SF Encyclopedia Home Page
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 ...
Clones
A clone is a group of individuals comprising the asexually produced offspring of a single individual. A pair of identical twins is a clone because the twin cells are produced by the asexual fission of the fertilized ovum. Asexual reproduction is very common among protozoa and some groups of invertebrates, but is much rarer in vertebrates. The possibility of cloning humans by transplanting the nucleus of a somatic cell from a donor into an ovum which can then be replaced in a host womb has ...
Bride of Frankenstein, The
1. Film (1935). Universal. Directed by James Whale. Written by John Balderston, William Hurlbut and R C Sherriff uncredited. Cast includes Colin Clive, E E Clive, Gavin Gordon, O P Heggie, Valerie Hobson, Boris Karloff (credited by surname only), Elsa Lanchester, Una O'Connor, Ernest Thesiger and Douglas Walton. 75 minutes. Black and white. / ...
De Marco, Guy Anthony
(1963- ) US author, most of whose work has been horror; after several nonfantastic stories, he began to publish work of genre interest with "Streetwalker" in Serpentarius for 2008. Such short fiction is assembled in Absolute Truths & Outright Lies (coll 2011) and other similar titles. He is of greatest sf interest for the first (all yet published) volume of the Interface Zero sequence, Solar Singularity ...
Smiling Friends
Australian/US animated tv series (2020; 2023-current). Princess Bento. Created, directed and written by Zach Hadel and Michael Cusack. Voice cast includes Michael Cusack, Zach Hadel and Marc M. Seventeen 11-minute episodes. Colour. / Smiling Friends is an organization dedicated to cheering people up: working from a building shaped like a giant smiley-face emoji, its members visit the despondent and attempt to bring a smile to their faces. The focus is ...
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 ...