SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Tuesday 20 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
Sponsor of the day: Andy Richards of Cold Tonnage Books
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 ...
Wise, Arthur
(1923-1983) UK drama consultant and author, most of whose works were thrillers; he also wrote as by John McArthur and under the non-sf house name Bryan Swift. Most of his sf was borderline, using genre elements to heighten the suspense. The best known of these tales was probably The Day the Queen Flew to Scotland for the Grouse Shooting (1968), about the abduction of the monarch in the context of a breakup of the United Kingdom. A second ...
Jäger, Willigis
(1925-2020) German monk and author of Der Alte aus Atlantis (1982; trans Ingrid Racz as The Old Sage of Atlantis 1995) as Willigis, in which an explorer examining Mayan ruins finds the Underground domain of a survivor of Atlantis, who transmits the story of its splendour and its fall. [JC]
Byoreseo on Geudae
["You Who Came From the Stars"] South Korean Television series (2013-2014; vt My Love from the Star). SBS. Directed by Jang Tae-yu. Written by Park Ji-eun. Cast includes Park Hae-jin, Yoo In-na, Jun Ji-hyun and Kim Soo-hyun. 21 episodes. Colour. / Crashlanding on Earth in the year 1609, the Alien Do Min-joon waits in vain for a means of escaping. With a human form that is permanently ...
Clute, John
(1940- ) Canadian critic, editor and author, in the UK from 1969; married to Judith Clute from 1964, partner of Elizabeth Hand since 1996. He began to publish work of genre interest with an sf-tinged poem "Carcajou Lament" in Triquarterly for Winter 1960 [ie Autumn 1959]; he began consistently publishing sf reviews in his "New Fiction" column for the Toronto Star (1966-1967), and later in ...