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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.
Site updated on 19 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 ...
Primal Scream
Film (1988; vt Hellfire UK). Manley. Directed by William J Murray. Written by Murray and David di Pietro (uncredited). Cast includes Stephen Caldwell, Sharon Mason, Jon Maurice, Kenneth McGregor, Julie Miller and Joseph White. 89 minutes. Colour. / In 1997 a revolutionary Power Source, the catalytic Element Hellfire, is a controversial issue. Terrorists destroy a Space Station ...
Reader, E E
(1847-1930) UK publisher's clerk and author of Priestess and Queen: A Tale of the White Race of Mexico: Being the Adventures of Ignigene and her Twenty-Six Fair Maidens (1899), a Prehistoric SF tale set in Mexico, during the time when a superior white civilization ruled the territory (see Race in SF). [JC]
Grass, Günter
(1927-2015) German artist, illustrator, sculptor and author, a significant creative and cultural voice in the long self-examination that the German world underwent (for cause) after World War Two; from the publication of his first novel, Die Blechtrommel (1959; trans Ralph Manheim as The Tin Drum 1962), he remained central to that interrogation, sometimes through the enraged and enraging mythopoesis of ...
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 ...