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Friday 16 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.
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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 ...
de Polnay, Peter
(1906-1984) Hungarian-born author, in the UK from before World War Two. Of his very many novels, only The Stuffed Dog (1977), a Time-Travel tale, is of genre interest. [JC]
Garbo, Norman
(1919-2017) US painter and author, active in the former capacity from around 1940, whose Near Future novel, The Movement (1969), grimly extrapolates late-1960s-style confrontations between US students and police into the takeover of a vast university campus and retaliatory bombing by the government. The coherence of the student movement is exaggerated, but the Computer- and bureaucracy-dominated world they hope to ...
Nicholson, Norman
(1914-1987) UK poet and author, best known for his sophisticatedly (though plain-spoken) regional poetry. He is of sf interest for Prophesy to the Wind (performed January 1949 Newcastle People's Theatre, Newcastle, Tyne on Wear; 1950 chap), a play whose protagonist survives a nuclear World War Three, having been cast mysteriously into the distant Near Future; here a northern part of Britain has been resettled by ...
Langford, David
(1953- ) UK author, critic, editor, publisher and sf fan, in the latter capacity recipient of 21 Hugo awards for fan writing – some of the best of his several hundred pieces are assembled as Let's Hear It for the Deaf Man (coll 1992 chap US; much exp vt The Silence of the Langford 1996; exp 2015 ebook) as Dave Langford, edited by Ben Yalow – plus five Best Fanzine Hugos ...