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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 ...
Sokołowski, Krzysztof
(1957- ) Polish critic, translator and editor, author of the Poland entry in the 1993 edition of this encyclopedia. A graduate of Warsaw University, Sokołowski is well known for his critical pieces on US-UK sf in the magazine Fantastyka. Since its foundation in 1990 until it ceased in 2001 he was editor of Fenix, the first professional science fiction and ...
Bubble E Go! Time Machine Wa Drum-Shiki
["To the Bubble! The Time Machine Is a Washing Machine"] Film (2007 Japan; vt Bubble Fiction: Boom or Bust). Aries, Hoichoi, Tōhō. Directed by Yasuo Baba. Written by Ryōichi Kimizuka. Cast includes Hiroshi Abe, Ryōko Hirosue and Hiroko Yakushimaru. 116 minutes. Colour. / With the yen on the verge of collapse (see Money), the Japanese government identifies the root of its troubles as a piece of fictional legislation in 1990 that ...
Fryers, Austin
Pseudonym of Irish trade unionist, playwright and author William Edward Clery (1861-1931), in the UK from 1877, whose activism in his public life cost him more than one job for political reasons. His first novel of interest, The Devil and the Inventor (1900), bridges sf and fantasy (the term Equipoise, here normally used for works whose relationship to the genres they transact is retrospective rather than proleptic, could easily be applied to this ...
Cinescape
Letter-size saddle-stapled Cinema magazine printed on glossy paper. Sendal Publications/Cinescape Media/Mania Entertainment. Editor: unknown. At least 78 issues from 1994 to 2004. Publication was generally bimonthly. / One of the more successful imitators of Starlog and its ilk, this title ran for at least a decade; coverage was almost exclusively of then-current films and Television programmes. Featured ...
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 ...