SF&F encyclopedia (N-N)NABOKOV, VLADIMIR (1899-1977) Russian-born US novelist, poet, translator and entomologist. Raised in Russia until the Revolution, and then educated at Cambridge, he lived between the wars in Germany and France, emigrated to the USA in 1940 - at which point he began to write in English rather than Russian - and from 1959 lived in Switzerland. His first books of poetry date from the teens of the century, his first novel from 1926, though he came to world fame only after the publication, many books later, of Lolita (1955 France). Several of his novels can be read precariously in terms of their fantasy or sf elements - including Korol', Dama, Valet (1928 Germany; trans Dmitri Nabokov and VN as King, Queen, Knave 1968 US), which features automata; the afterlife fantasy Soglyadatay (1930 France; trans Dmitri Nabokov and VN as The Eye 1965 US); Priglashenie na kasn' (1938 France; trans Dmitri Nabokov and VN as Invitation to a Beheading 1959 US), a fable which ends in a state beyond death; the DYSTOPIA Bend Sinister (1947); and Pale Fire (1962 US), which transforms RURITANIAN manias into deeply intricate parable. But VN's FABULATIONS tend to an austere self-referentiality, and are not easily pigeonholed. (It has also been suggested that all VN's novels from Pnin [1957] to Transparent Things [1972] contain attempts at communication from dead characters to the living.)Nevertheless Izobretenie Val'sa (1938 France; rev text trans Dmitri Nabokov as The Waltz Invention 1966 US) is a genuine sf play; its eponymous protagonist, having invented a kind of atomic device, demands to rule his country or he will cause apocalypse. Some of the stories assembled in Nabokov's Dozen (coll 1958) as well as "Poseshchenie muzeya (1939; trans as "The Visit to the Museum" 1963) and "The Vane Sisters" (1959), both found in Nabokov's Quartet (coll 1966 US), and "Lance" (1952), found in Nabokov's Congeries (coll 1968 US), are of sf or fantasy interest. Ada, or Ardor: A Family Chronicle (1969 US) has likewise been treated as sf, though perhaps not fruitfully. Certainly Ada depicts an ALTERNATE WORLD, whether or not this Anti-Terra has been created by protagonist Van Veen as a counterpoint to and justification of incest; the book can therefore be read with some interest for its rendering of sf elements, though the novel itself comprises much, much more. However individual texts might be defined, VN was concerned in all his work to shape versions of the creative act. The materials he used were subjunctive to the shaping, not vice versa, as in sf. [JC]"See also: HISTORY OF SF; OULIPO. NAHA, ED (1950- ) US writer and journalist, at one time the Los Angeles-based movie correspondent for the New York Post; since July 1986 he has run the regular movie and tv Nahallywood column in SF CHRONICLE. His nonfiction books, aimed at a popular market, include: Horrors - From Screen to Scream (1975); The Science Fictionary: An A-Z Guide to the World of SF Authors, Films and TV Shows (1980), a small, selective encyclopedia that is reliable if brief on film and tv, but devotes far too little space to authors; The Films of Roger Corman: Brilliance on a Budget (1982); and The Making of Dune (1984).EN's first sf novel was The Paradise Plot (1980), a humorous mystery novel set on a SPACE HABITAT at Lagrange 5 ( LAGRANGE POINT); the sequel was The Suicide Plague (1982). In 1984, as D.B. DRUMM (which may be a house name), he began writing the Traveler sequence of SURVIVALIST FICTION set in a depleted post- HOLOCAUST USA: #1: First, You Fight (1984), #2: Kingdom Come (1984), #3: The Stalkers (1984), #4: To Kill A Shadow (1984), #5: Road War (1985), #6: Border War (1985), #7: The Road Ghost (1985), #8: Terminal Road (1986), #9: The Stalking Time (1986), #10: Hell on Earth (1986), #11: The Children's Crusade (1987), #12: The Prey (1987) and #13: Ghost Dancers (1987). The first of these is definitely by Naha, but most subsequent numbers are thought to be the work of John SHIRLEY.EN has also written 3 film novelizations - Robocop * (1987), Ghostbusters II * (1989) and Robocop 2 * (1990) - and 2 horror novels, Breakdown (1988) and Orphans (1989). [PN] NANKAI NO DAIKETTO GOJIRA. NANOTECHNOLOGY Item of terminology borrowed by sf writers from theoreticians of future TECHNOLOGY, and quite popular in sf from the late 1980s. It seems to have been first used by K. Eric Drexler in 1976, and popularized by him in his book on the subject, Engines of Creation (1987).Nanotechnology - the term loosely combines "nano", the SI (metric system) prefix denoting 10(-9), with "technology" - means the technology of the very small indeed. The term microtechnology encompasses MACHINES of the order of a micrometre across; nanotechnology envisages machines very much smaller than that, perhaps of molecular size. Indeed, its working components would be atoms; the nanomachine might be like "motorized DNA". Drexler called these theoretical tiny machines "assemblers". As to the uses of these molecule-size ROBOTS, there is little that cannot be imagined: scraping fatty deposits from the insides of hardened arteries, brain surgery on individual neurons, food-making, ore-mining . . . The suggestions have been endless. Assemblers would be of a size small enough to conduct the most delicate operations within human cells - although Kim Stanley ROBINSON has suggested it might be better to image, rather than tiny medics, 10 million molecule-sized steamrollers charging up one's capillaries to perform brain surgery. Assemblers would also necessarily be capable of self-replication, which raises two questions: could they be considered a lifeform?; and could they get out of control, self-replicating until all available building materials were used up? Their number would increase exponentially: if a single assembler took 15 minutes to double, then at the end of 10 hours of doubling there would be 68 billion of them, and in just over 2 days the assemblage would outmass the Sun.Whether or not their construction is a realistic prospect is another question. Certainly it has been much discussed, and a number of laboratories have worked on some of the preliminary problems. The scanning tunnelling microscope, developed at the IBM laboratories in Zurich, has been used (April 1990) to manipulate individual atoms - even, in an episode of startling chutzpah, spelling out (using 35 xenon atoms) the IBM logo. Now that we have reached the stage of manipulating individual atoms, perhaps the construction of molecule-machines is not so impossible after all, though it is still a long way from achievement. Nevertheless, preliminary designs are already under way in the real world. A lively account of the development of theories about nanotechnology can be found in Great Mambo Chicken and the Transhuman Condition (1990) by Ed Regis.The concept of nanotechnology, not always named as such, appears regularly in 1990s sf. One of the most distinguished works to which it is fundamental is Queen of Angels (1990) by Greg BEAR. The intelligent briefcase around whose actions and fate Michael SWANWICK's eccentric tale STATIONS OF THE TIDE (1991) pivots is, according to his acknowledgements, a work of "nanotechnics". Perhaps more significant is the number of HARD-SF works in which the existence of nanotechnology is merely taken for granted, forming part of the overall background of futuristic technology. [PN] NANOVIC, JOHN L(EONARD) (1906- ). US editor and writer, associated with STREET & SMITH, for whom he edited The Shadow from 1932 to 1943. He was also involved in developing the figure of Doc Savage for the firm, writing the initial treatment which was published, long afterwards, as Doc Savage, The Supreme Adventurer (1980 chap), and editing the actual journal, DOC SAVAGE, from 1933 to 1943. He was responsible for the successful choice of Lester DENT as principal author of the series; Dent wrote most of the Doc Savage stories published under the Kenneth ROBESON housename (see this entry and the entry for the magazine itself for fuller details on the series). [JC] NATHAN, ROBERT (GRUNTAL) (1894-1985) US writer, author of over 40 novels from Peter Kindred (1919) to Heaven and Hell and the Megas Factor (1975), in which latter (as so often in his work) good and evil - in this case God and Satan - confer and put aside their differences, smilingly. Much of his fiction reflects a wistful, melancholy, sometimes satirical sense of fantasy; and it is perhaps ironic that he is best remembered for perhaps the harshest of his tales, Portrait of Jennie (1940), in which he uses J.W. DUNNE's time theories to frame the sentimental tale of a young girl not of this Earth whose love for a human artist reaches fruition only at the moment of her death. The Barly Fields (omni 1938) - which contains The Fiddler in Barly (1926), The Woodcutter's House (1927), The Bishop's Wife (1928) and its sequel There is Another Heaven (1929), and The Orchid (1931) - fairly represents the soft-edged work of his early years. Later came some Arthurian fantasies, including The Fair (1964), which sustains a sublimated elegiac tone in its depiction of a maiden's adventures there, and The Elixir (1971). The Mallott Diaries (1965) deals with Neanderthal survivals in Arizona, and The Summer Meadows (1973) movingly explores the nature of love in a fantasy quest for significant and telling moments in its protagonists' lives. Of direct sf interest is The Weans (1956 Harper's Magazine as "Digging the Weans"; 1960 chap), a satirical archaeological report on the long-destroyed US civilization. RN's reputation is submerged at present, but on revaluation he may be seen as a significant creator of humanistic fantasy. [JC]Other works: Jonah (1925; vt Son of Ammitai 1925 UK; vt Jonah, or The Withering Vine 1934 US); Road of Ages (1935), an unusual political fantasy in which the Jews are sent into a new Exile; The Enchanted Voyage (1936); Journey of Tapiola (1938) and Tapiola's Brave Regiment (1941), assembled as The Adventures of Tapiola (omni 1950); They Went on Together (1941); The Sea-Gull Cry (1942); But Gently Day (1943); Mr Whittle and the Morning Star (1947); The River Journey (1949); The Married Look (1950; vt His Wife's Young Face 1951 UK); The Innocent Eve (1951), which is assembled in Nathan 3 (omni 1952) along with The River Journey and the associational The Sea-Gull Cry (1952); The Train in the Meadow (1953), an afterlife fantasy; Sir Henry (1955);The Rancho of the Little Loves (1956); So Love Returns (1958); The Wilderness Stone (1961); The Devil with Love (1963); Stonecliff (1967); Mia (1970).About the author: Robert Nathan: A Bibliography (1960 chap) by Dan H. Laurence.See also: The MAGAZINE OF FANTASY AND SCIENCE FICTION ; TIME TRAVEL. NATION, TERRY (1930- ) UK screenwriter involved in the inception of the long-running BBC TELEVISION series DR WHO; he created in 1963 its most famous villains, the DALEKS, the story of which he subsequently told in The Official Doctor Who and the Daleks Book (1988) with John Peel, the relevant episodes appearing as Doctor Who: The Scripts: The Daleks * (coll 1989) with John McElroy. In 1975 TN created a post- HOLOCAUST