SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Tuesday 20 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
Sponsor of the day: Andy Richards of Cold Tonnage Books
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 ...
Willeford, Charles
(1919-1988) US soldier – much decorated in World War Two – and author, best known for noir crime thrillers like The Burnt Orange Heresy (1971) and for the equally dark police thrillers in the Miami-based Hoke Moseley series, most famously the first title in the sequence, Miami Blues (1984). In a prefiguration of the surreal juxtapositions examined in his work, Willeford's first novel, High Priest of California (1953), was bound with a ...
Endō Akinori
(1959- ) Japanese scenarist and novelist, sometimes using the pseudonym Meigo Endō, who toiled throughout the 1980s and 1990s on Anime scripts and Ties, before finding some respite and creative freedom out of the field. / Endo's earliest credited script work included stints on Mecha shows, such as Chōriki Robo Galatt ["Super-Powered Robo Galatt"] ...
Southland Tales
Film (2007). Universal Pictures and Cherry Road Films present a Cherry Road Films/Darko Entertainment and MHF Zweite Academy Film production in association with Inferno Distribution and Eden Roc Productions with Persistent Entertainment. Written and directed by Richard Kelly. Cast includes Sarah Michelle Gellar, Dwayne Johnson, Christopher Lambert, Jon Lovitz, Mandy Moore, Miranda Richardson, Seann William Scott and Justin Timberlake. 145 minutes. ...
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 ...