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Saturday 31 October 2026
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Site updated on 26 October 2026
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Rivas, Manuel Antonio de
(circa 1707-? ) Mexican Franciscan friar and author of one Proto SF short story. In his time, his surname could also be written Ribas. The only biographical information Rivas appears in depositions opened against him by the Inquisition of New Spain (see Mexico) between 1773 and 1778. It seems probable that he was born in New Spain at the beginning of the eighteenth century, because in a 1777 letter he declared ...
Mercier, Lewis Page
(1820-1875) UK minister, schoolmaster and translator, signing as Mercier Lewis and Louis Mercier; it has been surmised that a combination of career and financial difficulties forced him into the translation trade, and these pressures plus ill health may explain the occasional shoddiness of (and frequent cuts to) his translations of Jules Verne novels; the frequency with which they were reprinted remains anomalous. The degree to which his translations were ...
Rios, Julia
(? - ) US writer and editor much involved in various podcasts starting with Outer Alliance which she hosted from 2010 to 2015. As well as currently co-hosting The Skiffy and Fanty Show podcast she has acted as a narrator for this and other online magazines. Between 2012 and 2015 she was senior fiction editor at Strange Horizons; from 2014 the poetry and reprints editor for the equally highly-regarded ...
Van Vorst, Bessie McGinnis
(1873-1928) US social reformer and author, mostly in France from around 1900, who usually wrote as Mrs John Van Vorst, but also as by Esther Kelly; her early nonfiction was mostly written in collaboration with her sister-in-law Marie Louise Van Vorst (1867-1936). She is of some sf interest for Magda Queen of Sheba: From the Ancient Royal Abyssinian Manuscript [for full title see Checklist below] (1907) as Mrs John Van Vorst, a Lost Race tale set in ...
Giant Spider Invasion, The
Film (1975). Group 75/Transcentury. Directed by Bill Rebane. Written by Robert Easton, Richard L Huff. Cast includes Steve Brodie, Alan Hale, Barbara Hale and Leslie Parrish. 76 minutes. Colour. / Noted by one critic, Michael Weldon, as the Monster Movie with the worst special effects since The Giant Claw (1957), this is fondly remembered as the one where the giant Spider ...
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 ...