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.
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 ...
Stewart, James
(? - ) UK author, possibly pseudonymous, who is of some sf interest for Danger from Grassen (1946), a post-World War Two thriller for boys set mostly in a Ruritanian version of Lichtenstein, here called Grassen, where a rogue Nazi Mad Scientist is preparing to release a deadly bacteriological Pandemic on the world. ...
Kerner, Charlotte
(1950- ) German author of fiction and nonfiction primarily for the Young Adult market. Titles not yet translated include Geboren 1999: Eine Zukunftsgeschichte ["Born 1999: A Future History"] (1991) and Kopflos ["Headless"] (2008). Blueprint/Blaupause (1999; trans Elizabeth D Crawford as Blueprint 2000), filmed as Blueprint (2003), depicts the ...
Editorial Practices: Chinese and Japanese Names
China / Chinese names are given in the traditional order, with surname first; we do not use commas to separate surnames from "first" names in Chinese entry titles because the surname naturally occurs at the front. Romanization is standard Pinyin, without tone marks, which this encyclopedia employs not only for figures from the People's Republic of China, but also from Taiwan, Singapore and the Chinese diaspora. Hence, the likes of ...
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 ...