SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Tuesday 13 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 ...
Stawicki, Matt
Working name of American artist Matthew Stawicki (1969- ), though he is occasionally credited with his full name. After graduating from the Pennsylvania School of Art and Design in 1991, Stawicki embarked upon a career in genre art with a 1993 cover for Brad Linaweaver's Moon of Ice (March 1982 Amazing; exp 1988), an image of the Earth and Moon separated by a red bar with a ...
MacAulay, L
(? -? ) UK author of The Decadence: An Excerpt from "A History of the Triumph and Decay of England": Dateable 1949 (1929), most of whose focus is on issues of free trade, which is advocated. [JC]
Moles, David
(? - ) US author, principally of short fiction, who began to publish work of genre interest with "Long Past Midnight" for Say ... #2 in Spring 2003. The protagonist of "Finisterra" (December 2007 F&SF) travels by Starship to an artificial gas giant (see Macrostructure) on an engineering contract; the occupants of Sky (see ...
Sonin, Ray
Working name of UK scriptwriter, journalist, radio broadcaster and author Zola Sonin (1907-1991), in Canada from 1957. He published several nonfantastic thrillers, and is of sf interest for his contribution to the "Space" Kingley Shared World sequence, The Adventures of Captain "Space" Kingley (coll 1952), which enjoyably presents standard-fare Space Opera for children. There is ...
Nicholls, Peter
(1939-2018) Australian editor and author, primarily a critic and historian of sf through his creation and editing of The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction [see below]; resident in the UK 1970-1988, in Australia from 1988; worked as an academic in English literature (1962-1968, 1971-1977), scripted television documentaries, was a Harkness Fellow in Film-making (1968-1970) in the USA, worked as a publisher's editor (1982-1983), often broadcast film and book reviews on BBC Radio from 1974 and ...