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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 ...
House, Edward Mandell
(1858-1938) US political figure – in his refusal of official duties rather like an earlier Bernard Baruch (1870-1965) – involved with President Woodrow Wilson in setting up the League of Nations; his urgency about the USA's joining the League played some part in his dismissal in 1919 from Wilson's inner circle of advisors. Philip Dru, Administrator: A Story of Tomorrow, 1920-1935 (1912), published anonymously, is a surprisingly wide-ranging exercise in ...
BEM
A once common item of sf Terminology, being an acronym of Bug-Eyed Monster and referring to the type of Alien creature, usually menacing, which was regularly pictured on the covers of SF Magazines in the 1930s and 1940s. [PN] see also: Monsters. /
Lost Races
The lost-race sf theme goes hand in hand with that of the Lost World; there are few lost worlds, lands, continents, Islands, or regions Underground (see Hollow Earth) which do not come equipped with one or more indigenous races ripe for First Contact and perhaps displaying interesting quirks for the student 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 ...