series, SURVIVORS, also for BBC TV, which rather unsuccessfully attempted to capture on tv the flavour of the English DISASTER novel; his novelization is The Survivors * (1976). Rebecca's World (1975), illustrated with bravura by Larry Learmonth, is a fable for young children about ECOLOGY. In 1978 TN created a further sf series for tv, BLAKE'S SEVEN; he wrote all 13 episodes of this SPACE OPERA's 1st season as well as 6 later episodes, but by the time of its weak 4th (and last) season in 1981 his association with it had ceased. [JC/PN] NATIONAL AMATEUR PRESS ASSOCIATION APA. NATIONAL FANTASY FAN FEDERATION N3F. NAYLOR, GRANT Joint pseudonym of UK scriptwriters and authors Rob Grant and Doug Naylor, who worked for 3 years as head writers for Spitting Image, a satirical tv series using a combination of puppets and live action, and who wrote the RED DWARF tv series, which weds black humour and SPACE OPERA; some of the scripts have been published as Primordial Soup: Red Dwarf Scripts (coll 1993). As GN they have published 2 novelizations: Red Dwarf: Infinity Welcomes Careful Drivers * (1989) and Better than Life * (1990), both assembled, with additional material, as Red Dwarf Omnibus (omni 1992). [JC] NAZI NOVEL Little did Norman Spinrad know that he was such an inspiring writer. His novel, The Iron Dream, was published in 1972, and the plot was not exactly realistic. It was set in an alternate universe where Hitler had emigrated to the United States as a young man, eventually becoming a pulp fiction writer. In Spinrad's book, Hitler ended up writing an SF novel called"Lord of the Swastika." Obviously the German authorities didn’t get the satire. Spinrad's book was banned in Germany in the early 1980s, under provisions of postwar anti-Nazi laws. NEAL, HARRY [s] Jerome BIXBY. NEANDERTHALS ANTHROPOLOGY and especially ORIGIN OF MAN for prehistoric romances; APES AND CAVEMEN for Neanderthal survivals. NEAR FUTURE Images of the near future in sf differ markedly from those of the FAR FUTURE in both content and attitude. The far future tends to be associated with notions of ultimate destiny, and is dominated by metaphors of senescence; its images display a world irrevocably transfigured. It is viewed from a detached viewpoint; the dominant mood is - paradoxically - one of nostalgia, because the far future, like the dead past, can be entered only imaginatively, and has meaning only in terms of its emotional resonances. The near future, by contrast, is a world which is imminently real - one of which we can have no definite knowledge, which exists only imaginatively and hypothetically, but which is nevertheless a world in which (or something like it) we may one day have to live, and towards which our present plans and ambitions must be directed. The fears and hopes reflected in our images of the near future are real, however overpessimistic or overoptimistic they may seem ( OPTIMISM AND PESSIMISM). In order to plan our lives we must all possess such images, and the fact that they are fictions does not mean that they are unimportant. Literary representations of the near future both reflect and nourish those images.Just as fictions of the far future could not emerge until there was an appreciation of the true timescale of the Earth and the forces involved in long-term change, so fictions dealing with the near future could not emerge until it was generally realized that an individual's lifetime might see changes of considerable import. An awareness that habits and strategies designed to deal with the past and the present might not be adequate to deal with one's personal future emerged rather more slowly than an awareness of the geological timescale, and was handicapped by a dogged ideative resistance. It is doubtful whether many people, even today, have really cultivated a genuine appreciation of the scope of the change that might overtake the world in the space of their own lifetimes. The difficulty of making such an adjustment was the subject of Alvin TOFFLER's bestselling work of popular FUTUROLOGY, Future Shock (1970).The near future is implicitly threatening; whatever innovations it produces must invalidate - however temporarily - the past experience on which our present consciousness is based. At a time when no one believed in the possibility of fundamental change, this threat was ineffective, not because innovations never occurred but because they were unanticipated and the processes producing them were unperceived. In today's world change is so rapid we cannot fail to perceive it, despite our most fervent efforts to ignore it. In such a historical situation it is easy to understand the popularity of dogmas of conservatism and conservationism, and the acuity of sensations of personal and social insecurity. It is also easy to understand the rapid growth of a literature which both reflects these anxieties and offers palliative reassurances.In much early futuristic fiction there is no trace of either near or far future in the senses outlined above; events take place in a disconnected, generalized imaginative space which is comprehensively distanced by its dating. Examples include the anonymous The Reign of King George VI 1900-1925 (1763), L.S. MERCIER's Memoirs of the Year Two Thousand Five Hundred (1771; trans 1772) and Jane LOUDON's The Mummy! A Tale of the 22nd Century (1827). The earliest near-future speculations are warnings about the consequences of specific political practices; I.F. CLARKE's bibliography, The Tale of the Future (3rd edn 1978), lists inter alia a 1644 pamphlet on the dangers of restoring the monarchy and an 1831 pamphlet warning of the effects of the Reform Bill. The idea of historical change independent of strategic action on the part of governing bodies did not come until the late 19th century.The first class of near-future fantasies to emerge was the WAR-anticipation genre in the UK, which began with a political debate concerning the need for rearmament. George T. CHESNEY's classic drama-documentary The Battle of Dorking (1871) headed a tradition of speculative stories exploring the probable effects of new TECHNOLOGY on the business of warfare which eventually led writers like George GRIFFITH and H.G. WELLS to produce literary nightmares of war remade by submarines, tanks, aeroplanes and atomic bombs. Griffith died before the outbreak of WWI, but most of his readers did not; Wells lived just long enough to witness the advent of the real atom bomb. The anxieties reflected in this early class of near-future fantasies were entirely justified, and the notion of "a war that will end war", in Wells's phrase - an idea already popularized in such jingoistic extravaganzas as Louis TRACY's The Final War (1896)-was enthusiastically borrowed by the promoters of WWI as a means of selling it to the populations which became involved.A somewhat different set of images was presented by another subgenre which emerged in the same period, celebrating the modern wonders of a newly emergent era of technological DISCOVERY AND INVENTION. Significantly, there are few genuine UTOPIAS in this class, most ideal societies being cast forward by at least a century, as in Edward BELLAMY's Looking Backward, 2000-1887 (1888); and even the fervently optimistic Hugo GERNSBACK subtitled his Ralph 124C 41+ (1911-12; 1925) "A Romance of the Year 2660". Technological wonder stories located within the personal future of their readers were mostly concerned with the future of TRANSPORTATION, connected to the war-anticipation genre by virtue of rejoicing in the conquest of the air. Jules VERNE is the archetypal early writer of near-future sf, although his imitators often took a more cavalier view of imminent possibility than he did; where Verne went Around the World in 80 Days (1873; trans 1874), Andre LAURIE went from New York to Brest in Seven Hours (1888; trans 1890). Sf writers were slower to take account of the AUTOMATION of industry than they were to foresee new opportunities in LEISURE. When Gernsback attempted to capture the scattered aspects of technological enthusiasm and bind them all together into a medium of communication which would hopefully "blaze a trail, not only in literature, but in progress as well" he was still a man ahead of his time, despite the precedents set by Verne and Wells. He saw SCIENTIFICTION as a means not only of anticipating the transformation which the world was undergoing through the acceleration of technological progress, but also of making a crucial contribution to it. He was an inventor himself, passionately involved with contemporary technology and particularly with the development of radio. In the editorials which he wrote for his early sf PULP MAGAZINES he talked about atomic energy, radar, tv and space travel. His near-future anticipations were by no means unjustified; most of his readers were in their teens in the 1920s, and so lived to see Gernsback's hypothetical technologies made actual. GENRE SF undertook to deal with all aspects of the future, but it was in its generalization of images of the near future that it was really new. The impact of sf upon young readers in the 1920s and 1930s may have been partly due to a consciousness of the immediacy of change as well as to the vastness of sf's imaginative horizons. That said, most early pulp sf was located in numinous eras beyond the personal horizon, and its grasp of the extent to which technological change would alter the quality of life was decidedly weak. Outside the genre, the wide-eyed optimism and ludicrously uninhibited melodrama of most pulp sf seemed childish; in the less prolific but far more earnest tradition of the UK SCIENTIFIC ROMANCE, the anxieties attendant on the awareness of change were much more prominently represented. The balance began to be redressed when John W. CAMPBELL Jr took over ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION in the late 1930s and began to ask for more carefully considered appraisals of future possibility. Many authors understandably preferred the freedom of more distant future realms, where they could set melodramatic SPACE OPERAS against the gaudy background of a GALACTIC EMPIRE, but a new generation of sf writers were prepared to tackle the problems of the near future, and in a more realistic fashion. The late 1930s and early 1940s produced several notable stories dealing with the advent of NUCLEAR POWER, and Robert A. HEINLEIN attempted to construct a detailed future HISTORY mapping the interplay of technological innovation and political response. The destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki by the first atom bombs brought into the world a sensation of existential insecurity unparalleled in modern history (it is perhaps more easily comparable with such events as the slaughter of the population of Europe by the Black Death in the 14th century). To those professionally involved in the sf field, like Campbell and Donald A. WOLLHEIM, it seemed that sf had been "justified" by the unveiling of the atom bomb, and that from 1945 on everyone would have to acknowledge the power of technological change to transform the world. But such advances in sf's popularity and esteem