SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Thursday 15 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 ...
My Greatest Adventure
US Comic (1955-1964; 2011), published by DC Comics. Monthly. Writers included Arnold Drake and Bob Haney. Artists included Mort Mesklin, Jim Mooney, Ruben Moreira, and Alex Toth. Its unrelated stories, in keeping with the comic's title, were always narrated by their protagonists. / In its early issues, the comic featured the realistic adventures of rugged he-men in exotic locales, similar to the stories ...
Fuller, Claire
(1967- ) UK sculptor and author who began to publish work of genre interest with "All Clear in the Anderton House" in After the Fall: Tales of the Apocalypse (anth 2014) edited anonymously. Her first four novels share a sense of dread that the ground may not hold, either in their protagonists' fragile lives, or in planetary terms, somewhere down the line. This aura may be most explicit in the first of these, Our Endless Numbered Days (2015), ...
Zathura: A Space Adventure
Film (2005). Columbia Pictures presents a Radar Pictures/Teitler Film/Michael de Luca production. Directed by Jon Favreau. Written by David Koepp & John Camps, based on Zathura: A Space Adventure (graph 2002) by Chris van Allsburg. Cast includes Jonah Bobo, Josh Hutcherson, Tim Robbins, Dax Shepard and Kristen Stewart. 119 minutes. Colour. / Two squabbling brothers discover a vintage mechanical ...
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 ...