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.
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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 ...
Underground [Game]
Role Playing Game (1993). Mayfair Games (MG). Designed by Ray Winninger. / Underground is a game in which all the worst fears of US Democrats in the 1990s are brought to life. In this vision of the early twenty-first century, weaponized superhumans turned petty criminals terrorize the cities of a corrupted America. The world is locked in a second Cold War, a hostile stand off between the North American, ...
Storr, Catherine
(1913-2001) UK doctor and author, for many years a psychotherapist, after 1963 a prolific author of journalism, children's books – most famously Marianne Dreams (1958; vt The Magic Drawing Pencil 1960), in which physical and mental malaises are incarnated in a fantasy world; it was adapted by Moira Buffini as the play Marianne Dreams (first performed 2007; 2007) – and an sf novel, Unnatural Fathers ...
Budrys, Algis
Working name of Prussian-born Lithuanian-American editor and author Algirdas Jonas Budrys (1931-2008). He was born in East Prussia (now Russia); when his parents were exiled, he was taken with them to the US in 1936, where he remained. This early experience of dislodgement and exile clearly shaped much of his fiction. He began publishing sf in 1952 with two more or less simultaneous releases, "The High Purpose" in Astounding for November 1952 and "Walk to the World" in ...
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 ...