SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Friday 23 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 ...
Feeley, Gregory
(1955- ) US critic and author whose essays and book reviews have appeared from the 1980s in various journals from the Washington Post to Foundation. Sometimes adversarial, unfailingly intelligent, they represent a cold-eyed view of a genre he loves by a critic immersed in its material; not always justly, he has been accused of a tendency to hector. Although he began publishing sf with "The Light at the ...
Infinity Plus
Sf/fantasy fiction and reviews website edited 1997-2006 by Keith Brooke. Infinity Plus is now dormant, but its archives can still be read online. [DRL] links / Infinity Plus
Panshin, Alexei
Working name of US author Alexis Adams Panshin (1940-2022), married to Cory Panshin until his death; initially most active in sf Fandom, in this role doing considerable writing and editing, for which he won a Hugo for best fan writer in 1967. His first professional sale was the non-sf "A Piece of Pie" (November 1960 Seventeen); he began publishing fiction of genre interest with "Down to the Worlds of ...
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 ...