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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.
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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 ...
Gallagher, Matt
(1983- ) US former soldier and author whose military experiences are reflected in a blog, Kaboom: A Soldier's War Journal (2007-2008), which was shut down by his superiors; in his first book, Kaboom: Embracing the Suck in a Savage Little War (2010), a memoir; and in his first novel, Youngblood (2016), a complex nonfantastic rendering of America's intimate involvement in Iraq. Gallagher is of sf interest for his second novel, ...
Godwin, Parke
(1929-2013) US author who began publishing work of genre interest with "Unsigned Original" for Brother Theodore's Chamber of Horrors (anth 1977) edited by Marvin Kaye "and Brother Theodore". Godwin was for some years more or less equally associated with fantasy and sf, though most of the stories assembled in The Fire when It Comes (coll 1984) are the former, the title novella winning a 1982 ...
Musgrave, David
(1973- ) UK artist and author whose first novel, Lambda (2022), is set in an Alternate World version of London co-inhabited by humans and lambdas, the latter being extremely tiny aquatic mammals, unregistered immigrants who establish a Wainscot Society in an unexpectedly welcoming United Kingdom. Sadly, a bombing unconnected to the lambdas excites the ...
Paull, Laline
(? - ) UK playwright, screenwriter and author whose staged dramas to date, beginning with Boat Memory (first performed 2004 Olivier Theatre, London), have been nonfantastic. Her first novel, The Bees (2014), is a surprisingly complex Animal Fantasy whose protagonist, an Ugly-Duckling-like Mutant worker bee, rises in the hive to become a handmaiden to the totalitarian Queen herself [for Ugly Duckling, and ...
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 ...