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Friday 16 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 14 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 ...
Pieczenik, Steve R
(1943- ) Cuban-born US author most of whose work of any genre interest has been contributed as Ties to the Tom Clancy's Net Force Shared World sequence of Near Future Technothrillers supervised by Tom Clancy, beginning with Net Force (1999) with Steve ...
Close Encounters of the Third Kind
Film (1977). Columbia. Directed by Steven Spielberg. Script credited to Spielberg but early draft actually written by Paul Schrader (1946- ), who disagreed with Spielberg over the treatment of his script and withdrew his name from the project. Cast includes Bob Balaban, Melinda Dillon, Richard Dreyfuss, Teri Garr, Cary Guffey and François Truffaut. 135 minutes. Colour. / After Star Wars ...
Barba, Harry
(1922-2007) US publisher and author of some nonfiction; his two sf books are a Satire, The Day The World Went Sane (coll 1979), and Round Trip to Byzantium (1985). He was believed to own Harian Creative Press. [JC]
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 ...