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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.
Site updated on 12 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 ...
Gnosspelius, Staffan
(1976- ) Swedish-born illustrator and graphic artist, in the UK since 1999, active from around then. He has illustrated picture books to texts by Swedish authors (published only in Swedish); the books for which he is wholly responsible have appeared in English, beginning with The Tristan Story (graph 2004) whose young protagonist loses his "crying", which he must search for in the bowels of his uncle's car: a Little-Big quest into a huge world growing huger, ...
Tree of Palme, A
Japanese animated film (2002). Original title Parumu no Ki. Palm Studio, Genco. Directed and written by Takashi Nakamura. Voice cast includes Yurika Hino, Akiko Hiramatsu, Motomu Kiyokawa, Kouka, Daisuke Sakaguchi and Megumi Toyoguchi. 137 minutes, Colour. / On a planet where immense fish swim through the sky (see Life on Other Worlds), "the kooloop tree thrives on the particles of memory that it soaks up from ...
Sensory Deprivation
The real-world Technology of the sensory deprivation chamber (sometimes referred to as a Black Room) or tank has been frequently invoked in borderline sf as well as Genre SF. A typical setup might be a tank of lukewarm water in which the suitably garbed subject floats, supplied with air but cut off from such normal senses of Perception as sight, hearing and touch. Sensory deprivation techniques are ...
Feintuch, David
(1944-2006) US lawyer, antique dealer and author who began to publish work of genre interest with the first volume of the Nick Seafort series Midshipman's Hope (1994), which depicts the life and adventures of a young cadet on a spaceship whose rituals are extremely like that of a planet-bound – indeed, more specifically, an early nineteenth-century – navy: specifically the navy in which C S Forester's Horatio Hornblower serves, ...
Robinson, Roger
(1943- ) UK computer programmer, bibliographer and publisher, active in UK Fandom for many years. The Writings of Henry Kenneth Bulmer (1983 chap; rev 1984 chap) is an exhaustive Bibliography of one of the most prolific sf writers, Kenneth Bulmer, and Who's Hugh?: An SF Reader's Guide to Pseudonyms (1987) is similarly exhaustive in its ...