SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Friday 23 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 19 January 2026
Sponsor of the day: Ted Chiang
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 ...
Gilbert, John
(1926- ) US author whose sf novel, Aiki (1986), sets a gladiatorial martial-arts tale in twenty-first-century New York. [JC]
Older, Daniel José
(1980- ) US EMT (Emergency Medical Technician) and author whose works are usually fantasy interfused with topoi from the fertile imaginary of Magic Realism, as directed to Young Adult readers. He began to publish work of genre interest with "The Crate" in Crossed Genres for June 2010, gaining considerable notice for his first series, the Shadowshaper Cypher sequence beginning with ...
Infinite Matrix, The
US professional cumulative Online Magazine which posted material daily but was archived monthly. It was published by Eileen Gunn and ran, after what could have been its only issue in August 2001, from November 2001 to January 2006, with three additional issues in April 2006, January 2007 and July 2008. Along with Sci Fiction and Strange Horizons, both of ...
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 ...