SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Friday 23 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 ...
Rosenblum, Mary
(1952-2018) US medical researcher and author who wrote mysteries as by Mary Freeman. She began publishing sf with "For a Price" in Asimov's for June 1990. Her first three novels explore various reaches of the contemporary sf landscape, though her favoured venue remains the American West. The Drylands (1993; exp vt as coll Water Rites 2007), which is derived from several stories but does not duplicate earlier material, posits a ...
Brinig, Myron
(1896-1991) US author in various genres – his linked tales, Singermann (1929) and This Man Is My Brother (1932; vt Sons of Singermann 1932), present perhaps the first non-stigmatizing portrayal of a gay protagonist in American literature. In his early Los Angeles (see California) sf novel, The Flutter of an Eyelid (1933), an opportunistic revivalist, seemingly based on Aimee Semple McPherson ...
Shelton, William R
(1919-2001) US author who began to publish work of genre interest with "Moon Crazy" in The Saturday Evening Post for June 1949, and who wrote a number of nonfiction books about the American and Soviet space programmes, and related matters; Countdown (1960), grippingly told, is typical. Of specific sf interest is the Near Future Stowaway to the Moon: The Camelot Odyssey (1973), a ...
Robinson, Roger
(1943- ) UK computer programmer, bibliographer and publisher, active in UK Fandom for many years. The Writings of Henry Kenneth Bulmer (1983 chap; rev 1984 chap) is an exhaustive Bibliography of one of the most prolific sf writers, Kenneth Bulmer, and Who's Hugh?: An SF Reader's Guide to Pseudonyms (1987) is similarly exhaustive in its ...