SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Friday 23 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
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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 ...
Skeleton Hand
US Comic (1952-1953). American Comics Group (ACG). Six issues. Artists include Ken Bald and Pete Riss. Script writers include Richard Hughes. 36 pages per issue, with 3-5 long strips and a short text story, plus occasional short fiction or non-fiction strips as filler. The non-fiction strips would normally put "true" in quotation marks: "'True' Ghost Experiences". / The opening story in #1, "Deathless Mortal", features a ...
Walderick, Frederick
(? -? ) UK author the protagonist of whose The Prophet (1907) travels to Tibet, where he encounters Theosophists who give him a "moon potion", a Drug which activates previous dormant parts of the human brain. After taking the drug, he gains Psi Powers including Telepathy and the ability to predict events twenty-fours in advance ...
Unearth
US magazine in Digest format, eight issues, Winter 1977 to Winter 1979, published from Boston by Unearth Publications, edited by Jonathan Ostrowsky-Lantz and John M Landsberg. Subtitled "The Magazine of Science Fiction Discoveries", the cleverly titled Unearth had the avowed intention that all fiction should be by previously unpublished authors or by authors previously published only in Unearth, or be reprints of first-sf-story sales by well known ...
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 ...