SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Tuesday 20 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 19 January 2026
Sponsor of the day: Andy Richards of Cold Tonnage Books
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 ...
Weitz, Chris
(1969- ) US screenwriter, producer, director and author, whose version of Philip Pullman's The Golden Compass (2007), which he directed and for which he wrote the screenplay, received some criticism for its softening of the author's iconoclastic take on Religion. Weitz is of specific sf interest for his Young World sequence comprising The Young World (2014), ...
Tremblay, Michel
(1942- ) Canadian playwright and author, much of whose work has been focused on the Québécois experience over the past half century, including several plays and other works analysing the secession drama at the centre of Canadian politics over these years; he has also focused on the life and politics of gay men over this period. Relatively little of his work could be easily described in terms of Fantastika, though his first ...
Tales of Wonder
UK Pulp magazine, sixteen issues [Summer] 1937 to Spring 1942, quarterly to 1940, thereafter slightly irregular, numbered consecutively, the first undated. Published by World's Work, London; edited by Walter Gillings. / After its first, trial issue in the summer of 1937 – which had been preceded in 1934 by the sf Boys' Paper, Scoops, and by Gillings's own ...
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 ...