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
Sponsor of the day: John Howard
Grant, Matthew
(? - ) UK author whose only sf novel is the unremarkable Space Opera Hyper-Drive (1962). [DRL]
Serenity
Film (2005). Universal Pictures. Written and directed by Joss Whedon. Cast includes Morena Baccarin, Adam Baldwin, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Nathan Fillion, Ron Glass, Summer Glau, David Krumholtz, Sean Maher, Jewel Staite, Gina Torres and Alan Tudyk. 114 minutes. Colour. / An Alliance assassin (Ejiofor) pursues the Serenity Spaceship crew's damaged psychic River Tam (Glau) to prevent the dissemination of a fearsome ...
North, William
(1825-1854) UK author whose precocious first novel, Anti-Coningsby; Or, The New Generation Grown Old (1844 2vols), is a Satire shaped as a Sequel by Other Hands to Benjamin Disraeli's Coningsby; Or, the New Generation (1844), in which new Inventions are used to sink the French fleet, and a very ...
Life Returns
Film (1935). Scienart Pictures/Universal Pictures. Produced by Lou L Ostrow. Directed by Eugene Frenke and James P Hogan (not the sf author). Written by L Wolfe Gilbert, John F Goodrich, Arthur T Horman and Mary McCarthy, from a story by Hogan. Cast includes George P Breakston, Valerie Hobson, Onslow Stevens and Lois Wilson. 63 minutes, sometimes cut to 60 minutes. Black and white. / Dr John Kendrick (Stevens) has spent his life working on a method of reviving the dead (see ...
McCoy, Nathaniel P
Pseudonym of UK art publisher and author George Grandison Millar (circa 1860-1913), whose The Gold Makers (1911) is a thriller involving the Transmutation of metals. In real life Millar was a shareholder of the Scottish metallurgical company Kosmoid Ltd [see links below], established in 1904, which planned to produce mercury and perhaps gold by transmutation of lead; The Gold Makers is seemingly a roman à clef ...
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 ...