SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Wednesday 9 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
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Mad Ghoul, The
Film (1943; vt Mystery of the Ghoul). Universal Pictures. Produced by Ben Pivar. Directed by James P Hogan. Written by Paul Gangelin and Brenda Wiseberg from a story by Hanns Kraly (credited as Hans Kraly). Cast includes Evelyn Ankers, Robert Armstrong, Turhan Bey, David Bruce and George Zucco. 65 minutes. Black and white. / University chemistry Professor Alfred Morris (Zucco) has re-created a nerve gas used by ancient Mayans in human sacrifice rituals. With medical student ...
Akhtar, Jamshed
(1947- ) Indian engineer and author whose Near Future sf novel, Ultimate Revelations (1996), in which the threat of precipitate Climate Change, caused by a minor event in the Sun's usually stable emission of energy, is understood as a kind of fulfilled prophecy (or typology) of an ancient catastrophe, as described in the Bible and further mediated through the Qur'an. ...
Donner, Richard
Working name of Richard Donald Schwartzberg (1930-2021), US Television and Cinema director and producer whose early genre or genre-adjacent work for the small screen included directing six episodes of The Twilight Zone (1959-1964) – including the famous "Nightmare at 20,000 Feet" (11 October 1963) written by Richard Matheson – ...
American Fantasy
US letter-size saddle-stapled weird fiction magazine. Publishers: Nancy and Robert Garcia. Editor: Robert Garcia (series one); Robert and Nancy Garcia (series two). Five issues, May 1982 to Winter 1988. Publication was roughly quarterly. / This well-produced Semiprozine had two incarnations, the first comprising two quarterly issues in 1982 with critical material on Fantasy and Horror fiction, with ...
Brambles, Lindsay Francis
(1959- ) Canadian author whose Alternate History tale, the Young Adult Becoming Darkness (2015), takes off from a Hitler Wins perspective: the Pandemic virus he has been responsible for releasing decimates the human race, leaving a few hundred million Vampires to continue ...
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 ...