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 ...
Pohle, Robert W, Jr
(1949- ) US author of a Space Opera, Doom of Three Planets (1978), and of a study of the actor Christopher Lee (1922-2015), The Films of Christopher Lee (1983) with Douglas C Hart. The latter is long out of date. [JC]
Hayes, Frederick William
(1848-1918) UK architect, painter, playwright and author whose Utopia, The Great Revolution of 1905, or The Story of the Phalanx: With an Introductory Account of Civilisation in Great Britain at the Close of the Nineteenth Century (1893; vt State Industrialism: The Story of the Phalanx; With an Account of Civilization in Great Britain at the Close of the Nineteenth Century 1894), describes from a 1930s perspective the successful efforts of ...
Gillet, A F
(1861-? ) US inventor, who held some patents for agricultural tools, and author of an sf novel for boys, Titan and Volcan [for subtitle see Checklist below] (1933), whose two protagonists discover a floating Island named Volcan which is inhabited by a miniature Lost Race (see Great and Small); they boast advanced Technology and a humane ...
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 ...