were limited, and there also emerged within the genre a powerful sense of nostalgia for that GOLDEN AGE when sf had been aware of change only as a succession of miracles and make-believe adventures.The response of sf authors to the new intellectual climate was varied. Straightforward PREDICTIONS of imminent atomic doom were abundant ( END OF THE WORLD; HOLOCAUST AND AFTER; WAR), but a more eccentric response was the widespread creation of distorted future societies in which some contemporary power-group had "taken over" and formed an oppressive regime; the archetype of this species is THE SPACE MERCHANTS (1953) by Frederik POHL and C.M. KORNBLUTH. These stories of distorted societies are often labelled SATIRES, and do indeed have a satirical edge, but there is also an element of actual anticipation in them, and they reflect a genuine fear of the swamping of individual ambitions by large-scale bureaucratic institutions.The baroque and slightly surreal mode of this kind of imaginative exercise gradually gave way to a more acute awareness of real processes of change in the contemporary world, and of their dangers. In the 1960s OVERPOPULATION, POLLUTION and resource crises ( POWER SOURCES) became standard features of sf's images of the near future. Stories on these subjects often have a hint of panic about them, and there was a distinct apocalyptic note about the sf of the 1960s and 1970s. Images of the near future produced outside the genre became virtually indistinguishable in attitude from those produced within it (although the near-future novels produced by MAINSTREAM WRITERS tended to work with an impoverished vocabulary of ideas). Insofar as it deals with the near future, genre sf is primarily a literature of anxiety; optimism and colourful adventurism remain the prerogatives of fiction set in a more distant future, in which the particular problems of Spaceship Earth are often reduced to irrelevance.Our awareness of impending ecocatastrophe ( ECOLOGY) has been complicated in the 1970s and 1980s by the advent of two new species of technology which promise dramatic transformations of the way we live. The COMPUTER revolution has pressed forward much faster than most sf writers of the 1950s and 1960s anticipated; CYBERPUNK fiction represents a somewhat belated but suitably intense response to this developing situation, and its rhetoric is feeding back into the real situation much as the rhetoric of the future-war story fed back into the actual build-up to WWI. Second, while the cracking of the genetic code and the subsequent advent of GENETIC ENGINEERING have not yet begun to transform the everyday environments of the home and workplace, the inherent possibilities hold the promise of a new technological revolution which might overturn many of our assumptions about the nature of MACHINES (see also NANOTECHNOLOGY). Within the last few years the assumptions which sf writers have made about the POLITICS of the future have been devastated by the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe, and this too has ensured that virtually all extant sf images of the near future, however recent, are now almost redundant. Those which seem most pertinent are those which anticipate the greatest confusion.Bruce STERLING's ISLANDS IN THE NET (1988) is perhaps the most compelling recent image of the near future, overtaking Frederik Pohl's The Years of the City (1985), which has already begun to seem tentative. David BRIN's far more optimistic Earth (1990) is a worthy attempt to celebrate heroic attempts to cope with ecocatastrophe but ultimately founders on the rock of its outrageous deus ex machina, while Greg BEAR's Queen of Angels (1990) obtains its conviction by focusing tightly on the particular predicaments of a handful of characters. The vast majority of sf writers are either narrower still in the focus of their concerns or content to farm the much greener pastures of hypothetical futures which lie safely beyond the personal event-horizon. This is probably inevitable. The near future is an uncomfortable imaginative space for writers and readers to inhabit, and it is entirely understandable that those who venture into it should go equipped with blinkers, armoured by some protective obsession which obviates the necessity of dealing with the near future-world as a whole.The faster the pace of technological change becomes, the more horrifying a prospect the near future seems. It could not be otherwise. Our personal ambitions are tied to our expectations, which - if they are not mere castles in the air - are based in our experience of the past. The innovations which the future will surely bring are much more likely to threaten these ambitions than to aid them (even though they may compensate by making possible new ambitions) and are therefore bound to be sources of acute anxiety. The rate of technological change will certainly not slow down - unless DISASTER overtakes the entire cultural/industrial complex and renders all ambitions beyond mere survival redundant - and there now seem no grounds for hoping, as some apologists for sf once did, that assiduous study of images of future possibility will help us adapt ourselves to the acceleration of that change. Despite the increasing number of sf titles published each year, realistic speculative fiction about the near future is scarce and will undoubtedly remain so. Such fiction is too frightening to be popular; even those readers who like to be frightened prefer to gain their excitement from the obsolete workings of the supernatural imagination, which are utterly without consequence for the way they must live their lives. [BS] NEARING, HOMER Jr (1915- ) US writer and professor of English at Pennsylvania Military College. His series of stories about Professor Cleanth Penn Ransom and Professor Archibald MacTate, mathematician and philosopher respectively, appeared in FSF from "The Poetry Machine" in 1950 up to 1963. 7 of these stories were assembled with 4 unconnected tales (and very thinly "novelized") as The Sinister Researches of C.P. Ransom (coll 1954); they concern the two professors' attempts to formalize a union between science and the arts. Their efforts, though doomed, are told without malice. Uncollected stories are "The Embarrassing Dimension" (1951), "The Maladjusted Classroom" (1953), "The Cerebrative Psittacoid" (1953), "The Gastronomical Error" (1953) and "The Hermeneutical Doughnut" (1956 Fantastic Universe). The professors' names disconnectedly represent several US poets and critics associated with the New Criticism: Cleanth Brooks, Archibald MacLeish, John Crowe Ransom, Allen Tate and Robert Penn Warren. [JC/PN]See also: DIMENSIONS; HUMOUR. NEBULA Sf award given by the SCIENCE FICTION WRITERS OF AMERICA (now the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America) since 1966. The idea of funding such an award from the royalties of an annual anthology of award-winning short fiction was proposed in 1965 by the SFWA's then secretary-treasurer, Lloyd BIGGLE Jr. The awards are made in the spring and, unlike the HUGOS, are dated by the year of publication of the award-winning stories; thus the 1965 awards, the first, were made in 1966. The award takes the form of a metallic-glitter spiral nebula suspended over a rock crystal, both embedded in clear lucite; the original design by J.A. LAWRENCE was based on a drawing by Kate WILHELM and has been followed ever since.The original 4 classes of award, all for professional writing, have remained unchanged; a 5th class, for Best Dramatic Presentation, was added in 1974, changed to Best Dramatic Writing in 1976, and then immediately dropped. Several special awards, taking the form of plaques or citations, have also been made; the only special category listed here is the Grand Master Award made from time to time by the Nebula committee for lifetime achievement in sf writing; it goes always to writers who are senior in both status and years.The 4 writing categories are Novel (over 40,000 words), Novella (17, 500-40,000 words), Novelette (7500-17,500 words) and Short Story (under 7500 words). Voting is by SFWA members, using a final ballot paper made up from members' nominations. From 1970 a preliminary ballot of all nominated works was circulated early in the year, the entries receiving the most votes being entered on the final ballot. In 1980 procedures were changed (not for the first or last time): the year of a work's eligibility became the previous calendar year (not December 1 to November 30 as had earlier been the case); more importantly, perhaps, a Nebula jury system was set up, with each year's panel of judges allowed to add one item to the final ballot in each category. For some time authors have been allowed the option of choosing a one-year-later, usually mass-market, edition of their books to be eligible, rather than the original edition: many authors prefer to be judged on the basis of a widely read paperback rather than on the original hardcover.The procedures for Nebula awards have been more consistent than those for Hugos, but lobbying among the SFWA membership has received much criticism over the years, with some critics maintaining that the awards sometimes reflect political as much as literary ability. It may be partly as a result of this that the proportion of SFWA members voting is often not very high.Although the Nebulas have occasionally gone to rather more experimental writing than ever wins a Hugo, there has not been a great deal of difference between the choices. It might have been expected that the Nebula, inasmuch as it is given by a consensus of professional writers, would place a stronger emphasis on literary skills, but there is no evidence that this has been so. Neither Hugo nor Nebula has been given to non-genre sf or fantasy, and both have mostly gone, quite disproportionately, to US recipients. While the Nebula has certainly been awarded to some fine works, many critics have argued that the whole AWARDS system, in sf at least, is more a publicity exercise than a consistently well judged measure of value.Anthologies of Nebula-winning short fiction, along with a selection of the runners-up, are published annually in the Nebula Award Stories series, each volume ed by an SFWA member. These books sometimes contain critical essays and accounts of the year in sf, as well as winners of the Rhysling Award for sf POETRY. Volumes to date are Nebula Award Stories 1965 (anth 1966; vt Nebula Award Stories 1 UK) ed Damon KNIGHT, Nebula Award Stories Two (anth 1967; vt Nebula Award Stories 2 UK) ed Brian W. ALDISS and Harry HARRISON, Three (anth 1968) ed Roger ZELAZNY, Four (anth 1969) ed Poul ANDERSON, Five (anth 1970) ed James Blish, Six (anth 1971) ed Clifford D. SIMAK, Seven (anth 1972) ed Lloyd Biggle Jr, Eight (1973) ed Isaac ASIMOV, Nine (anth 1974) ed Kate Wilhelm, Ten (anth 1975) ed James E. GUNN, Eleven (1976 UK) ed Ursula K. LE GUIN (Eleven appeared in 1977 in the USA; from then until 1983 the year of publication was 2 years behind the year for which the awards were given), Twelve (anth 1978) ed Gordon R. DICKSON, Thirteen (anth 1979) ed Samuel R. DELANY, Fourteen (anth 1980) ed