SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Saturday 24 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 ...
Lawrence, W H C
(? -? ) Unidentified author, presumably Canadian, of a Future War tale, The Story of '92: A Grandfather's Tale, Told in 1932 (1889), in which an attempted Invasion of Canada by the United States ends in the former's favour (which is to say an independent land, still under British control, survives). The tone of the tale – the first Canadian ...
Werlin, Nancy
(1961- ) US author, primarily of Young Adult fantasy, including the Scarborough Fair sequence [see Checklist]. Of sf interest is Double Helix (2004), whose young protagonist discovers that he is the subject of an illicit experiment in Eugenics designed to apply a molecular biologist's Inventions in the field of ...
Pardio
Pseudonym of UK author John Nott Pyke-Nott (1841-1923), author of a book-length poem, The White Africans (1879 chap; exp rev 1883), which narrates the discovery of an ancient Lost Race of whites in the mountains of Africa; it is an early example of the form. [JC]
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 ...