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.
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 ...
Puccetti, Roland
(1924-1995) US philosopher and author, long professionally involved in mind-body problems. He published several essays on the split-brain controversy, perhaps most accessibly in "Sperry on Consciousness: A Critical Appreciation" for The Journal of Medicine and Philosophy in 1977. Both of his novels deal, in their way, with the question. In The Death of the Führer (1972) Hitler's brain is transplanted into the body of a voluptuous woman, and "his" identity discovered, ...
Mitchell, J Leslie
(1901-1935) Scottish journalist and author, active from around 1917; too young for World War One, he spent a taxing aftermath decade (1919-1929) in active service; known also for nonfantastic Scottish novels written as by Lewis Grassic Gibbon and the nonfiction Scottish Scene; Or, the Intelligent Man's Guide to Albion (1934), also as by Gibbon, with Hugh MacDiarmid. Under his own name he wrote popular ...
Rowe, Christopher
(1969- ) US author, who began to publish work of genre interest with "Kin to Crows" in Realms of Fantasy for June 1998, assembled with other early work in Bittersweet Creek and Other Stories (coll 2003 chap). Most of his early work has been fantasy, including the Supernormal Sleuthing Service sequence beginning with The Lost Legacy (2017) with Gwenda Bond, who is his ...
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 ...