SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Monday 13 April 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 6 April 2026
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Infinite Matrix, The
US professional cumulative Online Magazine which posted material daily but was archived monthly. It was published by Eileen Gunn and ran, after what could have been its only issue in August 2001, from November 2001 to January 2006, with three additional issues in April 2006, January 2007 and July 2008. Along with Sci Fiction and Strange Horizons, both of ...
Hegland, Jean
(1956- ) US author whose Into the Forest (1996), which is set in the Northern California woodlands, attracted some attention for its moderately positive response to the challenges of life in a Post-Holocaust America. Treating high-technology civilization as a "fugue state", Hegland offers as a life-redeeming substitute the example of the Native Americans, who survived in California for ...
Mathews, Richard
(1944-2024) US author, critic and publisher, for many years director of the University of Tampa Press until he retired in 2020, who began to publish criticism of genre interest with an essay on William Morris: An Introductory Guide to the Utopian and Fantasy Writing of William Morris (1976 chap). This was followed by the Brian W Aldiss study Aldiss Unbound: The Science Fiction of Brian W. Aldiss ...
Hand of Death
Film (1962; vt Five Fingers of Death). Associated Producers/20th Century Fox Film Corporation. Produced by Eugene Ling. Directed by Gene Nelson. Written by Ling. Cast includes John Agar, Stephen Dunne, Roy Gordon and Paula Raymond. 58 minutes. Black and white. / Idealistic Scientist Alex Marsh (Agar) is developing an experimental nerve gas which he naively hopes will be a Weapons so deadly as to bring about an end to ...
Science Fiction Foundation
UK research unit set up in 1971 at the North East London Polytechnic (which became the University of East London in 1992), but semi-autonomous, being controlled by a council, partly academics and partly sf professionals, and including George Hay, whose enthusiasm had much to do with the SFF's inception. Peter Nicholls, the first administrator (1971-1977), was followed by Malcolm Edwards ...
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 ...