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Monday 9 February 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 9 February 2026
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Carver, Jeffrey A
(1949-2026) US author who began publishing sf with "... Of No Return" in Fiction Magazine for 1974. His first novel, Seas of Ernathe (1976), which serves as an introduction to the loose Star Rigger sequence of Space Operas, showed early signs of a love of plot and thematic complexity which would take him some time, and several novels, to control. The continuation, Star Rigger's Way (1978), for instance, combines quest ...
Last Mimzy, The
Film (2007). New Line Cinema. Directed by Bob Shaye. Written by Bruce Joel Rubin and Toby Emmerich; story by James V Hart & Carol Skilken, based on "Mimsy were the Borogoves" (February 1943 Astounding) by Lewis Padgett (Henry Kuttner and C L Moore). Cast includes Michael Clarke Duncan, Kathryn Hahn, Timothy Hutton, Chris O'Neil, Joely Richardson, Rainn Wilson and Rhiannon Leigh Wryn. 90 minutes. ...
Nodaway, Max
Pseudonym of US author Louisa Alcott Andrews Imus (1885-1969), whose only recorded publication is a Lost Race tale, Rollo in Hawaii [for subtitle see Checklist below] (1908); the young protagonists, who are adept surfers (though fully dressed, in an outrigger canoe), come across an undiscovered inland territory inhabited by native Hawaiians ignorant of their islands' fate. [JC]
Threads
Made-for-tv film (1984). BBC-TV. Directed by Mick Jackson. Written by Barry Hines. Cast includes David Brierly, June Broughton, Reece Dinsdale, Karen Meagher, Henry Moxon and Sylvia Stoker. 115 minutes. Colour. / This BBC production, at once a UK equivalent of The Day After (1983) and an attempt to update the harrowing vision of Peter Watkins's The War Game ...
Setlowe, Richard
(1933-2022) US naval officer and author whose first novel, The Brink (1976), though not fantastic, explores the complex events (and paranoias) that might lead the world to the verge of World War Three. Of more direct sf interest is The Experiment (1980), a Near Future tale in which a man terminally ill with lung cancer (see Medicine) is given a chance to live through ...
Clute, John
(1940- ) Canadian critic, editor and author, in the UK from 1969; married to Judith Clute from 1964, partner of Elizabeth Hand since 1996. He began to publish work of genre interest with an sf-tinged poem "Carcajou Lament" in Triquarterly for Winter 1960 [ie Autumn 1959]; he began consistently publishing sf reviews in his "New Fiction" column for the Toronto Star (1966-1967), and later in ...