SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Monday 16 February 2026
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 16 February 2026
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Terror in the Midnight Sun
Swedish/US film (1959; original title Rymdinvasion i Lappland; vt Invasion of the Animal People; vt Space Invasion of Lapland). Gustaf Unger Films, AB Fortuna Film. Directed by Virgil W Vogel. Written by Arthur C. Pierce and (uncredited) Robert M Fresco. Cast includes Robert Burton, Sten Gester and Barbara Wilson. 72 minutes. Black and white. / The Royal Academy of Science in Sweden is puzzled by reports of a meteor crashing in ...
Rhys, Jack
Pseudonym of David Michael Heptonstall (1943- ), UK author of two sf novels for Robert Hale Limited, The Eternity Merchants (1981), a Space Opera, and The Five Doors (early version as by Michael Stall in New Writings in SF 23, anth 1973, ed Kenneth Bulmer; exp 1981), whose "doors" (the first of which appears on Earth) are ...
Cave Carson
A DC Comics Superhero, created by France Herron and Bruno Premiani in 1960; he made several appearances in The Brave and the Bold and Showcase, but was never popular enough to star in his own title, unlike other imitations of the Challengers of the Unknown such as the Sea Devils and the team headed by ...
Futureworld
Film (1976). American International Pictures. Directed by Richard T Heffron. Written by Mayo Simon, George Schenck. Cast includes Blythe Danner, Peter Fonda and Arthur Hill. 104 minutes. Colour. / An inferior sequel to Westworld (1973), set in the same Theme Park, Delos, Futureworld lacks the unity and impact of Michael ...
Survivalist Fiction
During the near-half century of Cold War after the dropping of the atom bomb on Japan in 1945, nuclear Holocausts were a commonplace plot device in various genres of popular fiction. Some novels took readers teasingly up to the brink without actually carrying them into the terminal moments; Cold War thrillers of this sort are not generally treated in this encyclopedia. A rather larger number of novels treated the final war as a given, ...
Robinson, Roger
(1943- ) UK computer programmer, bibliographer and publisher, active in UK Fandom for many years. The Writings of Henry Kenneth Bulmer (1983 chap; rev 1984 chap) is an exhaustive Bibliography of one of the most prolific sf writers, Kenneth Bulmer, and Who's Hugh?: An SF Reader's Guide to Pseudonyms (1987) is similarly exhaustive in its ...