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 ...
Calvet, Emile
(? -? ) French author of whom little or nothing is known, and who according to Brian Stableford in his introduction to Dans Mille Ans (1883 Musée des Familles; 1884; trans Stableford as In a Thousand Years 2013), may be pseudonymous. His text is a Utopia based on the argument that advances in science and Technology are ...
Lynch, Paul
(1977- ) Irish editor, journalist and author, most of whose fiction has dealt in nonfantastic terms with Irish history, focusing on issues – national identity; famine; enforced emigration – central to that history over the past two centuries. The influence of Cormac McCarthy is pervasive, as confirmed by an epigraph from The Crossing (1994) in Lynch's first novel of sf interest, the ...
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 ...
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 ...