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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.
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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 ...
Turenne, Raymond
Working name of French diplomat, banker and author Raymond Auzias-Turenne (1861-1940), in Canada from 1890; he also wrote as by Amès Sémiré. Of sf interest is Le dernier mamouth (1904 as Raymond Auzias de Turenne; trans as The Last of the Mammoths 1907), in which the eponymous survivor is hunted down in its despoiled Lost World. [JC]
Adams, Bill
Working name of US author William Adams (? - ), author of the Evan Larkspur sequence comprising The Unwound Way (1991) and The End of Fame (1994) with Cecil Brooks; though they are structurally similar in their use of Sleeper Awakes conventions to describe the psychological and consequential effects of spending extended periods in ...
Miller, John J
(1954-2022) US author, who began publishing work of genre interest with "Comes a Hunter" in Wild Cards (anth 1987) edited by George R R Martin, followed shortly by his first Tie, Buck Rogers: First Power Play (1990), part of the Buck Rogers: The Inner Planets Trilogy subseries. He also contributed to the Ray Bradbury Presents sequence [see Checklist below]. His two ...
Bleackley, Horace
(1868-1931) UK author who began publishing work of genre interest with "What Might Have Been" (April 1902 The Windsor Magazine), and whose Anymoon (1919) is an anti-socialist Dystopia set in a Near Future Britain. [JC]
Langford, David
(1953- ) UK author, critic, editor, publisher and sf fan, in the latter capacity recipient of 21 Hugo awards for fan writing – some of the best of his several hundred pieces are assembled as Let's Hear It for the Deaf Man (coll 1992 chap US; much exp vt The Silence of the Langford 1996; exp 2015 ebook) as Dave Langford, edited by Ben Yalow – plus five Best Fanzine Hugos ...