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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 ...
Woodring, Jim
(1952- ) American cartoonist, Comic book artist and author. Prone to hallucinations when young, Woodring dropped out of college and after a stint as a garbage collector joined Ruby-Spears Productions as an animator, working on such low-quality shows as Rubik the Amazing Cube (1983) (see Hanna-Barbera) and Turbo Teen (1984-1985), about a teenager who could transform into a sports car. ...
Dowding, Henry Wallace
(1867-1938) UK-born clergyman and author, in the US from 1889, most active in the 1920s. His sf novel, The Man from Mars, or Service, for Service's Sake (1910), is occupied for much of its length with its protagonist's search for a McGuffin document, but shifts in its later moments to be a long description, on the part of the protagonist's employer, of his time on Mars, which planet is small, quite close to Earth, and ...
Tintera, Amy
(? - ) US author of the Near Future Young Adult Dystopian Reboot sequence beginning with Reboot (2013), whose young protagonist, having died, is reborn with enhanced abilities but with a Zombie-like lack of affect, making her an ideal recruit in the repressive regime's army, except for a sudden love interest, and ...
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 ...