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 ...
Emrys, Ruthanna
(? - ) US author, who began to publish work of genre interest with "Exposure Therapy" in Analog for January-February 2007; it has been assembled with several other stories as Imperfect Commentaries (2019). In her first series, the Near Future Innsmouth Legacy sequence beginning with The Litany of Earth (14 May 2014 Tor.com; 2014 ...
Winterburn, Katherine
(? - ) US author of Mystery=Wisdom From Mars (1961), a Utopia set on Mars and based on Eugenic principles. The fittest rule. Children seem to be raised communally. [JC]
Wright, William Henry
(1856-1934) US journalist and author, perhaps best known for his nonfiction The Black Bear (1910) about raising a bear named Ben from infancy. Of sf interest is The Great Bread Trust (1900 chap), a Satire on capitalist excesses in which an entrepreneur, after heading a cartel that corners the market in cereal, has himself proclaimed the King of America. [JC]
Armitage, Simon
(1963- ) UK translator and poet, Poet Laureate from 2019. Much of his Poetry, which may be described as fluently world-facing, comes close to or enters the water margins of Fantastika, though his use of the SF Megatext is casual. The poems assembled in CloudCuckooLand (coll 1997) are consistent with this delineation; the volume also includes a full-length ...
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 ...