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
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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 ...
Vector
The journal of the British Science Fiction Association (BSFA). There have been 281 issues from 1958 to Winter 2015-2016. / Vector has been published since the foundation of the BSFA in 1958, fairly regularly since the 1970s. E C Tubb was its first editor (#1), and it has had many editors since then, including Terry Jeeves (#2-#4, 1958-1959) and Michael ...
Puccetti, Roland
(1924-1995) US philosopher and author, long professionally involved in mind-body problems. He published several essays on the split-brain controversy, perhaps most accessibly in "Sperry on Consciousness: A Critical Appreciation" for The Journal of Medicine and Philosophy in 1977. Both of his novels deal, in their way, with the question. In The Death of the Führer (1972) Hitler's brain is transplanted into the body of a voluptuous woman, and "his" identity discovered, ...
Jorgensen, Ivar
Floating Pseudonym – also spelled or misspelled Ivar Jorgenson – first used in the Ziff-Davis magazines Amazing Stories and Fantastic, subsequently used in If, Imagination and Imaginative Tales. Its main user was Paul W Fairman (whom see ...
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 ...