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.
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Adventures of Captain Havoc and the Phantom Knight, The
Australian Comic (?1947-?1949). Number of issues unknown; copies of #1-#6, #8-#10, #12 and #18 are extant in some form. Artists include Matt Baker, Don Ryan and C M Tighe. Writers include Noel P Bookes and John Libris. Issues #1-#2 were titled The Phantom Knight; from #3, The Adventures of Captain Havoc and The Phantom Knight. Some sources have this as a New Zealand comic – and there are copies with a New Zealand ...
Rogers, Jane
(1952- ) UK screenwriter and author of Young Adult novels beginning with Separate Tracks (1983), none of her early work being fantastic, though Island (1999), a mundane fantasia on William Shakespeare's The Tempest (performed circa 1610-1611), comes close. Mr Wroe's Virgins (1991) – she also scripted the ...
Aliens [film]
Film (1986). Brandywine/Twentieth Century Fox. Produced by Gale Anne Hurd, directed by James Cameron. Written by Cameron, based on a story by Cameron, David Giler, Walter Hill. Cast includes Michael Biehn, Jenette Goldstein, Carrie Henn, Lance Henriksen, William Hope, Paul Reiser and Sigourney Weaver. 137 minutes. Colour. / This formidable sequel to Alien is more an action than a ...
Rocket Kelly
US Comic (1945-1946). Fox Feature Syndicate Inc. Artists include Alec Hope, E C Stoner and Al Zere. Script writers include Betty Burrows, Al Jones and Ted Small. There are 2-3 Rocket Kelly stories per issue, accompanied by one or two other long strips, mostly non-sf/Fantasy but including one-off appearances by two very minor Superheroes: Illuso, a magician given Magic ...
Barnes, Julian
(1946- ) UK author who has published detective thrillers as by Dan Kavanagh; his most famous single novel remains Flaubert's Parrot (1984). He has written some Scientific Romances of interest. An abstractedness about the circumstances of the world (see Mainstream Writers of SF) attends Staring at the Sun (1986), which carries its protagonist from her birth in ...
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 ...