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
Sponsor of the day: Ansible Editions
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 ...
Flynn, Katie M
(? - ) US editor and author, active from around 2005, who is of sf interest for her first novel, The Companions (2020), set in a moderately distant Near Future California some time after a devastating plague Pandemic has savagely reduced the population of the state, a Disaster severe enough to warrant a permanent ...
Duke, Madelaine
Pseudonym of Ukrainian-born physician and author Elizabeth Magda MacFarlane (1919-1996), in UK from 1939 or earlier; active under her main pseudonym plus at least two others in a variety of genres including sf novels (which she describes as "cartoons"). Claret, Sandwiches and Sin: A Cartoon (1964 as by Maxim Donne; 1966 as by Duke) depicts a world insecurely amalgamated, after a World War Three that has, in ...
Aztec Mummy, The
Mexican film (1957); original title La Momia Azteca. Cinematográfica Calderón S.A. Directed by Rafel Lopez Portillo. Written by Alfredo Salazar and Guillermo Calderon. Cast includes Crox Alvarado, Rosita Arenas, Luis Aceves Castañeda, Ángel Di Stefani, Ramón Gay and Jorge Mondragón. 80 minutes. Black and white. / A narrator tells us this film blends reality with fiction, with the former based on scientific ...
Minkov, Svetoslav
(1902-1966) Bulgarian author and man of letters, active from 1920 (for contextual comments on his earliest work, see Bulgaria). The sf tales and Fabulations assembled in The Lady with the X-Ray Eyes (coll trans Krassimira Noneva 1965 Bulgaria), which brings together work originally published 1928-1965, are sharp, occasionally didactic, and expose a sometimes insistent irony. This text is not a translation of a 1934 ...
Langford, David
(1953- ) UK author, critic, editor, publisher and sf fan, in the latter capacity recipient of 21 Hugo awards for fan writing – some of the best of his several hundred pieces are assembled as Let's Hear It for the Deaf Man (coll 1992 chap US; much exp vt The Silence of the Langford 1996; exp 2015 ebook) as Dave Langford, edited by Ben Yalow – plus five Best Fanzine Hugos ...