SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Friday 23 January 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 19 January 2026
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von Däniken, Erich
(1935-2026) Swiss author of a series of purportedly nonfiction books, beginning with Erinnerungen an die Zukunft (1968; trans Michael Heron as Chariots of the Gods? 1969), which, based on a mass of often suspect and internally inconsistent data, argues that the Earth was visited by at least one Alien spacefaring race before and at the dawn of historical time; thus, for example, the Great Pyramid of ...
Adams, Scott
(1957-2026) US author and cartoonist best known for the Dilbert strip published from 1989, which when at its best superbly (in terms of concept and accuracy of Satire rather than quality of drawing) satirized contemporary office life and corporate incompetence. As with most ambitious modern comic strips, it segues frequently into sf and fantasy tropes – such as Robot office workers, wish-fulfilling ...
Adams, Alex
(? - ) New Zealand-born author, now in the US, whose first novel White Horse (2012) has a background of global Disaster with Horror in SF overtones. A Pandemic (see also Medicine) which proves to have been engineered by a US Mad Scientist precipitates a general collapse of civilization, ...
Doerr, Anthony
(1973- ) US author, active from before the turn of the century. The protagonist of his first novel, About Grace (2004), experiences moments of prescience (see Precognition), during one of which he sees his daughter die; he spends much of the novel, after the model of the Appointment in Samarra fable, attempting to flee this fate: which he meets. The blind protagonist of All the Light We Cannot See (2014), a ...
Baen, Jim
Working name of US editor and author James Patrick Baen (1943-2006) who began his publishing career in 1972, when he became Gothics editor at Ace Books; in early years, he sometimes signed himself James Baen. He moved to Galaxy Science Fiction in 1973 as managing editor, taking over the editorship in 1974 of both Galaxy and If from Ejler Jakobsson. These magazines were then ...
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 ...