SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Wednesday 15 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 13 January 2025
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Zone Troopers
Film (1985). Altar/Empire. Executive producer Charles Band. Directed by Danny Bilson. Written by Bilson, Paul DeMeo. Cast includes Art La Fleur, Biff Maynard, Tim Thomerson and Timothy Van Patten. 86 minutes. Colour. / This curious, small, honest film is perhaps as close as the cinema has ever got to the flavour of Pulp sf. Three GIs and a war correspondent are trapped behind German lines in Italy in 1944. In between repeated ...
Predator 2
Film (1990). Gordon/Silver/Davis/Twentieth Century Fox. Directed by Stephen Hopkins. Written by Jim Thomas, John Thomas. Cast includes Maria Conchita Alonso, Ruben Blades, Gary Busey, Danny Glover, Kevin Peter Hall and Bill Paxton. 107 minutes. Colour. / This superior sequel to Predator is a well-oiled adrenaline machine. Los Angeles (see California) in 1997 is anarchic, with Jamaican and Colombian drug gangs, the LA police ...
Nichols, Beverley
(1898-1983) UK author, perhaps best known for a series of nonfiction books about gardens and gardening. Of his fifty or so books, one of the most interesting is the ghostwritten autobiography – Melodies and Memories (1925) – of the most famous prima donna of the day, Nellie Melba, whom he had accompanied on tour for several years. He is of direct sf interest for a Near Future Dystopian "When the Crash ...
Grainer, Ron
(1922-1981) Australian-born composer and musician, resident in the UK from the 1950s. Grainer's most enduring work is the theme to the BBC TV series Doctor Who (1963-current), created in collaboration with Delia Derbyshire of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop. He also composed the themes for the television shows The Prisoner (1967-1968) and ...
Spook Louder
Short US film (1943). Columbia Pictures. Directed by Del Lord. Written by Clyde Bruckman. Cast includes Stanley Blystone, Symona Boniface (uncredited), Stanley Brown (uncredited), Heinie Conklin (uncredited), Larry Fine, Curly Howard, Moe Howard, William Kelley (uncredited), Lew Kelly, Theodore Lorch (uncredited), Charles Middleton (uncredited), Shirley Patterson and Helen Servis (uncredited). 17 minutes. Black and white. / In the frame story, "investigator" Dunkfeather (Kelly) ...
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 ...