SF Encyclopedia Home Page
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
Sponsor of the day: Ted Chiang
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 ...
Lang, Andrew
(1844-1912) Scottish anthropologist and man of letters well known for a wide range of literary activity, including novels, poetry, belles-lettres, children's books and (perhaps most familiar to current readers) Anthologies of traditional fables and tales retold for children, with some added hagiographical and historical material, much of the work being done by his wife; numerous volumes followed the first of these, The Blue Fairy Book (anth 1889). ...
Boey, Eliane
(? - ) Singapore author who began to publish work of genre interest with "The Forgotten" in Clarkesworld for July 2022. Much of her work shares a loose Near Future common background, including the two novellas assembled as Other Minds (coll 2023): in the Cyberpunk-inflected Hard-Sf "Other Minds", an ...
Gat, Dmitri V
(1936- ) US university librarian and author of a complex interstellar Dystopia, The Shepherd is my Lord (1971), in which a giant corporation, Galactic Enterprises, oppresses humans and Aliens alike over a vast compass; its attempts to claim-jump a hidden sector of space hiding an advanced race (the Shepherds) end, however, in failure. [JC]
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 ...