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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.
Site updated on 12 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 ...
Trancers
Film (1984; vt Future Cop). Lexyn/Empire. Produced and directed by Charles Band. Written by Danny Bilson, Paul DeMeo. Cast includes Helen Hunt, Michael Stefani and Tim Thomerson. 76 minutes. Colour. / Band apparently learned from his early, mostly bad movies, for this small film is confident, stylish sf. Future cop Jack Deth (Thomerson) travels back from 2247 CE to present-day Los Angeles in search of dangerous mystic Whistler (Stefani), who ...
Bishop, William Henry
(?1843-? ) US author – apparently not William Henry Bishop (1847-1928) – whose Utopia, The Garden of Eden, U.S.A.: A Very Possible Story (1895), posits an equable world, with equality between the sexes. [JC]
Time Traveller, The
A very early US Fanzine or Amateur Magazine with nine issues, published in 1932-1933, initially monthly with #1 dated January and #9 dated Winter 1933. Edited by Allen Glasser; managing editor Julius Schwartz; associate editor Mort Weisinger. Forrest J Ackerman was billed as contributing ...
Thompson, Harriet Alfarata
(1871-1922) US author of Idealia: A Utopia Dream; Or, Resthaven (1922 chap), whose protagonist visits a Utopian community for the elderly and the indigent whose features are so exceptionally humane, and racial stresses so muted (Thompson was Black), that this domestic Pastoral could readily be understood as occupying an Alternate World. [JC]
Robinson, Roger
(1943- ) UK computer programmer, bibliographer and publisher, active in UK Fandom for many years. The Writings of Henry Kenneth Bulmer (1983 chap; rev 1984 chap) is an exhaustive Bibliography of one of the most prolific sf writers, Kenneth Bulmer, and Who's Hugh?: An SF Reader's Guide to Pseudonyms (1987) is similarly exhaustive in its ...