SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Tuesday 8 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.
Site updated on 7 July 2025
Sponsor of the day: The League of Fan Funds
Lugosi, Bela
Working name of Hungarian-born Horror actor Béla Ferenc Dezső Blaskó (1882-1956), in the US from 1920, who became a US citizen in 1931. He first achieved fame with his title role in the 1927 Broadway stage version of Bram Stoker's Dracula (1897), leading to his star part in the Universal Pictures Dracula (1931) directed by Tod Browning. In non- ...
Messac, Régis
(1893-1945) French academic, translator and author who published widely under a number of pseudonyms, none of them used for stories of the fantastic. He was in active service throughout World War One, where his pacifism was confirmed; his later Communist affiliations (presumably) occasioned his deportation in 1943 by the German government and incarceration in various camps until his death, probably in January 1945, in the Gross-Rosen complex, or Dora, or ...
Weird Adventures
US Comic (1952). Ziff-Davis. One issue, numbered #10. Artists include John Celardo and Phil Marini. 36 pages, with four long strips, a two-page text story and a one-page non-fiction strip. / In the 1950s the use of "weird" in a comic's title usually meant a focus on Horror; however, despite one story referring to black Magic, Weird Adventures is best considered an sf ...
Nemesis
Film (1993). Shah/Jensen and Imperial Entertainment. Produced by Ash R Shah, Eric Karson and Tom Karnowski. Directed by Albert Pyun. Written by Rebecca Charles. Cast includes Olivier Gruner, Merle Kennedy, Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa and Tim Thomerson. 96 minutes. Colour. / This very violent, low-budget, straight-to-video, exploitation action-adventure movie, directed by straight-to-video specialist Pyun, has one element of sf interest. At a time when, despite all the publicity given to ...
Alarcón y Ariza, Pedro Antonio de
(1833-1891) Spanish author, initially famous for travel writings, though now know mainly as the author of El sombrero de tres picos (1874; trans anon as The Three-Cornered Hat 1891), a novella based on a traditional ballad which became famous after Manuel de Falla (1876-1946) composed a ballet in 1919 based on the tale. Alarcón is of some sf interest for his early novel, "El amigo de la muerte" (1852 El eco de occidente; trans Mrs Francis J A Darr as ...
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 ...