SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Friday 16 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 14 January 2026
Sponsor of the day: Paul Giamatti
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 ...
Fiyah
US semiprofessional quarterly Online Magazine, subtitled "Magazine of Black Speculative Fiction" and also available as an ebook; published by the Niggerati Space Station, a virtual community of writers established by Troy L Wiggins. / Fiyah began in January (Winter) 2017 and is devoted to stories "by and about the Black People of the African diaspora". It was founded by Phenderson Djèlí Clark and ...
Wheeler, Harriet
(1858-1924) US author whose The Woman in Stone (1903) presents elegiacally, though not without convinced Christian condescension, the declining culture of the Ojibwe nation of Native Americans through a tale in which the discovery of the petrified body of a woman from ancient times opens into the description of a doomed Lost Race. [JC]
Shadows of Saturn
US Online Magazine and Semiprozine produced by Peter Burtis, Intervale, New Hampshire which ran for just three issues, April/May to August/September 2005. The magazine was dedicated to "dark science fiction, fantasy and slipstream stories with horror elements", according to its now defunct website, and the contents of the three issues certainly emphasized the dark and fantastic. James S Dorr's "City on Fire" (April/May 2005) ...
Nicholls, Peter
(1939-2018) Australian editor and author, primarily a critic and historian of sf through his creation and editing of The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction [see below]; resident in the UK 1970-1988, in Australia from 1988; worked as an academic in English literature (1962-1968, 1971-1977), scripted television documentaries, was a Harkness Fellow in Film-making (1968-1970) in the USA, worked as a publisher's editor (1982-1983), often broadcast film and book reviews on BBC Radio from 1974 and ...