SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Thursday 10 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 Telluride Institute
Undersea Super Train: Marine Express
Japanese animated tv film (1979). Original title Kaitei Chōtokkyū Marin Ekusupuresu; vt Marine Express. Tezuka Productions. Directed by Satoshi Dezaki. Written by Osamu Tezuka. Voice cast includes Hisashi Katsuta, Kaneta Kimotsuki, Mami Koyama, Yoshiko Ōta, Chikao Ōtsuka, Mari Shimizu, Junichi Takeoka and Kōsei Tomita. 91 minutes. Colour. / Shown during Nippon Television Network's 1979 ...
Testament des Dr Mabuse, Das
Film (1933; vt The Last Will of Dr Mabuse, 1943) Nero-Film AG. Directed by Fritz Lang. Written by Thea von Harbou, loosely based on Norbert Jacques's then-unpublished fragment «Mabuses Kolonie» ["Mabuse's Colony"] (written circa 1930). Cast includes Oscar Beregi Sr, Gustav Diessl, Rudolf Klein-Rogge, Wera Liessem, Otto Wernicke. 122 minutes. Black and ...
Scheer, K-H
(1928-1991) German author, active from 1948. He published prolifically – including much sf – in the circulating-library format in which many pulp adventures appeared in postwar Germany; none of this material has been translated. However, translations of his novellas in the weekly Dime-Novel SF format of Perry Rhodan (which see for any details), the enormously ...
Baum, L Frank
(1856-1919) US entrepreneur, journalist, playwright and author who also published as Floyd Akers, Laura Bancroft, John Estes Cooke, Hugh Fitzgerald, Suzanne Metcalf, Schuyler Staunton and Edith Van Dyne (see below); active from around 1880. He remains most famous for his long series of tales set in the land of Oz, beginning with The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (1900; vt The New Wizard of Oz 1903), which served as the main source for the most famous film version, ...
Mirror of Time, The
Russian animated film (1976; original title Zerkalo vremeni). Soyuzmultfilm. Directed by Vladimir Tarasov. Written by Anatoliy Korobkov and Vasiliy Livanov. Voice cast includes Lev Lyubetskiy and Mariya Vinogradova. 10 minutes. Colour. / Aboard a Spaceship, a boy (Vinogradova) and his father (Lyubetskiy) discuss Time and ...
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 ...