SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Sunday 18 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 14 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 ...
Huff, Tanya
(1957- ) Canadian author whose wife Fiona Patton (1962- ) writes fantasy exclusively. She began publishing work of genre interest with "What Little Girls are Made Of" for Magic in Ithkar 3 (anth 1986) edited by Robert Adams and Andre Norton. Most of her subsequent work has also been fantasy, beginning with the Novels of Crystal sequence comprising ...
Atiyah, Edward
(1903-1964) Lebanese-born author in the UK permanently from 1945; his study of Jewish-Arab conflicts in the Middle East, The Arabs (1955), supplied arguments utilized (sometimes ruthlessly) by all sides in the long tragedy. He is of sf interest for The Eagle Flies from England (1960), an Alternate History tale in which Napoleon's parents emigrate to Britain in 1769; their son – displaying military and political genius ...
Tallerman, David
(? - ) UK author who began to publish work of genre interest with "Stockholm Syndrome" in Pseudopod for July 2007. Most of his work has been horror, sometimes with a light touch (see Horror in SF), or fantasy, as in the Low Fantasy Tales of Easie Damasco sequence beginning with Giant Thief (2012) [for Low Fantasy see The ...
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 ...