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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 ...
Gelman, Peter
(? - ) US author whose Flying Saucers over Hennepin: A Novel about an Avenue (1997), is a spoof of Alien Invasion tales like The Body Snatcher (1955) by Jack Finney, famously filmed (twice) as The Invasion of the Body Snatchers. Here, parts of Minneapolis are taken over secretly by ...
Palmer, David
(1941- ) US author whose first story, the impressive "Emergence" in Analog for January 1981, was expanded as Emergence (fixup 1984), a Young Adult tale which attracted some notice for its depiction of a Post-Holocaust America suffering the consequences of a nuclear World War Three, and for its juvenile heroine, who represents a ...
Noble, William
(? -? ) UK author of Consternation in Mars: Dispatches of Faynt Dams, Ex Mock M.P. (1932), a Satire on Near Future England conducted in an eighteenth-century idiom; War is imminent. [JC]
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 ...