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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 ...
Pierre, DBC
Pseudonym of Australian author Peter Finlay (1961- ), the initials of whose pseudonym stand for Dirty But Clean, a reference to the author's adventurous but troubled early life; these early experiences are surreally unpacked in his first novel, Vernon God Little: A 21st Century Comedy in the Presence of Death (2003), a gonzo Bildungsroman which gestures at the fantastic. Conjoined twins in an almost Near Future, ...
Lever, Peter
(1972- ) UK editor and author whose first novel, Me Cheeta: The Autobiography (2009) as by Cheeta, is an Apes as Human tale narrated by Cheeta (as impersonated by various chimpanzees in Tarzan Films from 1932), looking back on his life from the age of 76; the poignance of his love for Johnny Weissmuller (1904-1984) contrasts, at times savagely, with his Satirical ...
Barlowe, Wayne Douglas
(1958- ) US illustrator whose successful Barlowe's Guide to Extraterrestrials (graph 1979), in collaboration with Ian Summers and Beth Meacham (who wrote the text), was published when he was twenty-one, only two years after he had made his first sale, a cover for Cosmos. The book featured Barlowe's excellent paintings of many of sf's best-known attempts to ...
Clute, John
(1940- ) Canadian critic, editor and author, in the UK from 1969; married to Judith Clute from 1964, partner of Elizabeth Hand since 1996. He began to publish work of genre interest with an sf-tinged poem "Carcajou Lament" in Triquarterly for Winter 1960 [ie Autumn 1959]; he began consistently publishing sf reviews in his "New Fiction" column for the Toronto Star (1966-1967), and later in ...