SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Thursday 22 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.
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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 ...
Penny, Laurie
(1986- ) UK author who began to publish work of genre interest with "Making Babies" in Terraform [online] for 13 April 2015; in her sf novel, Everything Belongs to the Future (2016), is set in a Near Future Britain, most of whose inhabitants have been comprehensively immiserated by the very rich, the 1% have access to an Immortality Drug, though the protagonist ...
Maynard, William Patrick
(1971- ) US author who has written extensively about Sax Rohmer and his notorious Yellow Peril character Fu Manchu. He began to publish work of genre interest with the authorized Sequel by Another Hand The Terror of Fu Manchu (2009), following this novel with The Destiny of Fu Manchu (2012). Relatively ...
Gill, Judy
(1942- ) Canadian author, almost all of whose books are nonfantastic romances under her full name, Judy Griffith Gill. Of sf interest is Whispers on the Wind (2001), a romantic Space Opera tale whose protagonist, member of a Alien Telepathic Pariah Elite trapped on Earth, must liaise with a human female in order to find his way back ...
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 ...