SF Encyclopedia Home Page
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.
Site updated on 19 January 2026
Sponsor of the day: Ted Chiang
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 ...
Hughes, Denis
(1917-2008) UK author who published some sf under his own name, but who wrote most of his paperback originals – principally for Curtis Warren – under a variety of pseudonyms. These included Marvin Ashton, Ray Barry, George Sheldon Brown, Dee Carter, John Lane, Grant Malcom [sic], G R Melde, Russell Rey and William Rogersohn, and the House Names Berl Cameron, Neil ...
Daniels, Keith Allen
(1956-2001) US poet, author and Small Press publisher whose first poem, "Denouement", appeared in Logos in 1974, and who published frequently and variously until his premature death, much of this work appearing in Anamnesis Press, which he founded in 1990, and thorough which he also published work by James Blish, Arthur C Clarke, Lord ...
Churchill, David
(? - ) UK author of Young Adult sf novels including It, Us, and the Others (1978), whose young protagonists discover an Alien underwater, and Not My World (1980). He may be the David Churchill credited with the teleplay for the 1986 four-part miniseries presentation of Mervyn Peake's Mr Pye (1953). [JC]
Clute, John
(1940- ) Canadian critic, editor and author, in the UK from 1969; married to Judith Clute from 1964, partner of Elizabeth Hand since 1996. He began to publish work of genre interest with an sf-tinged poem "Carcajou Lament" in Triquarterly for Winter 1960 [ie Autumn 1959]; he began consistently publishing sf reviews in his "New Fiction" column for the Toronto Star (1966-1967), and later in ...