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Saturday 24 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 ...
Phillips, Holly
(1969- ) Canadian author who began to publish work of genre interest with "No Such Thing As an Ex-Con" in On Spec for Summer 2000; much of her early work, not including this story, was assembled as In the Palace of Repose (coll 2005), most of the contents being best read as fantasy; a later collection, At the Edge of Waking (coll 2012), is fantasy. "The Other Grace", however, neatly ...
Karlsson, Ørjan Nordhus
(1970- ) Norwegian author of thrillers, murder mysteries, sf and fantasy juveniles. Karlsson's first contribution to the genre was the Marko Eldfell trilogy, comprising the novels Huset mellom natt og dag ["The House Between Night and Day"] (2014), Speilets bakside ["The Back Side of the Mirror"] (2016) and Den lengste dagen ["The Longest Day"] (2019). This action-filled story, set in a gloomy and ...
Terrornauts, The
Film (1967). Amicus Productions. Directed by Montgomery Tully. Written by John Brunner, based on the novel The Wailing Asteroid (1960) by Murray Leinster. Cast includes Charles Hawtrey, Patricia Hayes, Zena Marshall, Stanley Meadows and Simon Oates. 75 minutes. Colour. / The head of a project to use a radio telescope to listen for signs of intelligent life, Dr Joe Burke (Oates), is rewarded for his ...
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 ...