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 ...
Pirate Writings
US Semiprozine, 26 issues, Winter 1992 to October 2005 (last two issues undated), published by Pirate Writings, New York until issue #16 (Spring 1998), thereafter by DNA Publications, Radford, Virginia; edited by Edward J McFadden III. Retitled Fantastic Stories of the Imagination from issue #19 Spring 2000. Intended as quarterly but only occasionally hit a regular schedule. The original title was never fully explained; like a pirate ship, the magazine ...
Aycock, Dale
(1935- ) US teacher and author whose first two sf novels – Stardrifter (1981) and Starspinner (1981) – are enjoyable Space Opera adventures, complete with Starship pilots, Villains, and a "forbidden star system" or two. After a long silence between 1981 and 2007, she continued the Starspinner sequence with ...
Preston, H
Pseudonym used for fiction by US technical author Henry Preston Nail (1931-2012), author of Project Deep Space (2000), set in the moderately distant Near Future as private corporations finally provide the impetus to launch Homo sapiens into interstellar space; the Invention of successively more efficient Spaceship drives is focused upon. [JC]
Clute, John
(1940- ) Canadian critic, editor and author, in the UK from 1969; married to Judith Clute from 1964, partner of Elizabeth Hand since 1996. He began to publish work of genre interest with an sf-tinged poem "Carcajou Lament" in Triquarterly for Winter 1960 [ie Autumn 1959]; he began consistently publishing sf reviews in his "New Fiction" column for the Toronto Star (1966-1967), and later in ...