SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Saturday 24 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 ...
Just Imagine
Film (1930). Fox Film Corporation. Directed by David Butler. Written by Lew Brown, Butler, Ray Henderson and Buddy G DeSylva. Songs by Brown, DeSilva and Henderson (credited) and/or Hugo Friedhofer (uncredited). Choreography by Seymour Felix. Cast includes Frank Albertson, Mischa Auer, El Brendel, John Garrick, George Irving, Joyzelle Joyner, Ivan Linow, Wilfred Lucas, Maureen O'Sullivan, Kenneth Thomson and Marjorie White. 109/113 minutes. Black and white. / As a viewing experience, ...
Kasulke, Calvin
(? - ) US author and playwright (recipient in the latter capacity of a Lambda literary fellowship) based in New York. His debut novel – or rather, novella with a great deal of white space – is Several People Are Typing: A Novel (2021), a genial comedy told entirely through chat sessions and personal direct messages in an eccentric New York PR consultancy's internal Slack ...
Lyons, Steve
(? - ) UK author, almost exclusively of Ties to various enterprises, primarily the Doctor Who universe, beginning with Doctor Who: New Adventures: Conundrum (1994) and Doctor Who: New Adventures: Head Games (1995), each part of a complicated Alternate History subset of tales known (perhaps unsurprisingly) as the ...
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 ...