Frederik POHL, Fifteen (anth 1981) ed Frank HERBERT, Sixteen (anth 1982) ed Jerry E. POURNELLE, Seventeen (anth 1983) ed Joe W. HALDEMAN, 18 (anth 1983) ed Robert SILVERBERG (with these latter, both published in the same year, the books went back to trailing the award year by only 1 year), 19 (anth 1984) ed Marta RANDALL, 20 (anth 1985) ed George ZEBROWSKI, 21 (anth 1986) ed Zebrowski (again the gap increased to 2 years), 22 (anth 1988) ed Zebrowski, 23 (anth 1989) ed Michael BISHOP, 24 (anth 1990) ed Bishop and 25 (anth 1991) ed Bishop.In 1969 the concept of SFWA members voting on stories was extended retroactively to cover those stories (but not novels) considered the all-time best prior to 1965. The chosen short stories were published as SCIENCE FICTION HALL OF FAME (anth 1970) ed Robert SILVERBERG and the novellas in The Science Fiction Hall of Fame Volume Two A (anth 1973; vt The Science Fiction Hall of Fame Volume Two UK) and The Science Fiction Hall of Fame Volume Two B (anth 1973; vt The Science Fiction Hall of Fame Volume Three UK) ed Ben BOVA. [PN]Novels:1965: Frank HERBERT, DUNE1966: Daniel KEYES, FLOWERS FOR ALGERNON, and Samuel R. DELANY, BABEL-17 (tie)1967: Samuel R. Delany, THE EINSTEIN INTERSECTION1968: Alexei PANSHIN, RITE OF PASSAGE1969: Ursula K. LE GUIN, THE LEFT HAND OF DARKNESS1970: Larry NIVEN, RINGWORLD1971: Robert SILVERBERG, A TIME OF CHANGES1972: Isaac ASIMOV, THE GODS THEMSELVES1973: Arthur C. CLARKE, RENDEZVOUS WITH RAMA1974: Ursula K. Le Guin, The Dispossessed1975: Joe HALDEMAN, THE FOREVER WAR1976: Frederik POHL, MAN PLUS1977: Frederik Pohl, GATEWAY1978: Vonda N. MCINTYRE, DREAMSNAKE1979: Arthur C. Clarke, THE FOUNTAINS OF PARADISE1980: Gregory BENFORD, TIMESCAPE1981: Gene WOLFE, The Claw of the Conciliator1982: Michael BISHOP, NO ENEMY BUT TIME1983: David BRIN, STARTIDE RISING1984: William GIBSON, NEUROMANCER1985: Orson Scott CARD, ENDER'S GAME1986: Orson Scott Card, Speaker for the Dead1987: Pat MURPHY, The Falling Woman1988: Lois McMaster BUJOLD, FALLING FREE1989: Elizabeth Ann Scarborough, The Healer's War1990: Ursula K. Le Guin, Tehanu: The Last Book of Earthsea1991: Michael SWANWICK, STATIONS OF THE TIDE1992: Connie WILLIS, DOOMSDAY BOOK1993: Kim Stanley ROBINSON, RED MARSNovellas:1965: Brian W. ALDISS, "The Saliva Tree", and Roger ZELAZNY, "He who Shapes" (tie)1966: Jack VANCE, "The Last Castle"1967: Michael MOORCOCK, "Behold the Man"1968: Anne MCCAFFREY, "Dragonrider"1969: Harlan ELLISON, "A Boy and his Dog"1970: Fritz LEIBER, "Ill Met in Lankhmar"1971: Katherine MACLEAN, "The Missing Man"1972: Arthur C. Clarke, "A Meeting with Medusa"1973: Gene Wolfe, "The Death of Dr Island"1974: Robert Silverberg, "Born with the Dead"1975: Roger Zelazny, "Home is the Hangman"1976: James TIPTREE Jr, "Houston, Houston, Do You Read?"1977: Spider and Jeanne ROBINSON, "Stardance"1978: John VARLEY, "The Persistence of Vision"1979: Barry B. LONGYEAR, "Enemy Mine"1980: Suzy McKee CHARNAS, "Unicorn Tapestry"1981: Poul ANDERSON, "The Saturn Game"1982: John KESSEL, "Another Orphan"1983: Greg BEAR, "Hardfought"1984: John Varley, "PRESS ENTER"1985: Robert Silverberg,"Sailing to Byzantium"1986: Lucius SHEPARD,"R & R"1987: Kim Stanley ROBINSON,"The Blind Geometer"1988: Connie WILLIS, "The Last of the Winnebagos"1989: Lois McMaster Bujold,"The Mountains of Mourning"1990: Joe Haldeman,"The Hemingway Hoax"1991: Nancy KRESS, "Beggars in Spain"1992: James MORROW, "City of Truth"1993: Jack Cady,"The Night We Buried Road Dog"Novelettes:1965: Roger Zelazny, "The Doors of his Face, the Lamps of his Mouth"1966: Gordon R. DICKSON, "Call Him Lord"1967: Fritz Leiber, "Gonna Roll the Bones"1968: Richard WILSON, "Mother to the World"1969: Samuel R. Delany, "Time Considered as a Helix of Semi-Precious Stones"1970: Theodore STURGEON, "Slow Sculpture"1971: Poul Anderson, "The Queen of Air and Darkness"1972: Poul Anderson, "Goat Song"1973: Vonda McIntyre, "Of Mist, and Grass, and Sand"1974: Gregory Benford and Gordon EKLUND, "If the Stars are Gods"1975: Tom REAMY, "San Diego Lightfoot Sue"1976: Isaac Asimov, "The Bicentennial Man"1977: Raccoona Sheldon (James Tiptree Jr), "The Screwfly Solution"1978: Charles L. GRANT, "A Glow of Candles, A Unicorn's Eye"1979: George R.R. MARTIN, "Sandkings"1980: Howard WALDROP, "The Ugly Chickens"1981: Michael Bishop, "The Quickening"1982: Connie Willis, "Fire Watch"1983: Greg Bear, "Blood Music"1984: Octavia E. BUTLER, "Bloodchild"1985: George R.R. Martin, "Portraits of his Children"1986: Kate WILHELM, "The Girl who Fell into the Sky"1987: Pat MURPHY, "Rachel in Love"1988: George Alec EFFINGER, "Schrodinger's Kitten"1989: Connie Willis, "At the Rialto"1990: Ted Chiang, "Tower of Babylon"1991: Mike CONNER, "Guide Dog"1992: Pamela SARGENT, "Danny Goes To Mars"1993: Charles SHEFFIELD, "Georgia on my Mind"Short Stories:1965: Harlan Ellison, "'Repent Harlequin!' said the Ticktockman"1966: Richard MCKENNA "The Secret Place"1967: Samuel R. Delany, "Aye, and Gomorrah . . ."1968: Kate Wilhelm, "The Planners"1969: Robert Silverberg, "Passengers"1970: no award1971: Robert Silverberg, "Good News from the Vatican"1972: Joanna RUSS, "When it Changed"1973: James Tiptree Jr, "Love is the Plan, the Plan is Death"1974: Ursula K. Le Guin, "The Day Before the Revolution"1975: Fritz Leiber, "Catch that Zeppelin!"1976: Charles L. Grant, "A Crowd of Shadows"1977: Harlan Ellison, "Jeffty is Five"1978: Edward BRYANT, "Stone"1979: Edward Bryant, "giANTS"1980: Clifford D. SIMAK, "Grotto of the Dancing Deer"1981: Lisa TUTTLE, "The Bone Flute"1982: Connie Willis, "A Letter From the Clearys"1983: Gardner DOZOIS, "The Peacemaker"1984: Gardner Dozois, "Morning Child"1985: Nancy Kress, "Out of All Them Bright Stars"1986: Greg Bear, "Tangents"1987: Kate Wilhelm, "Forever Yours, Anna"1988: James MORROW, "Bible Stories for Adults, No. 17: The Deluge"1989: Geoffrey A. Landis, "Ripples in the Dirac Sea"1990: Terry BISSON, "Bears Discover Fire"1991: Alan BRENNERT, "Ma Qui"1992: Connie Willis, "Even the Queen"1993: Joe Haldeman, "Graves"Dramatic presentation/writing:1973: SOYLENT GREEN (presentation)1974: SLEEPER (presentation)1975: Young Frankenstein ( FRANKENSTEIN) (writing)Grand Master Award:(The years given are the years in which the award was made)1975: Robert A. HEINLEIN 1976: Jack WILLIAMSON1977: Clifford D. Simak1979: L. Sprague DE CAMP1981: Fritz Leiber1984: Andre NORTON1986: Arthur C. Clarke1987: Isaac Asimov1988: Alfred BESTER1989: Ray BRADBURY1991: Lester DEL REY1993: Frederik PohlSee also: WOMEN SF WRITERS. NEBULA SCIENCE FICTION UK large- DIGEST-size magazine. 41 issues Autumn 1952-Aug 1959, published by Crownpoint Publications, Glasgow, Autumn 1952-Apr 1955, and by Peter Hamilton Sep 1955-Aug 1959; ed Peter Hamilton. Issues were numbered consecutively after Vols 1 and 2 of 4 nos each; what should have been Vol 3 #1 was actually marked #9. Publication was quite irregular except for July 1957-Feb 1959, which was monthly apart from the omission of Nov and Dec 1957.N was the first and so far only Scottish sf magazine, and was part of the 1950s UK sf magazine revival, one of the most important titles along with NEW WORLDS and SCIENCE FANTASY. N was subsidized by its editor, an enthusiastic fan, still a teenager when the magazine began. It always ran a news section, including a column by the celebrated Irish fan Walt Willis (1919- ), editor of HYPHEN and SLANT. But although N was fannish it was by no means juvenile; Hamilton was serious-minded and prepared to experiment with difficult stories and to encourage young writers. Brian W. ALDISS, Bob SHAW and Robert SILVERBERG all had their first published stories in N. Other contributors included Harlan ELLISON, Eric Frank RUSSELL, Kenneth BULMER and E.C. TUBB, the latter being the most prolific. Early issues each contained a novel with a small number of short stories, but the novel-an-issue policy was later dropped. The handsome and distinctive front covers were the work of various artists, including Gerard QUINN and Eddie JONES. N was popular with writers; Hamilton was able to keep it going as very much a one-man show, never very profitably, for 7 years. Some later issues went on sale in the USA. [PN/FHP] NEEF, ELTON T. [s] R.L. FANTHORPE. NEEPER, CARY Working name of US microbiologist and author Carolyn A. Neeper (1937- ) for her fiction, which consists primarily of the ambitious A Place Beyond Man (1975), which somewhat uneasily combines a HARD-SF rendering of the physics and biology of her interplanetary venues with a contemplative sweep characteristic of the SCIENTIFIC ROMANCE. Confronted with the looming ecological self-destruction of Earth, the two other sentient species of our Solar System must decide what course to follow; the consequent lessons are earnestly put. [JC] NEFF, ONDREJ [r] CZECH AND SLOVAK SF. NEILL, A(LEXANDER) S(UTHERLAND) (1883-1973) UK educationist who gained fame for revolutionary theories about the teaching of children and who cofounded the International School - first on the Continent, then (from 1921) at Summerhill in the UK - to put them into practice. Fictionalized accounts like A Dominie's Log (1915) popularized his arguments, and his sf novel, The Last Man Alive (1938), was read aloud to his pupils. The DISASTER it recounts is readable but unoriginal. [JC] NEILSON, KEITH (TOWNSEND OLAF) (1935- ) US academic of importance in the field of sf and fantasy scholarship for editing (anon: both books were created under the umbrella editorship of Frank N. Magill [1907- ]) the 5-vol Survey of Science Fiction Literature (anth 1979) and the 5-vol Survey of Modern Fantasy Literature (anth 1983); each contains about 500 essays, averaging about 2000 words, on individual books and series. Although (inevitably) some essays are weak or wrong-headed, many are strong and original, and the two surveys present between them an indispensible series of critical responses to the literature. [JC] NELSON, RAY Working name of Radell Faraday Nelson (1931- ), who also writes as R.F. Nelson, R. Faraday Nelson and Ray Faraday Nelson, and once under the house name Jeffrey Lord ( Lyle Kenyon ENGEL). He has been active in both sf and detective genres, publishing his first sf story, "Turn off the Sky", in FSF in 1963. He worked as a gagwriter for cartoonist Grant Canfield, and for a time collaborated with Michael MOORCOCK in smuggling Henry Miller books from France into the UK; Moorcock was caught, RN forced to cease. RN holds a secure place in the hearts of sf FANDOM (he used to be a fan artist) for having invented the propeller beanie which in fan cartooning is always emblematic of the sf fan.RN's first sf novel was The Ganymede Takeover (1967) with Philip K. DICK, a tale in which Dickian preoccupations are somewhat dampened by implausibly foregrounded action sequences. His second, Blake's Progress (1975 Canada; rev vt Timequest 1985 US), accords the poet/painter William Blake (1757-1827) the capacity to travel through time, along with his wife Kate; she is by far the better painter of the two, though her husband signs her works. History is altered, the novel being in part an ALTERNATE-WORLDS story. In its full revised form it is a highly energetic vision of the poet, and RN's best work. Then Beggars Could Ride (1976 Canada) and its sequel, The Revolt of the Unemployables (1978), depict an ecological UTOPIA of small, self-contained but interacting units, in which a protagonist tries to sort himself out. RN's most recently published novel is #1 in the projected Timebinder sequence, The Prometheus Man (1982), in which a rigid and therefore DYSTOPIAN meritocracy has transformed the USA into a land of employables (not numerous) and the Uns, or unemployables (the great majority). The plot revolves around a marriage broken by the system as well as an assortment of gurus, tycooons and revolutionaries; it does not fully resolve. At least one sequel is reportedly awaiting publication. Though sometimes over-easily applied, RN's iconoclasm is all the more welcome for its surprising rarity in the sf field. [JC]Other works: The Ecolog (1977 Canada); Dimension of Horror * (1979) as Jeffrey Lord, #30 in the Richard Blade series.See also: INVASION; PHILIP K. DICK AWARD; TRANSPORTATION. NEMERE, ISTVAN [r] HUNGARY. NEMESIS Film (1993). Shah/Jensen and Imperial Entertainment. Prod Ash R. Shah, Eric Karson and Tom Karnowski; dir Albert Pyun; screenplay Rebecca Charles; starring Olivier Gruner, Tim Thomerson, Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa and Merle Kennedy. 