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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 ...
Hjortsberg, William
(1941-2017) US screenwriter and author, much of whose work – like his first novel, Alp (1969), or his third, Toro! Toro! Toro! (1974) – hovers Equipoisally between a mildly gonzo Western American Magic Realism and genuine Fabulation. Gray Matters (1971), which is sf, grounds its fantastic episodes in a future Utopia where people are reborn (see ...
Delord, Taxile
(1815-1877) French politician, journalist and author; of the narrative texts he composed to accompany illustrations by J J Grandville, that of most sf interest is Une Autre Monde ["Another World"] [for subtitle see Checklist] (graph 1844), where Grandville's grotesquely oneiric biomorphic visions render humans as deliquescent combinations of the organic and the mechanical (see Satire). Delord and Grandville in ...
Great Wall, The
Chinese film (2016; vt Chang Cheng). Legendary East, Le Vision, Atlas Entertainment, China Film Group, Universal Pictures. Directed by Zhang Yimou, starring Matt Damon, Pedro Pascal, Willem Dafoe, Jing Tian, Andy Lau. Written by Carlo Bernard, Doug Miro, Tony Gilroy. 104 minutes. Colour. / In the eleventh century CE, William (Damon) and Tovar (Pascal) are the last survivors of a group of European mercenaries who have made the long journey to China ...
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 ...