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Friday 8 November 2024
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Hildebrandt, The Brothers
Working name for the team of American artists Gregory J Hildebrandt (1939-2024) and Timothy Mark Allen Hildebrandt (1939-2006), identical twin brothers, although they also worked separately using the working names Greg Hildebrandt and Tim Hildebrandt. They will forever be regarded primarily as the definitive illustrators of J R R Tolkien because of the famous Tolkien calendars that featured their paintings of his characters; oddly enough, except for one 1975 ...
Von der Passer, Arnold
Pseudonym of German architect and author Franz Ludwig (or Franz-Levy) Hoffmann (1851-1917). His sf novel, Mene Tekel!: Eine Entdeckungsreise nach Europe ["Mene Tekel!: A Journey of Discovery to Europe"] (1893), places a Future History of Europe from 1898 to 2398 within the frame of an expedition (see Fantastic Voyage) undertaken in the latter year by a team of Freilanders anxious to discover what has been ...
Sharecrop
A term almost certainly devised by Gardner Dozois in the late 1980s to designate a story or book which has been written on hire; that is, assigned to an author – who will not hold copyright in the piece that s/he writes – by a franchiser or the copyright owner of the concept being developed. To describe a text as sharecropped is in 1995 almost certainly to disparage it as commodity fiction, designed to fit a prearranged marketing slot and written ...
Perkins, Frederick B
(1828-1899) US librarian, editor and author, who often spelled his first name Frederic, and also wrote as by Pharaoh Budlong; father of Charlotte Perkins Gilman. President Greeley, President Hoffman, and the Resurrection of the Ring: A History of the Next Four Years ... Written in the Second Week of November, 1876 (dated 1876 but 1872 chap) as by Pharaoh Budlong is a spoof Future History describing ...
FTL
Initialism, often employed in sf Terminology, for Faster Than Light – as for example in FTL Spaceship. Fritz Leiber's use of the term in "The Enchanted Forest" (October 1950 Astounding) may be the first printed appearance. [DRL] see also: Sublight. /
Robinson, Roger
(1943- ) UK computer programmer, bibliographer and publisher, active in UK Fandom for many years. The Writings of Henry Kenneth Bulmer (1983 chap; rev 1984 chap) is an exhaustive Bibliography of one of the most prolific sf writers, Kenneth Bulmer, and Who's Hugh?: An SF Reader's Guide to Pseudonyms (1987) is similarly exhaustive in its ...