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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.
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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 ...
Anthony, Patricia
(1947-2013) US teacher and author who began publishing sf with "Blood Brothers" for Aboriginal, February/March 1987. Her first published – though fourth completed – novel, Cold Allies (1993), aroused considerable interest for its fast and sophisticated plotting; its hard-nosed liberal take on the moral quagmires that complicate human actions during a Near Future Lebensraum war – between the ...
St George, David
Joint pseudonym of UK author David Phillips (? - ) and Bulgarian engineer and author Georgi Markov, the latter in the UK from about 1971; his assassination in London at the hands of Bulgarian agents was admitted only in 1990 after the old government fell. In their spoofish Near Future Satire, The Right Honourable Chimpanzee (1978), a crisis-ridden UK ...
Jennings, Hargrave
(?1817-1890) UK author, who may have also written as by Sha Rocco, though it is much more likely that books under that name were by Abisha S Hudson (1819-1904). Jennings published some studies in the occult, most famously The Rosicrucians, their rites and mysteries; with chapters on the ancient fire- and serpent-worshippers (1870; several revised editions), and several miscellanies, these assembling essays in cultural criticism along with tales meant usually to illustrate his ...
Langford, David
(1953- ) UK author, critic, editor, publisher and sf fan, in the latter capacity recipient of 21 Hugo awards for fan writing – some of the best of his several hundred pieces are assembled as Let's Hear It for the Deaf Man (coll 1992 chap US; much exp vt The Silence of the Langford 1996; exp 2015 ebook) as Dave Langford, edited by Ben Yalow – plus five Best Fanzine Hugos ...