SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Tuesday 20 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
Sponsor of the day: Andy Richards of Cold Tonnage Books
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 ...
Battle-Felton, Yvonne
(? - ) US academic and author, in UK from early adulthood. Her first novel, Remembered (2019), which is not sf, uses ghost topoi out of the toolkit of Fantastika to guide its 1910 protagonists psychopomp-like into an understanding of their ancestors' lives in Slavery. Curdle Creek (2024) comes close to Alternate History in its ...
Crackle of Death
Made-for-tv film (1976). Francy Productions for Universal Television. Produced by Cy Chermak. Directed by Alex Grasshoff and Don Weiss. Written by Arthur Rowe and Rudolph Borchert from an idea by Rowe ("The Energy Eater"); Bill S Ballinger ("Firefall"). Cast includes Fred Bier, Philip Carey, Elaine Giftos, Jack Grinnage, Darren McGavin, Simon Oakland, William Smith, Michael Strong and Robert Yuro. 92 minutes. Colour. / This film actually ...
Flynn, Danny
Working name of UK artist Anthony Flynn (1958- ), who took a degree in Illustration at Kingston University, London. Usually working in airbrushed acrylics, he was an active creator of UK paperback covers from the mid-1980s to the end of the twentieth century; early examples (often from New English Library) included reissues of Robert A Heinlein's ...
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 ...