SF Encyclopedia Home Page
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 ...
Santa Claus Conquers the Martians
Film (1964; vt Santa Claus Defeats the Aliens). Jalor Productions. Directed by Nicholas Webster. Written by Glenville Mareth, based on a story by Paul L Jacobson. Cast includes Vincent Beck, John Call, Donna Conforti, Leonard Hicks, Bill McCutcheon and Victor Stiles. 81 minutes. Colour. / In an effort to cheer up the children of Mars, who have learned about Santa Claus by watching television programmes from Earth, the Martian Kimar (Hicks) resolves to ...
Military SF
War and especially Future War are enduring sf themes. The melodramatic excesses of Space-Opera warfare faded with the pulps, although they were never to die out entirely. Complementing such extravagance, there grew up a more disciplined and more realistic notion of the kind of armies which might fight interplanetary and interstellar wars, and the kinds of Weapons they might use. ...
Winter, Edgar
(1946- ) US rock musician, whose eponymous group achieved commercial success in the 1970s; their best known song, "Frankenstein" (1972) is an instrumental and does not mention Mary Shelley's creation. Winter's album Standing on Rock (1981) includes sf-inspired songs with generic titles like "Martians" (see Mars) and "Tomorrowland". In 1986 he took on the task of recording songs written ...
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 ...