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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
Sponsor of the day: Ted Chiang
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 ...
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 ...
Childerhose, R J Chick
(1928-2016) Canadian author whose non-sf books are usually bylined R J Childerhose. Of sf interest is The Man Who Wanted to Save Canada: A Prophetic Novel (1975), which plunges a protagonist from Western Canada into Near Future problems with Québécois secessionists and even more complicated intrigues in Washington, District of Columbia. His attempts to avoid something like an ...
Back to the Future
Film (1985). Amblin Entertainment/Universal. Directed by Robert Zemeckis, Steven Spielberg among the executive producers. Written by Zemeckis, Bob Gale. Cast includes Michael J Fox, Crispin Glover, Christopher Lloyd, Lea Thompson and Thomas F Wilson. 116 minutes. Colour. / One of the major sf hits of the 1980s, Back to the Future is a disarming, calculated and intelligent comedy about ...
Langford, David
(1953- ) UK author, critic, editor, publisher and sf fan, in the latter capacity recipient of 21 Hugo awards for fan writing – some of the best of his several hundred pieces are assembled as Let's Hear It for the Deaf Man (coll 1992 chap US; much exp vt The Silence of the Langford 1996; exp 2015 ebook) as Dave Langford, edited by Ben Yalow – plus five Best Fanzine Hugos ...