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Thursday 16 January 2025
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Hawthorne, Julian
(1846-1934) US author, journalist and anthologist, the son of Nathaniel Hawthorne, of whom he wrote a biography, and father of writer Hildegarde Hawthorne (1871-1952). Julian forever lived in the shadow of his father and never mustered even a fraction of Nathaniel's reputation; indeed he sullied the family name when he became inadvertently involved in a speculation fraud in 1908 which made others rich and put him in gaol for a few months in 1913. In a ...
Phillips, Tony
A House Name used for the Turbo Cowboys sequence of Post-Holocaust tales for Ballantine Books. Designed for the Young Adult market, the series – which begins with Turbo Cowboys #1: Jump Start (1988) and ends with Turbo Cowboys #10: City of Glass (1990) – emphasizes the proactive friendship among the four young ...
Ultimate Warrior, The
Film (1975). Warner Bros. Written and directed by Robert Clouse. Cast includes Yul Brynner, Joanna Miles, William Smith and Max von Sydow. 92 minutes. Colour. / New York in 2022 CE is in an advanced state of decay after a man-made biological catastrophe that occurred decades earlier. The leader of a group who have barricaded a street against gangs of thugs roaming outside hires the services of a super-Samurai (Brynner). This was promoted as the first Kung ...
Nogaret, François-Félix
(1740-1831) French bureaucrat and author, intermittently prolific from around 1770 to 1830; he is of sf interest for Le Miroir des événements actuels, ou la belle au plus offrant, Histoire à deux visages ["The Mirror of Present Events, or, Beauty to the Highest Bidder: A Two-Faced Tale"] [for various versions see Checklist below] (1790 chap; trans Brian Stableford as "The Mirror of Present Events; Or, Beauty to the ...
Orton, Hugh
(? -? ) UK author of fiction for boys, seemingly active only in the mid-1920s; The King of Chaos (10 May-12 July 1924 Pluck as "Fangs of the Unknown"; 1927 chap), set in a 1950 Future War, pits a lad against a Villain who threatens Britain. [JC/RR] see also: Boys' Friend Library; Boys' Papers. / ...
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 ...