SF Encyclopedia Home Page
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 ...
Lacroix, Paul
(1806-1884) French bibliographer and author who published under a variety of names, including P L Jacob and Bibliophile, and who was possibly an anonymous collaborator with Victor Hugo (1802-1885) and certainly did anonymous work for Alexandre Dumas. He is of sf interest for La Danse Macabre: histoire fantastique du XVème siecle (1832 as by P L Jacob, Bibliophile; trans Brian Stableford as ...
Thompson, Alice
(? - ) Scottish musician and author who first became known as a founding member of the rock band The Woodentops in 1983, leaving in the 1987. She has been active as a writer from around 1990, most of her fiction consisting of Gothic explorations of extreme states, as in her first novel Justine (1990) which intricately replays, while reversing in Feminist terms, the implications of ...
Damned, The
Film (1961; vt These Are the Damned). Hammer/Swallow. Directed by Joseph Losey. Written by Evan Jones, based on The Children of Light (1960) by Henry L Lawrence. Cast includes MacDonald Carey, Shirley Ann Field, Alexander Knox, Viveca Lindfors and Oliver Reed. 96 minutes, cut to 87 minutes (UK) and to 77 minutes (US). Black and white. / Made in the UK by expatriate US director Losey, this film so dismayed the distributors, ...
Olša, Jaroslav, Jr
(1964- ) Czech and Czechoslovak diplomat whose posts include those of Ambassador to Zimbabwe (2000-2006), South Korea (2008-2014) and the Philippines (2014-2018); Consul General in Los Angeles (2020-current); author of books on history, art and literature of Asia and Africa; also sf editor, translator and bibliographer. Olša started the major Czechoslovak fanzine Ikarie XB (1986-1989), which turned into the first ...
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 ...