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
Sponsor of the day: Ansible Editions
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 ...
Thomas, Sheree Renée
(1972- ) US author, poet, artist and editor who began to publish work of genre interest with "How Sukie Cross de Big Wata" in Mojo: Conjure Stories (anth 2003) edited by Nalo Hopkinson. Her stories and poems are collected in Shotgun Lullabies: Stories & Poems (coll 2011), Sleeping Under the Tree of Life (coll 2011) and Nine Bar Blues: Stories from an Ancient Future (coll 2020), ...
Cinemacabre
Digest-size saddle-stapled Media Magazine printed on slick paper. Publisher: George Stover. Editor: John E Parnum. Seven issues 1979 to 1988; no publication schedule listed, although issues were given quarterly cover dates. / This high-quality Semiprozine was an unofficial continuation of Stover's Fanzine Black Oracle, of which ten issues appeared from 1969 to 1979. Cinemacabre ...
Garlick, Nicholas
(? - ) UK author – using his real name, not a pseudonym derived from the Catholic recusant and martyr of that name (circa 1555-1588) – of one sf novel, California Dreaming (1981), for Robert Hale Limited, in which Drugs are able, at least in California, to make thoughts real. [JC]
Martin, Les
Working name of US author Lester Martin Schulman (1934- ), whose work consists almost exclusively of Ties, most of these being contributions for younger readers to the X-Files universe, beginning with X Marks the Spot (1995) in the X-Files Young Readers sub-series. Martin has done similar work for the Indiana Jones universe (see ...
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 ...