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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 ...
Minto, William
(1845-1893) Scottish philosopher, academic, journalist and author whose sf novel, The Crack of Doom: A Novel (August 1885-June 1886 Blackwood's Magazine; 1886 3vols), portentously invokes the Disaster threatened by an approaching Comet to shape, intermittently, an otherwise prosaic (and conspicuously dithery) plot; in the event, the End of the World is averted. This novel should ...
Balmer, Edwin
(1883-1959) US author and editor, trained as an engineer, who wrote in a variety of genres and edited (1927-1949) the magazine Red Book, which occasionally published sf; his first novel, Waylaid by Wireless: A Suspicion, a Warning, a Sporting Proposition, and a Transatlantic Pursuit (1909), verges on sf; more interestingly, with his brother-in-law William MacHarg, he soon published The Achievements of Luther Trant (coll ...
Boswell, Diane
(1899-1995) UK pilot and author, with the Air Transport Auxiliary in World War Two. As with many female authors of the twentieth century, her surname, which she took on her first marriage in 1922, was not a pseudonym during her literary career, though she had legally become Diane Farnell (her second husband's surname) by the time of her war service. In her first novel, Posterity: A Novel (1926), mandatory devices to decrease the birth rate in ...
Langford, David
(1953- ) UK author, critic, editor, publisher and sf fan, in the latter capacity recipient of 21 Hugo awards for fan writing – some of the best of his several hundred pieces are assembled as Let's Hear It for the Deaf Man (coll 1992 chap US; much exp vt The Silence of the Langford 1996; exp 2015 ebook) as Dave Langford, edited by Ben Yalow – plus five Best Fanzine Hugos ...