96 mins. Colour.This very violent, low-budget, straight-to-video, exploitation action-adventure movie, directed by straight-to-video specialist Pyun, has one element of sf interest. At a time when, despite all the publicity given to them, CYBERPUNK themes are barely impinging on the "respectable" end of the film business, parts of poverty row are embracing them. In N, bio-enhanced gangsters, anti- CYBORG terrorist groups, machine cops, a lovely dead woman encoded on a data chip, and third world police forces take part in an almost unfathomable series of shoot-outs in the information-saturated world of 2027, where the largest information cartel consists of US/Japan. Hawaii is passed off as Java, and ethnic Chinese unconvincingly represent Indonesians. Though the acting is below par, the dialogue is largely four-letter words and nothing in the plot goes beyond cyberpunk stereotypes, at least the attempt was made. [PN] NENONEN, KARI [r] FINLAND. NEPTUNE OUTER PLANETS. NESFA BIBLIOGRAPHIES; Erwin S. STRAUSS. NESVADBA, JOSEF (1926- ) Czech psychiatrist, doctor and writer, born in Prague. He started by writing dramatic sketches but soon turned to detective stories and satirical sf, continuing the tradition of Karel CAPEK. One of the best Czech sf writers ( CZECH AND SLOVAK SF) - though he has written less since the late 1960s - and aside from Capek the best known in the West, JN writes subtly ironic variations on common sf themes, poking fun at human weaknesses, and is not afraid to satirize his own social system (as in "Inventor of His Own Undoing", in all the English-language collections noted below). His 3 early collections of short stories are Tarzanova smrt ["Tarzan's Death"] (coll 1958), Einsteinuv mozek ["Einstein's Brain"] (coll 1960) and Vyprava opacnym smerem ["Expedition in the Opposite Direction"] (coll 1962), not to be confused with the later Vypravy opacnym smerem ["Expeditions in the Opposite Direction"] (coll 1976), which assembles early work, some previously collected, as does Einsteinuv mozek a jine povidky ["The Einstein Brain and Other Stories"] (coll 1987). A mystery novel of fantasy interest is Bludy Erika N. ["The Ravings of Erika N."] (1974), which draws on some of Erich VON DANIKEN's ideas.A later stage of psychiatry-related sf novelettes and novels begins, in book form, with Ridicsky prukaz rodicu ["Parents' Driving Licence"] (coll of 3 linked novelettes 1979). Others are Minehava podruhe ["Minehava for the Second Time"] (coll of 3 linked novelettes 1981) and the novel Hledam za manzela muze ["I am Looking for a Man to be a Husband"] (1986). These are less well known in the West, but the title story of the second collection has been translated in cut form as "The Return of Minnehawa or Marian Kolda's Psychoscope" in Panorama of Czech Literature, No 8 (anth 1986 Czechoslovakia) ed Nesvadba, an anthology of modern Czech fantasy and sf with biographical pieces on the authors.JN's stories have been a fertile source of inspiration for the Czech film industry. Films based on his work include Tarzanova smrt (1962; vt The Death of an Apeman) dir Jaroslav Balik, screenplay by JN and Balik, a tragicomic new adventure of Tarzan; Blbec z Xeenemunde (1962; vt The Idiot of Xeenemunde) dir Balik, screenplay by JN and Balik, another tragicomedy, this time about a halfwit scientist who kills Nazis; Ztracena tvar (1965; vt The Lost Face) dir Pavel Hobl, screenplay by Hobl and JN, a slapstick story set in the 1930s about a doctor who can perform miracles of disguise with plastic surgery and organ transplants; Zabil jsem Einsteina, panove! (1969; vt I killed Einstein, Gentlemen) dir Oldrich Lipsky, screenplay by Lipsky, Milos Macourek and JN, an overfarcical TIME-TRAVEL comedy involving a society in 1999 where women are sterile and bearded because of radiation from nuclear war; Slecna Golem (1972; vt Miss Golem) dir Balik, screenplay by Balik and JN, about the creation of an artificial woman by cloning; Upir z Feratu (1981; vt The Vampire from Ferat) dir Juraj Herz, based on JN's story known in English as "Vampires Ltd.", about a racing car that uses the blood of drivers rather than petrol as fuel. Another film based on a JN story is ZITRA VSTANU A OPARIM SE CAJEM (1977; vt Tomorrow I'll Wake up and Scald Myself with Tea).JN's intricately plotted, absurdly logical stories have been translated into many languages and widely anthologized. English-language editions of JN's stories are Vampires Ltd. (coll 1964 trans Iris Urwin, Prague) and In the Footsteps of the Abominable Snowman (coll 1970; vt The Lost Face US). All but the first and third stories of the latter collection are also in the former, which also contains 5 stories not in the latter. [JO/SC/FR/PN]Other works: Dialog s doktorem Dongem ["Dialogue with Dr Dong"] (1964), a contemporary novel about Vietnam; Tajna zprava z Prahy ["Secret Report from Prague"] (censored text 1978; text restored 1992). NETHERLANDS BENELUX. NEUTRON STARS Item of TERMINOLOGY in ASTRONOMY, and much used in sf. In an ordinary star, such as the Sun, the gravitational pressure tending to make it collapse is balanced by the outward pressure created by the continuous nuclear fusion within it. As a star's fuel burns out, GRAVITY takes over. A star of mass less than the Chandrasekhar limit - a value calculated by Indian physicist Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar (1910- ) to be about 1.4 times the mass of our Sun - would usually contract under the force of gravity into a very dense White Dwarf, with a radius of maybe only a few thousand kilometres; but a further, more extreme compression is possible, as under pressure the empty space within the atoms of the star's matter is annihilated, the electrons being crushed down to the atomic nucleus, there to fuse with the protons of the nucleus to form neutrons. The resulting degenerate matter - neutronium - is incredibly dense because of the loss of the intra-atomic emptiness: a neutron star having the same mass as our Sun would have a radius of about 10km (6 miles). Its surface gravity would be so strong that no "mountain" (i.e., surface irregularity) could exist on it higher than about 5mm (0.2in); and, initially at least, it would rotate very rapidly owing to the conservation of angular momentum (i.e., for the same reason as ice skaters can increase their rate of spin by pulling in their limbs).Beginning in 1968, radio telescopes discovered many celestial sources which emitted regular bursts of microwave radiation with very short periods (from only a couple of seconds down to tiny fractions of a second) between pulses. These objects were named pulsars, and were soon shown almost certainly to be neutron stars. Their powerful electromagnetic fields channel the radiation associated with the pulsar into two continuous beams which, because of the object's rapid rotation, we see (assuming we are in a suitable line-of-sight) in the form of pulses, much as we might see the light from the rotating lamp of a lighthouse. The period of a pulsar's pulses (i.e., its rate of rotation) can be used as a measure of the pulsar's age - the rotation slows with time - and there is excellent correlation between such measures and the ages of pulsars whose dates of formation are known (notably the pulsar at the core of the Crab Nebula, the remnant of the supernova observed in AD1054).The tidal forces created in proximity to such a star would be lethal, as imagined in Larry NIVEN's story "Neutron Star" (1966), in which a spaceship pilot who has ventured too close is almost ripped apart because, in such an intense gravitational field, the length of his body represents a significant distance, and so the force exerted by GRAVITY on his feet is considerably stronger than that exerted on his head; it is this difference in pull that so nearly proves fatal to him. In Gregory BENFORD's The Stars in Shroud (1978) a neutron star's gravity is exploited by spacecraft whipping round it to accelerate into new courses - a more extreme version of the manoeuvre whereby space-probes in the Solar System exploit the gravitational fields of the larger planets. The most extreme neutron-star stories may be Robert L. FORWARD's DRAGON'S EGG (1980) and its sequel Starquake! (1985), which have an ALIEN race - who live on a hugely accelerated timescale - evolving on the unfriendly surface of such a star, and ultimately making contact with human observers.Stellar collapse for stars with a mass greater than the Chandrasekhar limit can, it is theorized, lead to a different and even more bizarre form, the BLACK HOLE. [PN] NEUTZSKY-WULFF, ERWIN [r] DENMARK. NEUWIRTH, BARBARA [r] AUSTRIA. NEVILLE, KRIS (OTTMAN) (1925-1980) US writer of fiction who worked for many years as a technical writer specializing in plastics technology, and through his connection with the Epoxylite Corporation co-authored several texts on epoxy resins. He began publishing sf with "The Hand from the Stars" for Super Science Stories in 1949, and for several years was a prolific contributor to FSF and other magazines; he wrote some fantasy as by Henderson Starke. His short fiction was assembled in Mission: Manstop (coll with some stories updated 1971) and in the posthumous The Science Fiction of Kris Neville (coll 1984) ed Barry N. MALZBERG and Martin H. GREENBERG, much of it demonstrating his notable strengths as a writer: concision, clarity of style and a capacity to develop the sometimes routine initial material of a story so that its implications expanded constantly, rather in the manner mastered, with more recognition than KN ever received, by James TIPTREE Jr. "Hunt the Hunter" (1951), for instance, begins as a simple hunt on an alien planet but expands subtly but quickly into a study in power politics whose trick ending very neatly turns the meaning of the whole tale in upon itself. Another