SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Saturday 5 September 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 31 August 2026
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Murray, Will
Working name of US author William Patrick Murray (1953-2026), who showed an interest throughout his career in Superheroes of the Pulp tradition (on which he was a known authority) such as Doc Savage, about which figure he wrote the nonfiction Secrets of Doc Savage (1981 chap). In this context he had been literary agent for Lester Dent's estate since 1979. ...
Eno, Brian
(1948- ) Influential UK musician, associated with the invention of minimalist "ambient" musical styles. Much of his work is instrumental, and identifying it as sf is an unsure business, although there is a spacious and material "otherworldliness" about the best of Eno's ambient compositions that are certainly evocative in the same way that some sf is evocative. Another Green World (1975) perhaps filters perceptions of the Earth through an imaginary other ...
Alexander, Paul
(1937-2021) US artist who studied at the Art Center College of Design in Los Angeles, California, and after working with architectural companies and in advertising – typically producing scenes of men and Machines – began to paint Genre SF covers for New York publishers, beginning with the 1977 Ace Books paperback of ...
Flash Gordon Strange Adventure Magazine
US letter-size Pulp magazine; one issue, December 1936, published by C J H Publications; edited by Harold Hersey. The featured novel was "The Master of Mars" by James Edison Northfield (as per the contents page) or Northford (as per the story heading). Flash Gordon Strange Adventure Magazine, intended to be a monthly juvenile magazine, was notable for its eight full-page coloured interior illustrations, all by Fred Meagher, the ...
Villeneuve, Denis
(1967- ) Canadian film director and screenwriter. Born in Bécancour, Quebec, into a Francophone family, Villeneuve has directed both French- and English-language films. He began making short films while in high school and later pursued film studies at the Université du Québec à Montréal. He is the director of the big-budget sf movies Arrival (2016), ...
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 ...