SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Tuesday 20 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 19 January 2026
Sponsor of the day: Andy Richards of Cold Tonnage Books
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 ...
Fieux de Mouhy, Charles de
(1701-1784) French journalist, playwright and author, whose name has also been given as Charles de Fieux, Chevalier de Mouhy, and whose surname has been variously registered as de Fieux de Mouhy, de Mouhy, Fieux, le Chevalier de Mouhy, or Mouhy. He is of Proto SF interest for Lamekis [for subtitle see Checklist below] (1737 4vols; trans Michael Shreve 2011), a complex tale involving Fantastic Voyages, with ...
Dystopias
The word "dystopia" is the commonly used antonym of "eutopia" (see Utopias) and denotes that class of hypothetical societies containing images of worlds worse than our own. An early user of the term was John Stuart Mill (1806-1873), in a parliamentary speech in 1868, but its recent fashionableness probably stems from its use in Quest for Utopia (1952) by Glenn Negley (1907-1988) and J Max Patrick (1908-? ). Anthony ...
Cleopatra in Space
US animated tv series (2019-2021). DreamWorks Animation. Based on the graphic novels by Mike Maihack. Directors include Jayson Thiessen and Scooter Tidwell. Writers include Lindsay Kerns and Belinda King. Executive Producers include Doug Langdale. Voice cast includes Katie Crown, Jorge Diaz, Lilimar Hernandez, Jonathan Kite, Sendhil Ramamurthy and Kari Wahlgren. 26 21-minute episodes. Colour. / In Ancient Egypt the teenaged Cleopatra VII ...
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 ...