early story, "The Toy" (1952), powerfully structures a very sharp lesson in ANTHROPOLOGY within an apparently routine tale about humans oppressing "inferior" aliens. One of his very few late stories, "Ballenger's People" (1967), counts as sf only through its moderately futuristic form of urban transport; the tale itself describes, with superb concision, the complex internal politics of a deranged mind.KN's best known story is probably "Bettyan" (1951) which, with a sequel, "Overture" (1954), eventually became Bettyann (fixup 1970). It tells the story of a young girl whose adolescent sense that she really belongs somewhere else is, in classic sf fashion, confirmed by her discovery first that she is adopted, and second that she is a child of creatures from the stars. She is then forced to decide between heredity and environment, a choice whose implications are developed in a recent sequel, "Bettyann's Children" (1973) with Lil Neville, KN's wife and frequent late collaborator. Among the fiction KN wrote with her is a 1975 novel published only in Japanese whose title translates as "Run, the Spearmaker".KN's comparative silence for two decades before his death, a silence obscured by the book publication of old material (some of it revamped), was much to be regretted, for his intelligence was acute and his artistic control over his material was always evident. He was one of the potentially major writers in the genre who never came to speak in his full voice. [JC]Other works: The Unearth People (1964); The Mutants (1953 Imagination as "Earth Alert"; exp 1966); Special Delivery (1952 Imagination; 1967 chap dos); Peril of the Starmen (1954 Imagination; 1967 chap dos); Invaders on the Moon (1970) with Mel Sturgis (left uncredited through a publishing decision against which KN protested).See also: LIVING WORLDS; SUPERMAN. NEW ADVENTURES OF WONDER WOMAN, THE WONDER WOMAN. NEW AVENGERS, THE The AVENGERS . NEW BARBARIANS, THE George MILLER; 1990: I GUERRIERI DEL BRONX. NEWCOMB, SIMON (1835-1909) Canadian-born writer, in the USA from 1853, of texts on and studies of astronomical and mathematical subjects. In his sf novel His Wisdom, the Defender (1900) future historians tell how a professor discovers a source of limitless energy, invents ANTIGRAVITY and, after creating a private army - equipping it with futuristic armour-takes over the world from the air and prohibits war. In "The End of the World" (1903 McClure's Magazine) a black body from space hits the Sun, devastating the world. The few who survive realize that eons must pass before civilization may rise again. [JC]See also: WEAPONS. NEW DESTINIES DESTINIES. NEW DIMENSIONS ORIGINAL-ANTHOLOGY series (1971-1981) ed Robert SILVERBERG. New Dimensions I (anth 1971) appeared when original anthology series were proliferating in the USA, with such titles as INFINITY, QUARK and UNIVERSE. ND was one of the longest-lasting titles from this period, although it had to change publishers several times (#1-#3 DOUBLEDAY, #4 Signet, #5-#10 Harper & Row, #11-#12 Pocket Books) in order to keep going: New Dimensions I (anth 1971), #2 (anth 1972), #3 (anth 1973), #4 (anth 1974), #5 (anth 1975), #6 (anth 1976), #7 (anth 1977), #8 (anth 1978), #9 (anth 1979), #10 (anth 1980), #11 (anth 1980) with Marta RANDALL and #12 (anth 1981) with Randall. An associated anthology was The Best of New Dimensions (anth 1979).ND was one of the more experimental anthology series, and introduced a number of new writers. Its regular contributors included Gardner DOZOIS, George Alec EFFINGER, Felix GOTSCHALK and James TIPTREE Jr. #2 contained "Eurema's Dam" by R.A. LAFFERTY, which shared a HUGO as Best Short Story; #3 contained 2 Hugo-winning stories: "The Girl who was Plugged In" by Tiptree and "The Ones who Walk Away from Omelas" by Ursula K. LE GUIN; #11 had "Unicorn Tapestry" by Suzy McKee CHARNAS, which won a NEBULA as Best Novella. Many other stories were award nominees; ND was one of the best original anthology series. [MJE/PN] NEW FUTURIAN, THE The FUTURIAN . NEWMAN, BERNARD (1897-1968) UK writer, mostly of espionage thrillers (some as by Don Betteridge) and detective mysteries, the two genres being perhaps most successfully combined in Maginot Line Murder (1939). The entertainment value of his sf is somewhat minimal, as he used the form primarily to provide platforms for his arguments about WAR, WEAPONS and the political nature of peace. In Armoured Doves (1931) SCIENTISTS combine to end war, as does the hero of Secret Weapon (1941), whose invention of an atomic bomb ends WWII; later, in The Flying Saucer (1948), the same scientist continues his peace campaign by creating an imaginary Martian threat against the world. BN, who appears as himself in this book, acknowledged that its source was Andre MAUROIS's Le Chapitre Suivant (1927 chap; trans as The Next Chapter 1928 chap UK). Further novels combining politics and future-war themes include Shoot! (1949), The Blue Ants: The First Authentic Account of the Russian-Chinese War of 1970 (1962) and Draw the Dragon's Teeth (1967). The Wishful Think (1954) is a borderline-sf story about politicized ESP. [JC]Other works: The Cavalry Went Through (1930); Hosanna (1933); The Boy who Could Fly (1967). NEWMAN, JOHN (? - ) UK research chemist and writer who collaborated with Kenneth BULMER on a long series of science articles for NW and Nebula 1955-61 under the name Kenneth Johns. [JC] NEWMAN, KIM (JAMES) (1959- ) UK writer and broadcaster who remains as well known for his film criticism as for his fiction, though the latter has become increasingly dominant in his output. His film books - Nightmare Movies: Wide Screen Horror Since 1968 (1984 US; rev vt Nightmare Movies: A Critical History of the Horror Film, 1968-1988 1988 UK) and Wild West Movies (1990) - express a generically savvy, sophisticatedly wry vision of their subject matters, a vision also articulated in the weekly reviews he has conducted on tv since 1989. KN began publishing sf with "Dreamers" for Interzone in 1984, rapidly establishing a name for liquidly dense tales of the NEAR FUTURE - or ALTERNATE-WORLD versions of the earlier 20th century - which combine a more or less standard CYBERPUNK idiom with an acute sensitivity to the dream world of the movies, in particular the film noir tradition already mined by authors like William GIBSON; many of these tales appear in The Original Dr. Shade and Other Stories (coll 1994). KN's almost excessive sensitivity to the icons of Hollywood helps distinguish him from his sf models. His first novel, The Night Mayor (1989), potently intensifies the VIRTUAL REALITY claustrophobias of cyberpunk through a plot whose villain, the criminal Daine, has escaped into a MAGIC-REALIST, glowing, alternate-world mental construct peopled by personas from detective films of the 1940s, from which haven he must be flushed by the protagonists. The book clearly and deliberately harks back to Philip K. DICK's darker investigations of the nature of reality and to Roger ZELAZNY's THE DREAM MASTER (1966), though KN's rather impersonal polish may have kept his tale from fully expressing the epistemological vertigo of some of its greater models; and certainly his use of tropes out of the dream-life of US film is, at times, soothingly nostalgic. His second novel, Bad Dreams (1990), replicates much of this material in terms of HORROR, again diminished in its visceral effect by a sense that the author has good-humouredly distanced himself from the products of his imagination. Jago (1991), a full-blown horror tale, once again features an antagonist capable of exercising coercive control over his opponents' inner worlds, in this case by transfiguring their dream self-images into reality, so that - for instance - a farmer anguished by drought and debt becomes a Green Man. Anno Dracula (1992) is set in a RECURSIVE alternate-world 19th-century England which has been transformed by the marriage of Vlad Tepes, Count Dracula, to Queen Victoria.The Quorum (1994) is again horror: four ambitious young men (there are roman a clef elements in their depiction) sell their souls to the devil, who manifests himself as a newspaper magnate.At the same time as writing novels that eat at the consensual world while suggesting that reality could still be addressed in something like comfort, KN also produced, as Jack Yeovil, a series of ties for GAMES WORKSHOP which leapt unashamedly into the explicitly easier environment of the GAME-WORLD. Drachenfels * (1989), Beasts in Velvet * (1991) and Genevieve Undead * (coll of linked stories 1993) are fantasies constructed for the Warhammer enterprise; but the Demon Download sequence - written in the Dark Future series, and comprising "Route 666" * (in Route 666 [1990] ed David PRINGLE), Demon Download * (1990), Krokodil Tears * (1991), Comeback Tour (The Sky Belongs to the Stars) * (1991) and Route 666* (1994) - contains elements of genuine sf, ruthlessly blended into a NEAR-FUTURE/alternate-world/fantasy/horror/punk mix. Both game-worlds and horror as a genre tend to view CONCEPTUAL BREAKTHROUGHS as breakers of the dream, and it is not yet certain that KN is much inclined to engage himself - or Jack Yeovil, under which name has also appeared Orgy of the Blood Parasites (1994) - in the displacements necessary to compose full and unadulterated sf.KN wrote many of the CINEMA and tv entries for the 2nd edition of this encyclopedia. [JC]Other works: Ghastly Beyond Belief: The Science Fiction and Fantasy Book of Quotations (anth 1986) edited with Neil GAIMAN; Horror: 100 Best Books (anth 1988) ed with Stephen Jones, critical essays.See also: BRITISH SCIENCE FICTION AWARD; COMPUTERS; GOTHIC SF; INTERZONE; NEW WORLDS; PSYCHOLOGY. NEW ORIGINAL WONDER WOMAN, THE WONDER WOMAN. NEW PATHWAYS US SEMIPROZINE, full title New Pathways into Science Fiction and Fantasy (Mar 1986-Jan 1991); BEDSHEET-format, bimonthly to #6, later quarterly, then irregular, ed and published Michael G. Adkisson from Texas, 19 issues to Jan 1991. Lively, but struggling for readership, NP mixed fiction, features and COMIC strips, all at the radical end of the sf spectrum, including commentary by MISHA and fiction by Carter SCHOLZ, Lewis SHINER, John SHIRLEY and others, and sometimes experimental, as in a number of reprints from Brian W. ALDISS's Enigmas series of short stories. We can trace no issues later than 1991. [PN] NEWTE, HORACE (WYKEHAM CAN) (1870-1949) UK novelist and controversialist on political matters whose The Master Beast: Being a True Account of the Ruthless Tyranny Inflicted on the British People by Socialism, A.D. 1888-2020 (1907; vt The Red Fury: Britain Under Bolshevism 1919) lives fully up to its subtitle, telling of a young socialist at the turn of the 20th century who first experiences a German INVASION of an unprepared UK, then, after awakening ( SLEEPER AWAKES) from suspended animation, experiences the enormity of a century of socialist rule, with women freed for immorality, George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950) canonized, and thought-control universal. The Ealing Miracle: A Realistic Story (1911) is a fantasy in which two women exchange personalities