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 ...
Stevenson, Burton
(1872-1962) US journalist, librarian, anthologist and author, some of whose work is of some interest, including The Gloved Hand (1913), whose supernatural elements are revealed to be stage machinery, and A King in Babylon (1917), a Lost Race tale. Of more direct sf interest is The Destroyer: A Tale of International Intrigue (1913), in which a French battleship is mysteriously destroyed through the ...
Pringle, Eric
(1935-2017) UK screenwriter and author connected in his earlier career with the Doctor Who universe, for which he wrote a Tie, Doctor Who – The Awakening (1985). Later he chiefly concentrated on Radio work, though his Big George sequence for younger children, beginning with Big George (2001), amusingly retells the legend of Saint George and the Dragon in sf terms, with a ...
Price, E Hoffmann
(1898-1988) US author whose career lasted 64 years. He served in World War One, graduated West Point in 1923, and began to publish weird fiction – the genre for which he is remembered – with "Triangle with Variations" in Droll Stories for June 1924. By the time he stopped writing for the Pulp magazines in the 1950s he had published hundreds of stories in dozens of outlets, sometimes as Hamlin Daly, and often drawing upon Oriental and near-Eastern ...
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 ...