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.
Site updated on 19 January 2026
Sponsor of the day: Ansible Editions
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 ...
Adventures of Captain Marvel
US Serial Film (1941). Republic Pictures. Directed by John English and William Witney. Associate producer: Hiram S Brown Jr. Written by Ronald Davidson, Norman S Hall, Arch B Heath, Joseph Poland and Sol Shor based on the Comics character Captain Marvel created by C C Beck and Bill Parker (both uncredited). Cast includes Frank Coghlan Jr, Nigel De Brulier, Gerald Mohr (voice, uncredited) and ...
Runyon, Charles W
(1928-2015) US author of thrillers and some sf, who began publishing the latter with "First Man in a Satellite" in Super-Science Fiction for December 1958; sixteen further short sf/fantasy stories followed, chiefly for The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. His first sf novel Pig World (1971) depicts a Near-Future USA governed by a right-wing tyranny challenged by a vicious would-be demagogue. ...
Rohmer, Richard H
(1924- ) Canadian soldier from 1942 until he retired with the rank of Major-General in 1978, lawyer and author; with some claim to being Canada's most decorated citizen; his novels almost invariably express a sense of fragile Paranoia about the political and economic prospects for his native land, thinly stretched as it is along the American border; more than once they involve an American ...
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 ...