SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Saturday 24 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 ...
Hunter, John
(1891-1961) UK author of a huge number of stories for the Boys' Papers and other markets from the early 1900s, under his own name and as by John Addiscombe, L H Brenning, Francis Brent, Stanton Doyle, Anthony Drummond, Peter Meriton and others, his total output being estimated as about 20,000,000 words. His sf work has not been fully identified. Typical early examples include two book-length serials: "The Lure of the Lost Land" (27 February-20 May 1922 ...
Smith, D Alexander
(1953- ) US investment banker and author who served as Treasurer of Science Fiction Writers of America 1987-1990 and has written several articles on Wargame strategy. The Marathon sequence comprising Marathon (1982), Rendezvous (1988) and Homecoming (1990) analyses in some depth a First Contact event, depicting with very considerable ...
Stanley, John
(1940- ) US author, much of whose work has been devoted to nonfiction studies of Cinema Monsters. Creature Features Movie Guide: an A to Z Encyclopedia of the Cinema of the Fantastic; Or, Is There a Mad Doctor in the House? (1981) and its expansions do a competent job of justifying their titles. Stanley is of sf interest for two novels. In World War III (1976), with ...
Robinson, Roger
(1943- ) UK computer programmer, bibliographer and publisher, active in UK Fandom for many years. The Writings of Henry Kenneth Bulmer (1983 chap; rev 1984 chap) is an exhaustive Bibliography of one of the most prolific sf writers, Kenneth Bulmer, and Who's Hugh?: An SF Reader's Guide to Pseudonyms (1987) is similarly exhaustive in its ...