SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Monday 19 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 ...
Piskorski, Krzysztof
(1982- ) Polish author of Fantastika – in particular, of Fantasy, New Weird, Steampunk, and Alternate History – and game designer. He has twice won the Polish premier fantastika award, the Janusz A Zajdel Award for best novel. He has ...
Malec, Alexander
(1929-2014) US author, variously employed, who began publishing sf with "Project Inhumane" in The Colorado Quarterly for Spring 1964. Extrapolasis (coll 1967) assembles much of his sometimes awkward but frequently sharply pointed work, which was restricted to short stories, only one of which – "10.01 A. M." (March 1966 Analog), a Near Future tale about ...
9
1. US computer-animated short film (2005). UCLA Animation Workshop. Directed and written by Shane Acker. 11 minutes. Colour. / Two small Robots scavenge in a Post-Holocaust landscape: one has a 5 on its back, the other 9. Called "stitchpunks" by Acker, they resemble sack dolls but their internal organs are mechanical. A predatory robot catches 5 and sucks out their soul using an electronic device: later we see it ...
Nicholls, Peter
(1939-2018) Australian editor and author, primarily a critic and historian of sf through his creation and editing of The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction [see below]; resident in the UK 1970-1988, in Australia from 1988; worked as an academic in English literature (1962-1968, 1971-1977), scripted television documentaries, was a Harkness Fellow in Film-making (1968-1970) in the USA, worked as a publisher's editor (1982-1983), often broadcast film and book reviews on BBC Radio from 1974 and ...
