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Saturday 15 August 2026
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Crowley, John
(1942-2026) US teacher and author who also worked in documentary films and television for some time beginning in 1966. His sf novels have had a considerable impact on the field, and his fantasies established him as a figure whose work courteously but deeply stretched the boundaries of genre literature. / His first novel, The Deep (1975), is set on a flat discworld resting on a pillar that extends beyond measurement into the circumambient galactic Deep, in which very few stars ...
Thompson, Harriet Alfarata
(1871-1922) US author of Idealia: A Utopia Dream; Or, Resthaven (1922 chap), whose protagonist visits a Utopian community for the elderly and the indigent whose features are so exceptionally humane, and racial stresses so muted (Thompson was Black), that this domestic Pastoral could readily be understood as occupying an Alternate World. [JC]
Emshwiller, Peter R
(1959- ) US actor, illustrator and author, son of Carol Emshwiller and Ed Emshwiller, who has also worked as Stoney Emshwiller; of sf interest is his Near Future series of noir tales – The Host (1991) and Short Blade (1992) – set in a New York directly extrapolated (seemingly) from the ...
Grimsley, Jim
(1955- ) US playwright, academic and author some of whose plays have been assembled as Mr Universe: And Other Plays (coll 1998), which includes Math and Aftermath (first performed Seven Stages, Atlanta, Georgia, April 1988) and The Lizard of Tarsus (first performed Seven Stages, Atlanta, Georgia 31 January 1990). Other plays of sf interest include The Earthlings (first performed Seven Stages, Atlanta, Georgia, January 1984) and ...
Davis, Frederick C
(1902-1977) US author of pulp fiction, sometimes under pseudonyms, from 1922 or earlier. He published detective fiction in book form from the mid-1930s until the end of his active career in the late 1960s. His most interesting early work of sf interest – mainly through explanations of the one-way Moon-shaped glass helmet worn as a disguise by the crimebusting hero – was the Moon Man sequence, 39 novellas published from 1933 to 1937 in Ten Detective Aces. After the ...
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 ...