SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Thursday 22 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.
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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 ...
Wolf, Gary K
(1941- ) US author who began publishing work of genre interest with "Love Story" in Worlds of Tomorrow for Winter 1970, which he followed with several sharply Satirical tales over the next few years. The best of these, like "Doctor Rivet and Supercon Sal" (January 1976 F&SF), are generally thought to scan American society with a sharper, cleaner vision than that attained in his ...
Huchu, T L
(1982- ) Zimbabwean author, resident in Scotland from 2010 at the latest; his first novels, including The Hairdresser of Harare (2010), An Untimely Love (2010) and The Maestro, the Magistrate & the Mathematician (2014), all as by Tendai Huchu, are nonfantastic [they are not listed below]. He began publishing work of genre interest with "The Sale" in AfroSf: Science Fiction by African Writers (anth 2012) edited by ...
Aresty, Adam
(? - ) US screenwriter and author, who began to publish work of genre interest with "Another Living Body" in Mad Scientist Journal for August 2012; he wrote the script for one full-length horror film, Stung (2015), directed by Bennie Diez (see Horror in SF). Aresty is of direct sf interest for his first novel, the Young Adult Near Future ...
Nicholls, Peter
(1939-2018) Australian editor and author, primarily a critic and historian of sf through his creation and editing of The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction [see below]; resident in the UK 1970-1988, in Australia from 1988; worked as an academic in English literature (1962-1968, 1971-1977), scripted television documentaries, was a Harkness Fellow in Film-making (1968-1970) in the USA, worked as a publisher's editor (1982-1983), often broadcast film and book reviews on BBC Radio from 1974 and ...