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Friday 16 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 14 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 ...
Krol, Torsten
(? - ) Australian author, whose reclusiveness has led to unconfirmed speculations that Torsten Krol is a pseudonym. His first novel, The Dolphin People (2006) skirts the fantastic in its depiction of the extreme behaviour of a German family (including at least one war criminal) whose plane has crashed in the Amazonian jungle just after World War Two, and who must convince the tribe that discovers them that ...
Trutz-Baumwoll, J M
Pseudonym of the unidentified author (? -? ) of "Sendschreiben des deutsch-englischen Zukunfspolitiker" (1871 Außerordentliche Beilage zur Allgemeinen Zeitung; trans anon as Forewarned! Forearmed!: The Suggested Invasion of England by the Germans 1871 chap), which takes the Battle of Dorking as a model for the real Invasion of England, an event that (at least as far as ...
Yukimura Makoto
(1976- ) Japanese artist and author whose sole sf work to date gained him the premier accolade in Japanese Fandom, in two media. A drop-out from the Tama Art University in Tokyo, Yukimura became an art assistant to the Manga creator Shin Morimura before finding fame with his debut work Planetes (graph 2000-2004 Comic Morning; coll 2001-2004). Trading on gritty ...
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 ...