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Tuesday 21 April 2026
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Watson, Ian
(1943-2026) UK teacher and author who lectured in English in Tanzania (1965-1967) and Tokyo (1967-1970) before beginning to publish sf with "Roof Garden Under Saturn" for New Worlds in 1969; he then taught Future Studies for six years at Birmingham Polytechnic, taking there one of the first academic courses in sf in the UK; he became a full-time writer in 1976, publishing around 200 short stories since 1969 at a gradually increasing tempo and with visibly ...
Vairasse D'Alais, Denis
(circa 1635/1638-circa 1700) French soldier, linguist and author, the latter part of whose surname is sometimes given as Allais; in the UK for a number of years from around 1660 to 1772, when he returned to the Continent. He is of strong Proto SF interest for a complexly published Fantastic Voyage, its mode and contents showing the influence of Johann Valentin Andreae, ...
Churchill, Winston S
(1874-1965) UK politician and author, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1953; influential advocate of legalized Eugenics programmes, such as he (with others) expounded in the Mental Deficiency Act of 1912, with "deficiency" being defined in both medical and moral terms. His only novel, Savrola: A Tale of the Revolution in Laurania (May-December 1899 Macmillan's Magazine; 1900), is a ...
Luftpirat und sein Lenkbares Luftschiff, Der
["The Pirate of the Air and his Navigable Airship"] German Dime-Novel series, popularly known as Kapitän Mors der Luftpirat; it has no connection with a 1948 series of the same name. One of the most popular series of its day, its author or authors are unknown, but well-known writers like Oskar Hoffmann (1866-1928) may have been involved; and, since its adventures take place alternately on Earth and in space, it may have been written by two people. ...
Hall, Steven
(1975- ) UK author and Videogame writer who has scripted radio dramas for the Doctor Who franchise. His first novel, The Raw Shark Texts (2007), is a Fabulation whose central conceit is the notion of a sharklike conceptual predator that devours information and Memories. The protagonist Eric Sanderson awakens with near-total ...
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 ...