SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Friday 16 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 14 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 ...
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 ...
Federman, Raymond
(1928-2009) French-born author, in the US from 1947 until his death; his family died in Auschwitz. Much of his work combines experimental forms with some content readable as fantastic; the term "surfiction" has been applied to Federman's version of the postmodern sensibility (see Postmodernism and SF). Of this work, The Twofold Vibration (1982), does incorporate a Near Future ...
Walker, Rysa
Pseudonym of US author (1961- ) of the Young Adult Chronos Files beginning with Time's Twisted Arrow (2012 ebook; vt Timebound 2014), in which Time Travel and romance are intertwined through the machinations of a religious fanatic. [JC]
Charteris, Leslie
(1907-1993) US author born as Leslie Charles Bowyer Yin in Singapore, educated in the UK; he legally changed his name to Leslie Charteris in 1928, and became a US citizen in 1946. He remains known almost exclusively for the long picaresque crime/thriller sequence featuring Simon Templar alias The Saint. This saga began with the author's second novel Meet the Tiger! (1928; vt The Saint Meets the Tiger 1940), though Charteris experimented with and discarded ...
Langford, David
(1953- ) UK author, critic, editor, publisher and sf fan, in the latter capacity recipient of 21 Hugo awards for fan writing – some of the best of his several hundred pieces are assembled as Let's Hear It for the Deaf Man (coll 1992 chap US; much exp vt The Silence of the Langford 1996; exp 2015 ebook) as Dave Langford, edited by Ben Yalow – plus five Best Fanzine Hugos ...