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Friday 23 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
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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 ...
Planet of the Apes
1. Film (1968). Apjac/Twentieth Century Fox. Directed by Franklin J Schaffner. Written by Michael Wilson, Rod Serling, based on La planète des singes (1963; trans as Planet of the Apes 1963) by Pierre Boulle. Cast includes Maurice Evans, Charlton Heston, Kim Hunter, Roddy McDowall and James Whitmore. 112 minutes. Colour. / Astronauts crashland on a planet where intelligent ...
Credits
In sf Terminology, a credit is a unit of Money. Credits are used widely in tales of the future. [PN]
Self, Will
(1961- ) UK journalist and author who early established a name for savagely gonzo Satire, both in his fiction and his nonfiction, where his targets run from adversarial anatomies of the State of the Nation to similar explorations and exposés of his own psyche, sparing nothing in his descriptions of his early years of drug addiction, and of his erratically transgressive acts as a human being. His work in all genres has the scatological ...
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 ...