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Thursday 22 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 ...
Davies, Hugh Sykes
(1909-1984) UK critical theorist, surrealist, Communist (until 1956), poet (in the Apocalyptic movement founded by Henry Treece), and author whose surrealist book-length Petron: A Prose Poem (1935) is, at least retroactively, of some value to sf writers and readers as an early model for contemporary attempts at the rendering of Inner Space. The Papers of Andrew Melmoth (1960) is an interesting story about the ...
Wallace, Jon
(1954- ) UK author, musician and comedian, working with Jon Cross in the comedy sketch duo Scanida-Hus and recording music as Ompsk and Nosp. He began to publish work of genre interest with "The Walrus and the Icebreaker" in Interzone for July/August 2011; some later stories from 2023 are bylined J Wallace. The Kenstibec sequence comprising Barricade (2014), Steeple (2015) and Rig (2016) ...
Taxandria
Belgian/French/German/Dutch live-action/animated film (1994). Iblis Films, Bibo Films, Les Productions Dussart. Directed by Raoul Servais. Written by Frank Daniel, Raoul Servais and Alain Robbe-Grillet. Cast includes Daniel Emilfork, Richard Kattan, Armin Mueller-Stahl, Andrew Sachs, Elliott Spiers and Katja Studt. 82 minutes. Colour. / In the present day, Jan (Kattan), a prince, arrives incognito with his tutor (Sachs) at a coastal resort ...
Langford, David
(1953- ) UK author, critic, editor, publisher and sf fan, in the latter capacity recipient of 21 Hugo awards for fan writing – some of the best of his several hundred pieces are assembled as Let's Hear It for the Deaf Man (coll 1992 chap US; much exp vt The Silence of the Langford 1996; exp 2015 ebook) as Dave Langford, edited by Ben Yalow – plus five Best Fanzine Hugos ...