first sf novel, Keepers of the Gate (1977; rev 1978), a complicated adventure tale rather in the mode of Keith Laumer, the alien Proteps of Eridani turn out to be an advanced form of Homo sapiens, and have been suppressing mankind's urge to the stars for selfish reasons; the generic cues for revelling in such a ...
Barba, Harry
(1922-2007) US publisher and author of some nonfiction; his two sf books are a Satire, The Day The World Went Sane (coll 1979), and Round Trip to Byzantium (1985). He was believed to own Harian Creative Press. [JC]
Price, Bruce Deitrick
(? - ) US artist, journalist and author, active from the early 1980s; of his various work, fiction and nonfiction, Frankie (2022) is of sf interest through its tracing of the creation of a female Android whose amiability does not fend off disaster. [JC]
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 ...