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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
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Galt, John
(1779-1839) Scottish developer, social critic and author, active in the latter capacity from around 1805; mostly in the UK and Canada from 1804 to 1834. Most of his fiction is nonfantastic, and set in his native Ayrshire along the north-west coast of Scotland; some of these tales, like The Spaewife: A Tale of the Scottish Chronicles (1823 3vols), contain some supernatural elements. "The Star of Destiny" (in The Autobiography of John Galt 1833 2vols) concerns an ...
Firefly
US tv series (2002). Mutant Enemy for 20th Century Fox Television. Created by Joss Whedon. Producers include Whedon, Tim Minear, and Ben Edlund. Directors include Whedon, Minear, and Vern Gillum. Writers include Whedon, Minear, Edlund, Jose Molina, and Jane Espenson. Cast includes Nathan Fillion as Malcolm Reynolds, Gina Torres as Zoe Washburn, Alan Tudyk as Hoban "Wash" Washburn, Jewel Staite as Kaylee Frye, Adam Baldwin as Jayne Cobb, Morena Baccarin as ...
Bell, Joseph
(1949- ) Canadian bibliographer, publisher and editor specializing in studies of H P Lovecraft and other weird fiction, initially in the Bibliography Howard Phillips Lovecraft: The Books 1915-1981 (1981 chap), which was followed by further titles in the Howard Phillips Lovecraft: The Books sequence [see Checklist below] to 1987. This time period also saw the Lovecraft-focused ...
Doney, Nina Murnie
(1884-1958) US author of My Life on Eight Planets; Or, a Glimpse of Other Worlds (1923), an sf tale tinged with an occult aura, whose protagonists enjoy a Fantastic Voyage through the Solar System, taking on a new incarnation upon each planet; each world has a distinct civilization which is described through new eyes, as the travellers undergo a form of Reincarnation at each ...
Empire of the Ants
Film (1977; vt H G Wells' Empire of the Ants). MGM Studios, Cinema 77, American International Pictures (AIP). Directed by Bert I Gordon. Screenplay by Gordon and Jack Turley, very loosely based on "The Empire of the Ants" (December 1905 Strand Magazine) by H G Wells. Cast includes Joan Collins, Robert Lansing. 82 minutes. ...
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 ...