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 ...
Russell, Ray
(1924-1999) US author, editor and screenwriter whose work (although he wrote several stories for the SF Magazines) was mostly horror, supernatural, Fantasy and Gothic fiction for the Slicks. His first published story was "The Lesser Sin" (1953 Esquire) and his best-known is "Sardonicus" (January 1961 Playboy), assembled with other novellas as ...
Jack the Ripper
This notorious nineteenth-century UK serial killer and mutilator – usually of female prostitutes – operated in the Whitechapel region of London, committing five murders in 1888 and perhaps others before and after, to a possible total of eleven. Never identified, the Ripper became and still remains gaslight-era London's major Icon of fear. The related literature of analysis and speculation ("Ripperology") is immense; we record ...
Nevins, Albert J
(1915-1997) US Catholic priest, film director and author, whose Children's SF novel, The Adventures of Pancho of Peru (1953), describes the brave behaviour of the eponymous native, who has connections with a Lost World deep in the mountains. It was published as part of the didactic Adventures with a Purpose series. [JC]
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 ...