SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Tuesday 20 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: Andy Richards of Cold Tonnage Books
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 ...
Weiner, Homer
(? - ) US author whose Spacewater Blues (1980) is a Young Adult Satire, whose protagonists' experiences of a very Near Future America are enabled by their transit through another Dimension. They learn, mildly, about Sex. [JC]
Footman, David J
(1895-1983) UK author of at least two Lost Race tales – The Mine in the Desert (1929), in which Roman slaves trapped down a mine are discovered centuries later to have suffered Devolution into apes (see Apes as Human); and The Yellow Rock (1929), a Yellow Peril novel whose marginal lost race of Mongolians is being raised through ...
Wayne, Jeff
(1943- ) US composer and musician, best known for his lengthy concept-album adaptation of H G Wells's The War of the Worlds (April-December 1897 Pearson's; 1898), released as Jeff Wayne's Musical Version of The War of the Worlds (1978). This work, narrated rather grumpily by Richard Burton, retells the whole of Wells's story through songs sung by David Essex, Justin Hayward (of ...
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 ...