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 ...
Arden, Leon
(? - ) US photographer, playwright and author The Twilight's Last Gleaming (1972), an Alternate History set after World War Two, with General Alfred Jodl (in real life executed in 1946) governing the state of West Germany, which America invades to prevent German development of a nuclear capacity: too late in the event, as Germany bombs Russia. One Fine Day ...
Transgender SF
In the real world, Gender reassignment surgery dates back to around 1930 as a technique; an earlier operation, in 1918, involved only removal of breasts and ovaries. The full procedure only became widely known to the general public, however, after the media blitz that surrounded Christine Jorgensen's transition in 1953. For reasons which may possibly have nothing to do with social attitudes (but almost certainly do), there seems to be no genuine early sf example of an ...
Meredith, James Creed
(1875-1942) Irish judge, a Protestant who was an early supporter of Sinn Féin; as an author, he focused usually on philosophical subjects, and carried that interest into fiction in The Rainbow in the Valley (1939), which features scientists in western China who establish Communications with Mars, giving Meredith the chance discursively to compare and contrast the two civilizations in terms of their attaining ...
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 ...