SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Thursday 15 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 ...
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 ...
Lang, Simon
Pseudonym of US screenwriter and author Darlene Hartman (1934- ), her work under this name consisting of the Skipjack sequence of Space Operas, beginning with All the Gods of Eisernon (1973) and The Elluvon Gift (1975), these two tales constituting a casual series, both featuring the Terran starship Skipjack and both set in the same loose-slung set of ...
Butler, Samuel
(1835-1902) UK artist, author, traveller and speculative thinker, whose family-induced sojourn in New Zealand 1859-1864 gave him raw material for Erewhon (see below) but did not cure him of his artistic inclinations; his best-known single work, the posthumously published autobiographical novel The Way of all Flesh (1903), describes the long conflict between Butler and his minister father, a conflict which also provided much of the force of the ...
Star Raiders
Videogame (1979). Atari. Designed by Doug Neubauer. Platforms: Atari8 (1979); Atari5200, AtariVCS (1982); AtariST (1986; vt ST Star Raiders). / Star Raiders was the first real time three-dimensional space combat game which combined arcade elements (see Videogames) with strategic aspects derived from text-based Star Trek games (see ...
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 ...