SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Tuesday 13 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 12 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 ...
Jobs in SF
Though it is a theme that may easily be overlooked, the future of occupations is as much an sf concern as technological developments, for the pair are interlinked (see also Slavery). Philip K Dick's Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (1968; vt Blade Runner 1982), for example, is equally a tale of the workplace as it is an examination of Technology. The protagonist hunts ...
Peel, John
(1954- ) UK television scriptwriter and author, resident for some time in the US, who has also written under the House Name Nicholas Adams, Rick North and John Vincent. He is mostly noted for his influential Doctor Who Ties, beginning with Doctor Who: The Chase (1989), often featuring ...
Conrad, Earl
(1912-1986) US author, fairly prolific and sometimes controversial. His relatively occasional sf comprises a Near-Future novel, The Premier (1963), in which a Black segregationist creates a separatist Black state in Western America; and a collection of short stories, The Da Vinci Machine: Tales of the Population Explosion (coll of linked stories 1969), set in various futures postulated (and perhaps brought into being) by the eponymous ...
Preston, Peter
(1938-2018) UK journalist, editor and author, active in the UK newspaper world from 1959, most prominently as editor of the Guardian 1975-1995; he remained active in executive and other functions with the Guardian group of newspapers, and published actively until his death. Preston is of sf interest for two novels. 51st State (1998) is a Near Future Satire in which an increasingly dysfunctional Britain leaves ...
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 ...