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Thursday 6 October 2022
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Lockhart-Ross, H S
(1856-1935) UK author of Hamtura: A Tale of an Unknown Land (1892), set in a Lost World Archipelago in the South Pacific, where two lost races are at war with each other. His surname has also been given as simply Ross. [JC]
Dennis, Geoffrey
(1892-1963) UK author whose fantasy Harvest in Poland (1925; rev 1931) bases its augurs of a grim future for Europe on the decay of civilization demonstrated by the horrors of World War One, in which he served. The Devil and X Y Z (1931) with Hilary Aidan St George Saunders, writing together as Barum Browne [for Saunders see Francis Beeding], is a supernatural thriller featuring, as does its predecessor, battles against diabolic possession. The End of the World (1930), despite its sf-like ...
Legendary Stardust Cowboy, The
US singer-songwriter, born Norman Carl Odam (1947- ). Known to fans as "the Ledge", the Legendary Stardust Cowboy divides listeners into those who find his idiosyncratic and sporadic recordings to be nothing more than novelty records, and those who think very highly of his left-field, peculiar and space-travel-obsessed imagination. In the latter category is David Bowie, who has covered Legendary Stardust Cowboy songs on his own recordings. Tracks such as "I Took a Trip ...
Harris, MacDonald
Pseudonym used by US academic and author Donald William Heiney (1921-1993) for most of his fiction from 1947 on; though composed in a smooth and accessible style, his novels (all as by Harris) tend significantly and non-mimetically to foreground any elements of fantasy (see Fabulation) with which they may deal. Bull Fire (1973) treats a modern family romance in terms of the myth of the Minotaur. The Balloonist (1976) recounts a failed 1897 Balloon expedition to the North Pole in terms ...
Mister X
Created by Canadian designers Dean Motter and Paul Rivoche, this cipherlike character – bald and with sunglasses, black overcoat and suitcase – appeared in illustrations and on record-album covers in the late 1970s before plans were made to publish a comic. The Mister X comic was promoted with several gorgeously designed posters 1981-1983 without in fact appearing. Eventually Rivoche was taken off the strip and the project was handed over to Jaime, Gilbert and Mario Hernandez, 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 reviews on BBC Radio from 1974 and ...