A term devised by Alfred Hitchcock (1899-1980) to designate an object whose loss – or rumours of whose existence – triggers the cast of a thriller or detective film into searching for it, or fighting for it, or running from it, but which has in fact little or no intrinsic meaning once the dust has settled. A famous non-sf example is the coveted titular artefact of The Maltese Falcon (1930) by Dashiell Hammett (1894-1961); a typical early-sf McGuffin, in the days when it was both valuable and mysterious, was radium (> Elements). The use of McGuffins to generate chase-the-searcher plots is widespread in 1920s and 1930s thriller sf and in more recent adventure sf, with the outcome routinely dependent on the searcher getting there first in the nick of time; McGuffin spoors, often left only partially traced, are particularly noticeable in the second volumes of trilogies. The term has been variously spelled "McGuffin", "MacGuffin" and "Maguffin"; we have decided to stick with the spelling chosen by John Bowen for his novel The McGuffin (1984). China Miéville's The Scar (2002) teasingly features a plot-facilitating talisman of a fishy nature, called a magus-fin. [JC/DRL]
see also: Forerunners.
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