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Tuesday 13 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.
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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 ...
Perriman, Cole
Joint pseudonym of US authors Wim Coleman (1954- ) and Pat Perrin (? - ), who are married to one another; their very Near Future sf novel, Terminal Games: A Cyberthriller (1994), faces its female protagonist, who does recreational time in a Cyberspace site called Insomnimania, with a serial killer, who seemed restricted to ...
Collins, Robert
(1972- ) UK author of The Soul Corporation (2004), set in a Near Future dominated by a vast Corporation whose control of things is manifested primarily through advertisements (see Advertising), and which is involved in a Genetic Engineering conspiracy. [JC]
Willis, Connie
Working name of US teacher and author Constance Elaine Trimmer Willis (1945- ). She began publishing sf with "Santa Titicaca" for Worlds of Fantasy (Winter 1970/1971 #3), but appeared only intermittently in the field until the early 1980s, when she became a full-time author, winning several awards almost immediately. Most of her best work of the 1980s was in short-story form; her first book, Fire Watch (coll 1985; cut ...
Felker-Martin, Gretchen
(1989- ) US journalist and author whose first novel, the Near Future Dystopian Manhunt (2022), is set in an America ravaged by a Pandemic that afflicts those with a sufficient testosterone level, ie males, turning the survivors into feral Monsters. In an extremely violent world (see Horror in SF), the ...
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 ...