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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.
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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 ...
Murder in a Blue World
Spanish film (1973; original title Una gota de sangre para morir amando ["A Drop of Blood to Die Loving"]; vt To Love, Perhaps to Die, 1975; Clockwork Terror, 1986). José Frade Producciones / Cinematográficas S.A. / Intercontinental Productions. Directed by Eloy de la Iglesia. Written by Eloy de la Iglesia, José Luis Garci, Antonio Fons, Antonio Artero and George Lebourg. Cast includes Sue Lyon, ...
Disney on Television
Aside from a one-off special in 1950 to promote Alice in Wonderland (1951), the Walt Disney Company's involvement with Television was initially to fund and advertise Disneyland – whose opening ceremony would be broadcast on ABC, watched by 70 million people. ABC had helped fund the park in return for a television series, Walt Disney's Disneyland (1954-1958), which was followed by ...
Big Pull, The
UK tv serial (1962). BBC. Producer Terence Dudley. Written Robert Gould. Cast includes William Dexter, Susan Purdie, June Tobin and Frederick Treves. Six 30-minute episodes. Black and white. / This fondly remembered thriller about alien Invasion, quite generously budgeted, has an astronaut returning to Earth after contamination by something strange in the Van Allen belts. There follow a series of strange "fusions" in which pairs of humans, one "dead" and ...
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 ...