SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Saturday 24 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.
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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 ...
Bruce, Muriel
(1890-1981) Canadian musician, journalist and author whose long-held interests in Theosophy, and other systems of transcendental knowledge, are reflected in her Lost Race novel, Mukara (1930), which is set far up the Amazon River. The protagonists, following a centuries'-old manuscript, discover an Apes as Human tribe, which they are able to escape, eventually reaching their goal, a ...
Landon, Kristin
(1958-2019) US editor and author of the Cold Minds sequence of Space Operas comprising The Hidden Worlds (2007), The Cold Minds (2008) and The Dark Reaches (2009), in which, after the near-destruction of Earth by Cybernetic intelligences, the waif remnants of humanity – piloted to and fro by "jump pilots" – survive on other planets hidden from sight; they prepare to ...
Manes, Stephen
(1949- ) US author on computer issues from the early 1980s, well-known for the "Digital Tools" column in Forbes; and author of several novels for the Young Adult and the younger children markets, the comical Oscar Noodleman sequence – comprising That Game from Outerspace: The First Strange Thing That Happened to Oscar Noodleman (1983 chap), ...
Robinson, Roger
(1943- ) UK computer programmer, bibliographer and publisher, active in UK Fandom for many years. The Writings of Henry Kenneth Bulmer (1983 chap; rev 1984 chap) is an exhaustive Bibliography of one of the most prolific sf writers, Kenneth Bulmer, and Who's Hugh?: An SF Reader's Guide to Pseudonyms (1987) is similarly exhaustive in its ...