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Wednesday 14 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 14 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 ...
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 ...
Balsdon, Dacre
(1901-1977) academic, historian and author, who signed his nonfiction as J P V D Balsdon, Fellow of Exeter College, Oxford 1927-1969; his sf novels are humorous Satires on contemporary mores, little allowance being made for technological, social or behavioural change. The most imaginative, Sell England? (1936), is a Dystopia set 1000 years hence in which the UK is inhabited solely by a decadent aristocracy, while the other ...
Spencer, K A
(? - ) US author of Days Gone By (1999), a Time Travel tale whose protagonist, thrust back to 1926 America, makes a life there. [JC]
de Valda, F W
(1884-1964) UK entrepreneur, pilot and author of two sf novels: Children of the Sun (1934), in which ultra-short waves from a distant star, when projected onto a screen, work as a Time Viewer, giving contemporary humans visual access to Hernando Cortez's savage conquest of Mexico; and The Treasure of Atíl (1934), a Young Adult tale whose young protagonists use various ...
Nicholls, Peter
(1939-2018) Australian editor and author, primarily a critic and historian of sf through his creation and editing of The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction [see below]; resident in the UK 1970-1988, in Australia from 1988; worked as an academic in English literature (1962-1968, 1971-1977), scripted television documentaries, was a Harkness Fellow in Film-making (1968-1970) in the USA, worked as a publisher's editor (1982-1983), often broadcast film and book reviews on BBC Radio from 1974 and ...