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Thursday 15 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 ...
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 ...
Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets
Film (2017). EuropaCorp presents a Valerian SAS and TF1 Films production with the participation of OCS and TF1 and in association with the Belga Film Fund, BNP Paribas, Fundamental Films, Novo Pictures, Orange Studio, River Road Entertainment and Universum Film GmbH. Directed by Luc Besson. Written by Besson, based on the Comic series Valérian and Laureline (November 1967-March 2018) by Pierre Christin and Jean-Claude Mézières. Cast ...
Guttenberg, Violet
(? -? ) UK author whose three novels focus on Jews in the modern world. Neither Jew Nor Greek: A Story of Jewish Social Life (1902) and The Power of the Palmist (1903) contain no fantastic elements; but A Modern Exodus (1904) is set in a Near Future Britain where Jews have been declared the equivalent of "aliens" (see Race in SF), lose all civil rights, and ...
Conner, Michael
(1951- ) US author, some of whose books have been published as by Mike Conner, who began to publish work of genre interest with "Extinction of Confidence, the Exercise of Honesty" for New Constellations (anth 1976) edited by Thomas M Disch and Charles Naylor (1942-2005). He later won a 1992 Nebula for "Guide Dog" (May 1991 F&SF) as by Mike Connor [sic: ...
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 ...