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Tuesday 28 March 2023
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Brown, Eric
(1960-2023) UK author who began publishing sf – after a children's play, Noel's Ark (1982 chap) – with "Krash-Bangg Joe and the Pineal-Zen Equation" for Interzone in Autumn 1987; like several further tales assembled in The Time-Lapsed Man and Other Stories (coll 1990), it is set in a future world dominated by the effects of bio-engineering and dense with information. This marriage of Cordwainer ...
ALF
US tv series (1986-1990). Warner Bros TV for NBC. Created by Paul Fusco and Ed Weinberger. Produced by Tom Patchett. Writers include Fusco, Patchett. Directors include Fusco, Patchett, Peter Bonerz. 25 minutes per episode. Colour. / ALF, an "alien life form" – in the line of extraterrestrial descent from My Favorite Martian and Mork in Mork & Mindy, though also influenced heavily by ...
Pedler, Kit
Working name of UK author and scientist Christopher Magnus Howard Pedler (1927-1981). He was a medical doctor, practising from 1953 for about three years, after which he began the research into the experimental pathology of eye disease that resulted in a second doctorate; from his early years he was a passionate advocate for the proper conservation of the planet. In collaboration with Gerry Davis he created the menacing Cybermen for the ...
Kirkbride, John
(? - ) UK author, not to be confused with the UK singer-songwriter John Kirkbride (1946- ); his Young Adult novel, Life on Urth (1994), carries its young protagonists to a Parallel World that turns out to be a comic Parody of Earth. Adventures accumulate winningly from this point. [JC]
MacDougal, John
Collaborative pseudonym of James Blish and Robert A W Lowndes on "Chaos, Co-ordinated" (October 1946 Astounding), a story which makes comic science-fictional use of Lewis Carroll's The Hunting of the Snark: An Agony, in Eight Fits (1876 chap). [PN/DRL] links / ...
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 ...