at the behest of a Christlike stranger and learn about love and deprivation. [JC] NEW TOMORROW PEOPLE, THE TOMORROW PEOPLE, THE. NEWTON, DAVID C. John LYMINGTON. NEWTON, JULIUS P. (? - ) UK writer whose The Forgotten Race (1963) depicts with awkward sincerity the attempts of Venusians and Martians-both survivors of the atomic HOLOCAUST which destroyed the fifth planet - to persuade the humans of Earth not to repeat the tragedy. [JC] NEWTON, W(ILFRID) DOUGLAS (1884-1951) Irish writer who began writing sf with 2 future- WAR novels, War (1914) - prefaced by Robert Hugh BENSON and introduced by Rudyard KIPLING - and The North Afire (1914). Later works include The Golden Cat (1930), The Beggar and Other Stories (coll 1933), which contains a story about guided missiles, "The Joke that Ended War", and Dr Odin (1933), about an attempt to perfect a Nordic "master race". His Savaran series includes two LOST-WORLD stories, "The Great Quest" in I, Savaran (coll 1937) and Savaran and the Great Sands (1939 The Passing Show as "The Devil Comes Aboard"; 1939). He contributed sf to various early magazines, including PEARSON'S MAGAZINE, and to the US PULP MAGAZINES, but only a small proportion has been reprinted in book form. [JE] NEW VOICES ORIGINAL-ANTHOLOGY series, subtitled "The Campbell Award Nominees", #1-#2 from Harcourt Brace & Jovanovich/Jove, #3-#4 from Berkley Books, final vol from BLUEJAY BOOKS; ed George R.R. MARTIN. Each vol contained original novellas written (a few years later in most cases) by the 4-6 finalists from a particular year of the JOHN W. CAMPBELL AWARD for the best new sf or fantasy writer. The books, which contained stories from the award winners for 1973 to 1977 respectively, were New Voices in Science Fiction (anth 1977; vt New Voices I: The Campbell Award Nominees 1978 US), New Voices II (anth 1979), New Voices III (anth 1980), New Voices 4 (anth 1981) and The John W. Campbell Awards Volume 5 (anth 1984). Eventually the publication year fell too far behind the year of the award, and this interesting series lost its point and came to a close. The best-known story published in the series is John VARLEY's "Blue Champagne" (1981) in #4. [PN] NEW WAVE This term, as applied to sf, is borrowed from film criticism, where it was much used in the early 1960s as a translation of the French nouvelle vague to refer to the experimental cinema associated with Jean-Luc Godard (1930- ), Francois Truffaut (1932-1984) and others. (It was also applied to music around 1977 as a synonym for Punk.) The term was first applied to UK sf writers in a 1961 book-review column by P. Schuyler MILLER, and then used - probably first by Christopher PRIEST - to describe the sort of fiction being published in NEW WORLDS. It came to be used more by sf proselytizers than by the writers concerned - especially by Judith MERRIL, in her anthology England Swings SF (anth 1968; cut vt The Space-Time Journal 1972 UK) and elsewhere.The kind of story to which the term refers is in fact rather older than the (late-1960s) term, which anyway has never been defined with any precision. The first writers whose work was later subsumed under the New Wave label were UK, notably Brian W. ALDISS and J.G. BALLARD. These two were publishing stories in NW while it was still under the editorship of John CARNELL, but it was not until Michael MOORCOCK took over with the May/June 1964 issue that the kind of imagistic, highly metaphoric story, inclined more towards psychology and the SOFT SCIENCES than to HARD SF, that both men wrote (in quite different styles) was given a setting where it seemed at home.Traditional GENRE SF had reached a crisis point in both the UK and the USA by the middle 1960s; too many writers were working with the same few traditional sf themes, and both the style and content of sf were becoming generally overpredictable. Many young writers entering the field came to feel, either instantly, like Thomas M. DISCH, or after some years' slogging away at conventional commercial sf, like Harlan ELLISON and Robert SILVERBERG, that genre sf had become a straitjacket; though widely supposed to emphasize change and newness, sf had somehow become conservative. Young Turks, of course, conventionally exaggerate the sins of their seniors, but this time they had a real case. It was not as if the market were shrinking; on the contrary, hardcover publishers were more willing than ever to add sf to their lists. There was no reason to suppose that publishers would not be grateful for sf becoming rather more flexible in style and content.By 1965, then, sf was ripe for change. In fact, many of the so-called sf experiments of the period were not experiments at all, but merely an adoption of narrative strategies, and sometimes ironies, that had long been familiar in the MAINSTREAM novel. In the event, some of the sf writers who felt they now had the freedom to experiment, especially Ballard and perhaps (rather later) Moorcock, were to add something new to the protocols of prose fiction generally; the New Wave may have taken from the Mainstream, but it gave something back in return (this is now a truism of POSTMODERNIST criticism, but it was by no means clear at the time), and certainly New-Wave sf did more than any other kind of sf to break down the barriers between sf and mainstream fiction.Because it was never a formal literary movement-perhaps more a state of mind than anything else-New-Wave writing is difficult to define. Perhaps the fundamental element was the belief that sf could and should be taken seriously as literature. Much of it shared the qualities of the late-1960s counterculture, including an interest in mind-altering DRUGS and oriental RELIGIONS, a satisfaction in violating TABOOS, a marked interest in SEX, a strong involvement in Pop Art and in the MEDIA LANDSCAPE generally, and a pessimism about the future that ran strongly counter to genre sf's traditional OPTIMISM, often focused on the likelihood of DISASTER caused by OVERPOPULATION and interference with the ECOLOGY, as well as by WAR, and a general cynicism about the POLITICS of the US and UK governments (notably the US involvement in Southeast Asia and elsewhere). The element of DYSTOPIA in New-Wave writing was particularly dramatic in the case of John BRUNNER, much of whose earlier work had been relatively cheerful SPACE OPERA. New-Wave sf often concerned itself with the NEAR FUTURE; but it often turned inward, too, and one of the buzzwords of the period was INNER SPACE.Moorcock's NW published most of the notable figures of the New Wave at one time or another, including the work of several US writers who lived for a time in the UK, such as Samuel R. DELANY, Disch, James SALLIS, John T. SLADEK and Pamela ZOLINE. Other US NW contributors often subsumed under the New-Wave label were Ellison, Norman SPINRAD and Roger ZELAZNY; other UK contributors were Barrington J. BAYLEY, M. John HARRISON, Langdon JONES and Charles PLATT, and one would add Christopher PRIEST, although he was less closely associated with NW.Despite the various excesses of NW, whose stories sometimes embraced ENTROPY with a fervour reminiscent of Edgar Allan POE's "The Masque of the Red Death" (1842), there is no doubt that it was influential on sf PUBLISHING generally, and it was not long at all before various US markets were adopting a far less exclusive attitude to what they would or would not publish, a symptom being the appearance of ORIGINAL-ANTHOLOGY series like DANGEROUS VISIONS, NEW DIMENSIONS, ORBIT and QUARK, which included a good quota of experimental work - indeed, they demonstrated clearly (though the point hardly needed to be made) that as much US sf as UK had come to be New Wave in style and content.All this naturally horrified some of sf's more conservative spokesmen, as a glance at sf histories written by David KYLE, Sam MOSKOWITZ and Donald A. WOLLHEIM will demonstrate. Wollheim commented, in The Universe Makers (1971), that "the readers and writers that used to dream of galactic futures now got their kicks out of experimental styles of writing, the free discussion of sex, the overthrow of all standards and morals (since, if the world is going to end, what merit had these things?)". It is easy to feel some sympathy with the conservative viewpoint in one respect; with few exceptions the New-Wave writers avoided HARD SF, and it must have seemed to some observers of the scene as if the very thing that most centrally defined sf by its presence-the science (to simplify) - was disappearing.But in fact the battle was quickly over (though hard sf never quite regained its former position of prominence). The better New-Wave sf writers were soon accepted by sf readers generally, and often found an audience outside sf as well; the bad writers (some were terrible) mostly fell by the wayside. By the 1970s there no longer seemed very much point to the term, although newly prominent figures like Gardner DOZOIS, Barry N. MALZBERG, Joanna RUSS, James TIPTREE Jr and Gene WOLFE clearly wrote in a style that would have been called New Wave only a year or so earlier. Later in the decade all sorts of quite different new writers emerged who had clearly absorbed the positive lessons of the New Wave, along with some of its attitudes, ranging from Michael BISHOP and John VARLEY in the USA to Ian WATSON in the UK.There can be no doubt that during the late 1960s genre sf found new freedoms, while the market showed a greater readiness to accept sophisticated writing. As with all ideological arguments, one uses whatever ammunition comes conveniently to hand, and it suited many friends (and foes) to see the New Wave as a kind of homogeneous, monolithic politico-literary movement. It was never that in the minds of most of its writers, many of whom resented being categorized. Disch commented, in an open letter published in 1978: "I have no opinion of the 'New Wave' in sf, since I don't believe that that was ever a meaningful classification. If you mean to ask - do I feel solidarity with all writers who have ever been lumped together under that heading - certainly I do not."It was common during the 1970s and 1980s, especially for those (like Disch) who resisted stereotyping, to dismiss the importance of the New Wave, or even to deny that it ever existed. From the perspective of the 1990s, however, it seems fair to say that the New Wave was real and liberating; New-Wave excesses-including its sometimes miasmic gloom - have largely dropped away in subsequent sf, while the New Wave's grasp of the complexities of the world has remained. The 1960s were indeed a maturing period for genre sf; if we see the 1960s as sf's puberty, then we also have an explanation of why some of it, at the time, was so irritating (especially in its tone of voice): most adolescents are. One reason why the perspective of the 1990s is useful is that we have, meanwhile, been able to observe yet another New Wave in action: CYBERPUNK.Two of the many anthologies of New Wave sf are The New SF (anth 1969) ed Langdon Jones and The New Tomorrows (anth 1971) ed Norman Spinrad. A book on the subject is The Entropy Exhibition: Michael Moorcock and the UK "New