SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Saturday 24 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
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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 ...
To the Moon
Videogame (2011). Freebird Games. Designed by Kan Gao. Platforms: Win. / To the Moon is a graphical Adventure about Dream Hacking in which events are displayed from above in a forced three-dimensional perspective. Created in Canada as an Independent Game and set in the Near Future, its fiction depends on a ...
Relic, The
Film (1997). Cloud Nine Entertainment and PolyGram Filmed Entertainment, Marubeni Corporation, Toho-Towa, Tele München Fernseh Produktionsgesellschaft, Pacific Western Productions and the BBC present in association with Paramount Pictures. Directed by Hyams. Producers include Gale Anne Hurd and Sam Mercer. Written by Rick Jaffa, Amy Holden Jones, John Raffo and Amanda Silver, based on Relic (1995) by ...
Rubinstein, Gillian
(1942- ) UK-born author in Australia from 1973, initially of Young Adult sf under her own name, as well as tales for younger children; in the twenty-first century she has perhaps become best known for fantasies as by Lian Hearn. The Space Demons sequence comprising Space Demons (1986) and Skymaze (1989) deals with AI in interactive Computer games (see ...
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 ...