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 ...
A Merritt's Fantasy Magazine
US Pulp magazine, 5 issues, December 1949 to October 1950, published by Popular Publications under their imprint Recreational Reading, Inc. No editor was credited, but it is believed to have been Harry Widmer, though Mary Gnaedinger may well have also been involved. A Merritt's Fantasy Magazine was a companion magazine to Famous Fantastic Mysteries and ...
Schwartz, Helen Ruth
(? - ) US author whose sf novel, The Meadowlark Sings (2006), is set in a Near Future Dystopian America governed by the fundamentalist right whose homophobia (see Sex) is given teeth by the discovery of the "Scarpetta gene", which causes homosexuality. When in 2018 an earthquake calves off part of California, which becomes an ...
Yourell, Agnes Bond
(1864-? ) US author whose A Manless World (1891) speculates about what might happen to the human species were an interstellar gas to have destroyed "animal desire" (see Sex; Feminism) in everyone except – it is mooted – the Jews (see Race in SF), who might find an elixir: riots and pogroms would occur; the race would vanish. In a manner not uncommon to ...
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 ...