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Wednesday 14 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 ...
Byrd, Bob
(? - ) US author of a Tarzan pastiche, Ka-Zar, King of Fang and Claw (October 1936 Ka-Zar as "King of Fang and Claw"; 1937), in which young David Rand, orphaned after a plane crash in Africa, becomes the lord of the jungle, calling himself Ka-Zar. Two sequels followed, "Roar of the Jungle" (January 1937 Ka-Zar) and "The Lost Empire" (June 1937 ...
Calderon, George
(1868-1915) UK playwright, linguistic scholar, illustrator, translator and author, son of the Pre-Raphaelite painter Philip Hermogenes Calderon (1833-1898); perhaps best known for his advocacy of the plays of Anton Chekhov, several of which he produced in his own translations, some of these later published. He died on active service in World War One, aged 46. The Adventures of Downy V Green, Rhodes Scholar at Oxford (1902) is a Fantasy of Manners ...
Niall, Ian
Pseudonym of Scottish author John McNeillie (1916-2002), most famous for the nonfiction The Poacher's Handbook (1950). His sf novel, The Boy Who Saw Tomorrow (1952), offers a quiet portrait of the effect on a small village of a young lad's Predictions of the Near Future. [JC]
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 ...