SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Sunday 24 September 2023
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 18 September 2023
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Artemis 81
Made-for-tv film (1981). BBC TV. Directed by Alastair Reid. Written by David Rudkin. Cast includes Hywel Bennett, Roland Curram, Dan O'Herlihy, Ian Redford, Dinah Stabb, Sting and Margaret Whiting. 181 minutes. Colour. / On another planet, the Manichean Alien angels Asrael (Curram) and Helith (Sting) vie over the fate of the human race. Evil Asrael travels to Earth and forces the cursed organist Albrecht von Drachenfels (O'Herlihy) to distribute pieces of a ...
Mark, Jan
(1943-2006) UK author, most significantly for Young Adult audiences; her several tales for younger readers, some of them acutely conceived picture books, are also of interest. Though much of her older fiction is set in the here-and-now, her sf stories – which are more complex, dark-hued and longer than her non-fantastic work, – are almost certainly her best work, and are very nearly indistinguishable, except for the age of their protagonists, from ...
Dell Comics
The Comics imprint of Dell Publishing, which began issuing comics in various genres in the 1930s and was active for several decades, being the most successful US comics publisher for a time in the 1950s. Most of Dell's output made use of material licenced from various sources, including Walt Disney Productions, Lone Ranger Inc, Tarzan from Edgar Rice Burroughs Inc and the Walter Lantz Studios. Many of their titles sold a million or more ...
Kearney, Chalmers
(1881-1966) Australian-born engineer and author, in the UK most of his life, author of the nonfiction Rapid Transit in the Future: The Kearney High-Speed Railway: Second Edition (only recorded edition, 1911 chap) as Elfric Wells Chalmers Kearney, in which he advocates, for the London Underground, an advanced version of the monorail (or, rather, duorail, with one rail below and one above the train); it was one of several pre-World War One schemes designed to revolutionize ...
Mad Max
Film (1979). Mad Max Pty. Directed by George Miller. Written by James McCausland, Miller, based on a story by Miller. Cast includes Tim Burns, Mel Gibson, Hugh Keays-Byrne and Joanne Samuel. 100 minutes, cut to 91 minutes. Colour. / This low-budget exploitation movie builds up to the vigilante-style revenge of spaced-out policeman Max Rockatansky (Gibson) – who is almost as disturbed as his antagonists – on the motorcycle gang that ...
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 ...