SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Tuesday 6 October 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 5 October 2026
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Doctor X
Film (1932). First National/Warner Bros. Directed by Michael Curtiz (1888-1962). Written by Robert Tasker, Earl Baldwin, based on a play by Howard W Comstock and Allen C Miller. Cast includes Lionel Atwill, Preston Foster, Lee Tracy and Fay Wray. 77 minutes. Original prints two-strip Technicolor; later black and white. / A series of cannibalistic murders committed when the Moon is full is investigated by reporter Lee Taylor (Tracy) and medical expert Dr ...
Kirkup, James
(1918-2009) UK-born academic, translator, poet and author who left England permanently in 1956, long before the hoicked-up "scandal" of his gay poem about Christ, "The Love that Dares to Speak its Name" (3 June 1976 Gay News), resulted in the last successful conviction for blasphemy in the UK; securely resident abroad, Kirkup did not attend these proceedings. His first book, ...
Collins, Max Allan
(1948- ) US author, best known for mysteries and thrillers, many written as Max Collins; under that form of his name he also wrote the Dick Tracy comic strip from 1977 to 1993, assembling a good deal of this output – much of which features sf-like Inventions and Villains with assorted Superpowers – in graphic collections like ...
Pollock, Walter Herries
(1850-1926) UK editor, man-of-letters and author, some of whose work is of sf interest, though "Sir Jocelyn's Cap", his collaboration with Walter Besant in the latter's Uncle Jack, etc. (coll 1885), is fantasy. Other fantasy tales are assembled in A Nine Men's Morrice: Stories Collected and Re-Collected (coll 1889) and King Zub, and Other Stories (coll 1893). Of more sf interest is He (1887) with Andrew ...
Chipman, W P
(1854-1937) US author of stories for Boys' Papers. Of some sf interest is An Aerial Runaway: The Balloon Adventures of Rod & Tod in North & South America (1901) with C P Chipman, who was his son; the lads pilot their Balloon into nether Venezuela, where they discover a Lost World inhabited by descendants of the Incas. [JC]
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 ...