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Thursday 10 July 2025
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Barrett, Geoffrey John
(1928-1999) UK author who also published thrillers as Cole Rickard and Westerns as Bill Wade; his sf novels, written for Robert Hale Limited under his own name and as Edward Leighton, Dennis Summers and James Wallace, are consistently routine; as there seems to have been no intrinsic reason for selecting these different names, Barrett's sf is listed below as a single chronology. [JC]
van Lorne, Warner
Pseudonym of US author Nelson Tremaine (1907-1971), author under that name of a number of stories in Astounding Science-Fiction from July 1935 to January 1939, plus "Wanted: 7 Fearless Engineers!" (February 1939 Amazing). "The Blue-Men of Yrano" (January 1939 Astounding) is probably the best remembered. His brother, F Orlin Tremaine, wrote at least one van Lorne story. [MJE]
Matinee
Film (1993). Universal. Directed by Joe Dante, screenplay Charlie Haas from a story by Jerico and Charlie Haas. Cast includes Simon Fenton, John Goodman, Lisa Jakub, Omri Katz and Cathy Moriarty. 99 minutes. Colour. / Not so much an sf movie as a movie giving a cultural critique of sf movies. The setting is Key West, Florida, during the 1962 Cuban missile crisis, when nuclear war for a time seemed imminent. Teenager Gene Loomis (Fenton) is new in town, ...
Meik, Vivian
(1894-1955) Indian-born engineer and author, in active service during World War One, during which he was wounded at least once; in UK during his adult life until 1947, then in USA. The Geoffrey Aylett sequence beginning with Devils' Drums (coll of linked stories 1933) is primarily supernatural, with an occult tinge, though verging at point into Horror in SF. His only singleton, ...
Griffith, George
Pseudonym of UK traveller, journalist, poet and author born George Chetwynd Griffith-Jones (1857-1906), the son of a clergyman and one of the most influential sf writers of his time; active as a poet in the 1880s, his first book being Poems (coll 1883 chap) as by Lara; he legally became George Griffith in 1894. He appeared frequently in the pre-sf Magazines and Pulp magazines, particularly ...
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 ...