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Tuesday 22 April 2025
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Broderick, Damien
(1944-2025) Australian author, editor and critic; he had a PhD in the semiotics of fiction, science and sf with special reference to the work of Samuel R Delany. He edited four anthologies of Australian sf: The Zeitgeist Machine (anth 1977), Strange Attractors (anth 1985), Matilda at the Speed of Light (anth 1988) and Centaurus: The Best of Australian Science Fiction (anth ...
Cat from Outer Space, The
US film (1978). Walt Disney Productions (see The Walt Disney Company), Buena Vista Distribution. Directed by Norman Tokar. Written by Ted Key. Cast includes Ken Berry, Sandy Duncan, Roddy McDowall, Harry Morgan, William Prince and Ronnie Schell. 104 minutes. Colour. / Minor, light-hearted comedy in which a Cat (voiced by Schell) who is a spacefaring Alien ...
Stong, Phil
(1899-1957) US author and editor, author of the thrice-filmed State Fair (1932). His The Other Worlds (anth 1941; vt The Other Worlds: Twenty-five Modern Stories of Mystery and Imagination 1942) was the first important sf Anthology. Its twenty-five stories, about half sf and half horror, were mostly from the Pulp magazines, not previously regarded as a proper source of material (of sf at least) ...
Groundhog Day
Film (1993). Columbia. Directed and coproduced by Harold Ramis (1944-2014). Written by Danny Rubin and Ramis, based on a story by Rubin. Cast includes Chris Elliott, Marita Geraghty, Andie MacDowell, Bill Murray and Steven Tobolowsky. 101 minutes. Colour. / Phil Connors (Murray) is a cynical and unhappy television weatherman with no real future in store, dejected at having to cover for the fifth time the annual 2 February Groundhog Day ceremony in the small town of Punxsutawney, ...
Roshwald, Mordecai
(1921-2015) Polish-born academic and author, in Palestine/Israel 1934-1955, afterwards in the US. He is best known for his first sf novel, Level 7 (1959; text restored 2004), which is deeply coloured by political concern about our nuclear civilization. A military officer describes his feelings and duties from within a great Underground bomb shelter, 4000 feet below the world gradually being demolished above him as ...
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 ...