SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Wednesday 8 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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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 ...
Aldrin, Buzz
Working name of US fighter pilot (in Korea), astronaut with a research degree in orbital mechanics, rocket design entrepreneur and author Edwin Eugene Aldrin (1930- ), whose first space flight was in Gemini XII in 1966, and whose most famous extraterrestrial moment was the Moon Walk in 1969 in which Neil Armstrong took the first step. His first sf novel is Encounter with Tiber (1996) with John Barnes. Told by an historian ...
Jack Gaughan Award
In full, the Jack Gaughan Award for Best Emerging Artist. Named in honour of artist Jack Gaughan and often referred to simply as the Gaughan Award, this is presented annually by NESFA, the New England Science Fiction Association, to an artist who has achieved professional status within the past five years. The winner is selected by a panel of judges. In practice, the qualification "within the past five years" seems to be applied fairly elastically; Richard ...
Brunner, John
(1934-1995) UK author, mostly of sf, though he published several thrillers, contemporary novels and volumes of poetry [see Checklist below]. He began very early to submit sf stories to periodicals – several appeared under the working name K Houston Brunner, based on his own middle names – and when he was 17 published his first novel, Galactic Storm (1951) under the House Name Gill Hunt. Even in a field ...
Dark City
Film (1998). New Line Cinema presents a Mystery Clock production. Directed by Alex Proyas. Written by Proyas, Lem Dobbs, and David S Goyer; story by Proyas. Cast includes Jennifer Connelly, Melissa George, William Hurt, Richard O'Brien, Ian Richardson, Rufus Sewell and Kiefer Sutherland. Theatrical cut 100 minutes; Director's Cut 111 minutes. Colour. / An Amnesiac murder suspect in a mysteriously sunless ...
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 ...