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Tuesday 8 October 2024
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Coover, Robert
(1932-2024) US author who established a considerable reputation with his novels, in which Fabulation and political scatology mix fruitfully. His work could be seen to represent a Postmodernist intensification of the same milieu excoriated by Richard Condon; at times both authors seem to be describing a nightmare dream of orgy-choked life in the Late Roman Empire (see ...
Lichtenberg, Jacqueline
(1942- ) US author who began publishing sf with "Operation High Time" for If in January 1969, but soon concentrated on fan fiction set in the Open Universe permitted by the owners of Star Trek; Star Trek Lives! (1975) with Sondra Marshak and Joan Winston is a famous nonfiction description of the early days of Star Trek fandom. Her ...
Barth, John
(1930-2024) US academic and author, one of the central fabulists (see Fabulation) of his generation of writers, noted for a sometimes relentless experimentalism, an inability or disinclination to seize upon the moment of story he famously articulated in "The Literature of Exhaustion" (August 1967 The Atlantic), where postmodern (see Postmodernism and SF) writers are presented as miming the genuine stories before ...
Hornblower in Space
Sea stories of the Napoleonic war era, especially the Horatio Hornblower sequence by C S Forester, have long appealed to sf fans. Obvious parallels with Spaceship voyages include the frail and crowded vessel in a lethal environment, an assumed need for tight naval discipline, and a profusion of technical Terminology. Walt Willis in his column "Fanorama" ...
Weatherhead, John
(? - ) UK author of Transplant (1969), a Near Future Dystopia whose citizens are controlled by the state, and are at risk of mandatory interference with their bodies through a mooted transplant Bill. [JC]
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 ...