SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Friday 11 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
Sponsor of the day: Ansible Editions
Poltergeists
These imagined Supernatural Creatures, whose German name means "noisy ghost", have attracted some sporadic sf interest. Though never directly seen, poltergeists supposedly move or throw small articles around, break crockery (which is sometimes also hurled across a room while remaining miraculously unbroken) and so forth. Their reality was once enough of an accepted phenomenon that Edmund Crispin used a highly active ...
Gardner, Gilson
(1869-1935) US author of A New Robinson Crusoe: A New Version of his Life and Adventures, With an Explanatory Note (1920), an updating of various Robinsonade tropes; the protagonist is becomes a castaway due to a plane crash; there are hints of Inventions in the air, which edge the text into sf. [JC]
Agnew, Ewan
(1893-1930) UK politician and playwright who was in active service during World War One, and who may have been blackballed from The Reform Club by E M Forster, but seems otherwise unnoted. In his sf play, The Shingling of Jupiter: A Fantastic Play for Serious People in Three Acts (1924 chap), Major Smith, a Mysterious Stranger from the eponymous planet who is on a spying ...
Nevins, Albert J
(1915-1997) US Catholic priest, film director and author, whose Children's SF novel, The Adventures of Pancho of Peru (1953), describes the brave behaviour of the eponymous native, who has connections with a Lost World deep in the mountains. It was published as part of the didactic Adventures with a Purpose series. [JC]
Destination Moon
Film (1950). A George Pal Production/Eagle-Lion. Directed by Irving Pichel. Written by Robert A Heinlein, Alford "Rip" Van Ronkel, James O'Hanlon, based loosely on Rocket Ship Galileo (1947) by Heinlein. Cast includes Warner Anderson, John Archer, Tom Powers and Dick Wesson. 92 minutes. Colour. / Destination Moon, the first of George Pal's many sf productions, ...
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 ...