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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.
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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 ...
Trevor, Ralph
Pseudonym of UK author James Reginald Wilmot (1897-1944), active for nine years as a crime novelist before his early death; he also wrote as by Frances Stuart. He is of minor sf interest for The Ghost Counts Ten (1938), a thriller featuring a heat-melting Ray. [JC]
Bell, Ted
(1946-2023) US advertising executive (ending in 2001 as Creative Director at Young and Rubicam) and author, best known for the Lord Alex Hawke series of nonfantastic political thrillers beginning with Hawke (2003) [series not listed below]. He is of sf interest for the Young Adult Nick McIver Time Adventure series beginning with Nick of Time: An Adventure Through Time (2000), whose young protagonist lives with his brave ...
Jeffries, Sagan
Pseudonym of Canadian athlete and author Ed Lukowich (1946- ) whose curling career climaxed with the captainship of the 1986 team which won the World Curling Championship. In his sf novel, The Trillionist (2013) a Superman on another planet singlehandedly brings his culture up to Technological speed within a few decades, and begins to conquer space; at which point, he must defend his actions in a ...
Judson, Theodore
(1951- ) US history teacher and author whose first novel, Tom Wedderburn's Life (2002), contains no fantastic element. His second novel, Fitzpatrick's War (2004), is constructed as the memoir of an older person intimate with the corridors of power, in this case an ostensibly democratic government ruled by a self-aggrandizing mass-murderer. The setting is a Ruined Earth America where any relics of high ...
Robinson, Roger
(1943- ) UK computer programmer, bibliographer and publisher, active in UK Fandom for many years. The Writings of Henry Kenneth Bulmer (1983 chap; rev 1984 chap) is an exhaustive Bibliography of one of the most prolific sf writers, Kenneth Bulmer, and Who's Hugh?: An SF Reader's Guide to Pseudonyms (1987) is similarly exhaustive in its ...