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
Sponsor of the day: Andy Richards of Cold Tonnage Books
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 ...
Mighty Space Miners
Japanese animated OVA (1994-1995; vt Oira Uchuu no Tankoufu). Written by Ritsuko Hayasaka and Umanosuke Iida (as Forsman Ranchfield). Directed by Umanosuke Iida. Produced by Triangle Staff and KSS. Voice cast includes Kappei Yamaguchi. Two 25-minute episodes. Colour / Set in the 2060s on a mining colony carved into the captured Asteroid 4179 Toutatis – effectively a working-class ...
Alam, Rumaan
(circa 1977- ) US journalist and author whose third novel, Leave the World Behind (2020), comprises an acute analysis of racial/cultural stresses (see Race in SF) in the north-east corridor of America, after a very Near Future Disaster where New York is blacked out, leading the various protagonists of the tale to anticipate ...
Smith, Kent
(? - ) US author in whose sf novel, Future X (1990), a Black man from a racist twenty-first century discovers a Time-Travel device, returns to the time of Malcolm X (1925-1965) with the intention of saving him from assassination, causes his death months too early, and finds himself bound into taking his place. But history continues as before, for there is no way, the book seems to argue, of curing the system ...
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 ...