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.
Site updated on 12 January 2026
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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 ...
Nogaret, François-Félix
(1740-1831) French bureaucrat and author, intermittently prolific from around 1770 to 1830; he is of sf interest for Le Miroir des événements actuels, ou la belle au plus offrant, Histoire à deux visages ["The Mirror of Present Events, or, Beauty to the Highest Bidder: A Two-Faced Tale"] [for various versions see Checklist below] (1790 chap; trans Brian Stableford as "The Mirror of Present Events; Or, Beauty to the ...
Oz
Japanese Original Video Animation (1992), based on the Manga by Natsumi Itsuki. Madhouse. Directed by Katsuhisa Yamada. Written by Mami Watanabe. Voice cast includes Toshiko Fujita, Yasunori Matsumoto, Yuko Minaguchi, Yuji Mitsuya, Tamio Ohki, Keiko Toda, Kōichi Yamadera and Mari Yokoo. Two 35-minute episodes. Colour. / In 1990, World War Three and the resulting six-month ...
Martin, John
(1789-1854) UK painter and illustrator with a spectacularly melodramatic imagination, whose vast canvases depicting cataclysmic biblical scenes of Disaster and the End of the World have informed much modern fantasy Illustration. Even his delicate mezzotint illustrations for such editions as Paradise Lost (1824) by John Milton (1608-1674) have an epic quality; his variously published ...
Fichman, Frederick
(? - ) US author whose SETI (1990) pits its teenaged hero against both US and Soviet governments – whose representatives are envious of his freelance initiatives – in the race to make First Contact (see also SETI). The teenager does very well. The SETI sequence is continued in self-published sequels: see Checklist below. [JC] see also: ...
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 ...