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 ...
Nektar
UK progressive rock band, founded in Hamburg in 1969 and based thereafter in Germany. Their first album, Journey to the Centre of the Eye (1971) spins an only obliquely Verne-like premise in which an astronaut travels to another dimension from which he is able to witness the nuclear destruction of Earth. A Tab in the Ocean (1972) is an incoherently druggy suite of songs, this time premised on the idea of dropping an enormous "tab" of ...
Bowie, David
(1947-2016) UK musician and actor, latterly resident in the US. Born David Robert Jones, Bowie was one of the most successful and famous pop stars of the 1970s, known as much for his often sf-themed role-playing as for his talents as a singer-songwriter. After some early unmemorable releases Bowie broke through with the single "Space Oddity" (recorded quickly and released in July 1969 to cash in on the Moon landing); it reached #5 in the UK charts, and after a ...
Underwood, Tim
(1948- ) US publisher (see Underwood-Miller Inc), bibliographer of Jack Vance in Fantasy and Science Fiction by Jack Vance (1977 chap) with Chuck Miller and Fantasms: A Bibliography of the Literature of Jack Vance (1978 chap with Daniel J H Levack; rev vt ...
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 ...