SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Tuesday 20 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
Sponsor of the day: Andy Richards of Cold Tonnage Books
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 ...
Hescox, Richard
(1949- ) US illustrator who, between 1976 and 1993, painted some 135 covers for sf and fantasy books, and who thereafter has devoted his artistic endeavours to the Games industry and to private works. / Hescox received his formal art education at Citrus Junior College, Glendora, California, and more significantly at the Art Center College of Design in Los Angeles, California, where he took Fine Arts as a major. Even while still there he began ...
Thompson, Kate
(1956- ) UK-born author, daughter of E P Thompson, in Ireland from 1981, mostly of books for younger readers and the Young Adult market. Most of her work is fantasy (a selection only is listed below), but she is of sf interest for the Missing Link sequence comprising The Missing Link (2000; vt Fourth World 2005), Only Human (2001) and Origins ...
Froese, Robert
(1945- ) US academic and author whose sf novel, The Hour of Blue (1990), presents the strangely consoling notion that Gaia herself is beginning to respond defensively to humanity's rape of the planet, and that the (surviving) forests in Maine (Froese himself teaches at the University of Maine, Machias) are protectively transforming themselves. [JC]
Clute, John
(1940- ) Canadian critic, editor and author, in the UK from 1969; married to Judith Clute from 1964, partner of Elizabeth Hand since 1996. He began to publish work of genre interest with an sf-tinged poem "Carcajou Lament" in Triquarterly for Winter 1960 [ie Autumn 1959]; he began consistently publishing sf reviews in his "New Fiction" column for the Toronto Star (1966-1967), and later in ...