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 ...
Stallman, Robert
(1930-1980) Literary critic, professor of English at Western Michigan University, and author of the Book of the Beast trilogy, the last two books of which were published posthumously: The Orphan (1980), The Captive (1981) and The Beast (1982; vt The Book of the Beast 1982). The books are complex, sensitively written Fabulations, fitting between the generic borders of sf and ...
Hope, Christopher
(1944- ) South African poet and author, active from around 1970; in UK and France from 1975. He is of sf interest primarily for his Satirical portrayals of South Africa, a land riven from his point of view by aspirations and betrayals. His first novel, the nonfantastic A Separate Development (1980), anatomizes the post-Apartheid world through the picaresque life of its troubled protagonist. His second novel, Kruger's Alp ...
Kirkham, Nellie
(1897-1979) Birth name, used for all her writing, of the UK author whose married name from 1928 was Mrs James H D Myatt. Her sf novel, Unrest of Their Time (1938), utilizes the Time theories of J W Dunne – specifically his argument that time can be comprehended as a palimpsest of closely compressed spirals, and that different periods can be accessed by crossing over to an earlier or strand (see ...
Nicholls, Peter
(1939-2018) Australian editor and author, primarily a critic and historian of sf through his creation and editing of The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction [see below]; resident in the UK 1970-1988, in Australia from 1988; worked as an academic in English literature (1962-1968, 1971-1977), scripted television documentaries, was a Harkness Fellow in Film-making (1968-1970) in the USA, worked as a publisher's editor (1982-1983), often broadcast film and book reviews on BBC Radio from 1974 and ...