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 ...
Nuclear Energy
The claim that sf is a realistic, extrapolative literature is often supported by the citing of successful Predictions, among which atomic power and the atom bomb are usually given pride of place. When the news of the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki was released in 1945, John W Campbell Jr, editor of Astounding Science-Fiction, was exultant, claiming that now sf would have to be taken seriously. ...
Toys
This entry deals with sf-based toys; for discussion of fictional toys, see Toys in SF. / From a commercial point of view, sf toys used to be traditionally more important than sf Games, and they have at least as long a history. They continue to be of greater commercial significance than Role Playing Games, WarGames or Gamebooks, but were ...
St Clair, Margaret
(1911-1995) US author, usually under her married name, though she wrote a series of elegant stories in the 1950s as by Idris Seabright, and had one tale published in 1952 under the House Name Wilton Hazzard. Her sf career began with "Rocket to Limbo" in Fantastic Adventures for November 1946, and by 1950 she had published about thirty stories, most of them vigorous adventures in a ...
Kinvig
UK tv series (1981). London Weekend Television. Created and written by Nigel Kneale. Produced and directed by Les Chatfield. Cast includes Prunella Gee, Tony Haygarth, Colin Jeavons and Patsy Rowlands. Seven 25-minute episodes. Colour. / This most recent of Kneale's many sf plays and series for television was a sitcom, fuelled apparently by a certain animus against sf Fandom, about two lunatic fans living seedy urban lives, ...
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 ...