Wave" (1983) by Colin GREENLAND. [PN]See also: ARTS. NEW WORLDS The leading UK sf magazine (an ORIGINAL-ANTHOLOGY series for two sections of its chequered career), publishing 218 issues over an intermittent career of nearly 50 years ([July] 1946-current), but including a 12-year hiatus; 12 of these issues have been in book form. NW, though it had volume numbers up to #177, has always been numbered consecutively (in its magazine incarnations), the numeration not beginning again with each volume number. #1-#5 were undated.3 PULP-size issues were published irregularly by Pendulum in 1946-7 under the editorship of an sf fan, John CARNELL (NW was a development from a pre-WWII FANZINE [1936-9] called first NOVAE TERRAE and then New Worlds, the last 4 issues of which were ed Carnell). #1 was issued twice with different covers; #1 with the original cover had not sold well, but it did better the second time round (the second version used the same cover as #2).Nova Publications, a publishing group formed by UK sf fans who used to meet at the White Horse pub in London, revived this somewhat tentative 1946-7 magazine in 1949 as a DIGEST. Carnell remained in charge until #141 (Apr 1964), after which the title was taken over by Roberts & Vinter, publishers of Compact Books, who issued it in a pocketbook (paperback-size) edition, ed Michael MOORCOCK. After #172 (Mar 1967) it was published by Moorcock under the auspices of the Arts Council in a stapled 8in x 11in (approx A4) format, rising to BEDSHEET-size with #179. In this incarnation NW suffered financial difficulties, compounded when the leading UK retail-newsagent chain, W.H. Smith & Sons Ltd, refused to carry copies for various reasons, in particular the use of "obscene" language in Norman SPINRAD's BUG JACK BARRON (Dec 1967-July 1968; 1969). The last issue to be properly released was #200 (Apr 1970), though in 1971 #201, a special final, "Good-Taste" issue with retrospective index went out to subscribers. During this period Moorcock relaxed his control over the editorship, various members of his coterie taking a hand in the issues released in 1969; Charles PLATT was editor #197-#200. For the greater part of the period from #22 to #200 the magazine maintained a monthly schedule with only occasional lapses.In 1971 the title was revived again, this time as a series of original anthologies (numbered from #1 again, although the original numeration was tacitly maintained) published in paperback by Sphere Books (#1-#8) and Corgi Books (#9 and #10). These were New Worlds #1 (anth 1971; vt New Worlds Quarterly 1 1971 US) ed Moorcock; #2 (anth 1971; vt New Worlds Quarterly 2 1971 US) ed Moorcock; #3 (anth 1972; vt New Worlds Quarterly 3 1972 US) ed Moorcock; #4 (anth 1972; vt New Worlds Quarterly 4 1972 US) ed Moorcock; #5 (anth 1973) ed Moorcock; #6 (anth 1973; vt New Worlds Quarterly 5 1974 US) ed Moorcock with Charles Platt; #7 (anth 1974) ed Hilary BAILEY with Platt; #8 (anth 1975) ed Bailey; #9 (anth 1975) ed Bailey; and #10 (anth 1976) ed Bailey.When the book series was cancelled, NW was defunct, but the fervour of its supporters brought about yet another resuscitation in 1978, with #212 ed Moorcock in a FANZINE-style format, and #213-#216 ed by various supporters professionally published, the last 2 being in 1979. This final incarnation, published by Charles Partington in Manchester, was more a generalized underground magazine than an sf magazine; it contained many satirical graphics. #214 was titled in Russian. #215 ed David BRITTON was marked "limited edition of one thousand copies".In 1991 David S. GARNETT, with Moorcock's approval and with Moorcock as Consulting Editor, initiated yet another incarnation of NW, this time in anthology book form, as New Worlds (anth 1991), New Worlds 2 (anth 1992), New Worlds 3 (anth 1993) and New Worlds 4 (anth 1994) all ed Garnett, published by GOLLANCZ. These volumes were numbered #217, #218, #219 and #220 according to the original sequence, which was again explicitly acknowledged. The financial results were disappointing, and Gollancz cancelled after the fourth, leaving Garnett currently looking for a new publisher.Under Carnell NW was the primary force in shaping a tradition in UK magazine sf, and under Moorcock its name became the banner of what was dubbed the NEW WAVE. Carnell provided a stable domestic market for the leading UK writers and played a considerable role in the careers of Brian W. ALDISS, J.G. BALLARD, John BRUNNER, Kenneth BULMER, Colin KAPP, E.C. TUBB and James WHITE. He encouraged a species of sf more sober in tone than much US material, with the emphasis on problem-solving; an excellent example of the species is James White's Sector General series. In publishing ambitious work by Aldiss and most of Ballard's early work Carnell began a shift in emphasis toward psychological and existential sf ( FABULATION; PSYCHOLOGY), which also showed in his choice of reprints from US authors: Philip K. DICK's Time Out of Joint (Dec 1959-Feb 1960; 1959) and Theodore STURGEON's Venus Plus X (Jan-Apr 1961; 1960). Most of the US magazines were also shifting their emphasis away from the "hardware" of sf, but retained a kind of brashness not evident in NW save in the work of those authors most heavily influenced by pulp sf.Moorcock's editorship was a good deal more flamboyant than Carnell's, and he was as polemical in the material which provided the environment for the fiction as John W. CAMPBELL Jr had been in ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION during the early 1940s, though to very different ends, juxtaposing fiction with factual social comment, visual collage, even concrete poetry, in a deliberate attempt to lose the GENRE-SF image and to place speculative fiction in a context of rapid social change, and radical art generally. Apart from his own avant-garde material (often written as James Colvin), he promoted inventive UK writers like Barrington J. BAYLEY, Langdon JONES, David I. MASSON and, later, Ian WATSON, and recruited some US writers - notably Thomas M. DISCH and John T. SLADEK. Moorcock's early Jerry Cornelius pieces appeared in NW, as did his NEBULA-winning "Behold, the Man" (Sep 1966; exp as BEHOLD THE MAN 1969). The large-size version serialized, in addition to Spinrad's BUG JACK BARRON (noted above), CAMP CONCENTRATION by Disch (July-Sep 1967; 1968), and featured 2 more Nebula-winning short pieces: Samuel R. DELANY's "Time Considered as a Helix of Semi-Precious Stones" (Dec 1968), which also won a HUGO, and Harlan ELLISON's "A Boy and His Dog" (Apr 1969). Under Moorcock NW established in its review columns a particularly trenchant style of criticism which continued in the paperback anthologies, much of it written by John CLUTE and M. John HARRISON. It cannot be said that Moorcock's programme met with wide-ranging approval, especially among those readers attuned to the more modest and traditional aspects of Carnell's policy, and it certainly lacked Carnell's sense of balance, but its contribution to sf in the 1960s was considerable-the paths beaten by the NW writers are now much more generally in use.Garnett's annualNW anthology of the 1990s could not find a secure market niche, though the contents were impressive, featuring good stories by, among others, Storm CONSTANTINE, Paul Di Filippo, Ian MCDONALD, Kim NEWMAN and Moorcock himself, and also an annual round-up of the year's sf by John CLUTE. Although Garnett sensibly avoided nostalgia for the 1960s/1970s, the enterprise seems to have been doomed anyway.A US edition of NW, with Hans Stefan SANTESSON credited as editor, ran for 5 issues Mar-July 1960, selected mainly from the 1959 NW with some stories from other sources. Some unsold issues of the Roberts & Vinter NW were bound up in twos and threes and sold under the title SF REPRISE, these being SF Reprise 1 (anth 1966) containing #144/#145; SF Reprise 2 (anth 1966) containing #149/#150; and SF Reprise 5 (anth 1967) containing #149-#151.There were many derived anthologies. Carnell ed The Best From New Worlds Science Fiction (anth 1955), and his Lambda 1 and Other Stories (anth 1964; UK and US contents vary) was also selected from NW. Moorcock ed The Best of New Worlds (anth 1965), Best S.F. Stories from New Worlds (anth 1967), Best Stories from New Worlds 2 (anth 1968; vt Best S.F. Stories from New Worlds 2 US), Best S.F. Stories from New Worlds 3 (anth 1968), Best S.F. Stories from New Worlds 4 (anth 1969), Best S.F. Stories from New Worlds 5 (anth 1969), Best S.F. Stories from New Worlds 6 (anth 1970), Best S.F. Stories from New Worlds 7 (anth 1971) and Best S.F. Stories from New Worlds 8 (anth 1974), as well as the retrospective New Worlds: An Anthology (anth 1983). These series anthologies also sometimes used stories from SCIENCE FANTASY Impulse. The first 6 of the 8 Best S.F. Stories from New Worlds vols were also published in the USA. [BS/PN]See also: ENTROPY; TABOOS. NEW WORLDS QUARTERLY NEW WORLDS. NEW WRITINGS IN SF ORIGINAL-ANTHOLOGY series begun 1964 by John CARNELL after he relinquished the editorship of NEW WORLDS and SCIENCE FANTASY; it was published by Dennis Dobson to #20, then by Sidgwick & Jackson. The UK paperback editions (all published by Corgi) sometimes preceded hardcover publication, and in the case of #30, the last in the series, there was no hardcover. NWISF carried on the tradition of Carnell's New Worlds: predominantly middle-of-the-road sf, leavened with occasional more adventurous pieces and saved from staleness by his willingness to publish new writers. Regular contributors included not only Colin KAPP (chiefly with his Unorthodox Engineers series), Douglas R. MASON (under his own name and as John Rankine), John Rackham (J.T. PHILLIFENT) and James WHITE (including stories in his Sector General series), but also Keith ROBERTS, while M. John HARRISON and Christopher PRIEST both published early short stories in its pages. NWISF was intended to be a quarterly, but later its appearances became erratic. New Writings in SF 1 (anth 1964) was followed by #2 (anth 1964), #3 (anth 1965), #4 (anth 1965), #5 (anth 1965), #6 (anth 1965), #7 (anth 1966), #8 (anth 1966), #9 (anth 1966), #10 (anth 1967), #11 (anth 1967), #12 (anth 1968), #13 (anth 1968), #14 (anth 1969), #15 (anth 1969), #16 (anth 1970), #17 (anth 1970), #18 (anth 1971), #19 (anth 1971), #20 (anth 1972) and #21 (anth 1972), this last being published after Carnell's death. 9 vols of this series were published in the USA by BANTAM BOOKS 1966-72, with some difference in contents after the first 6: the US #7 drew from the UK #7, #8 and #9; US #8 drew from UK #10, #11 and #12; US #9 drew from UK #12, #13, #14 and #15.The series remained alive after Carnell's death, its editorship being taken over by Kenneth BULMER from #22 (anth 1973). This brought about no substantial change in policy, although one feature of Bulmer's NWISF was Brian W. ALDISS's Enigmas series. New authors to debut in the later issues included David LANGFORD, Charles Partington ( NEW WORLDS; SOMETHING ELSE) and Cherry WILDER, and early stories by Robert P. HOLDSTOCK and Ian WATSON also appeared around this time. Bulmer edited #23 (anth 1973), #24 (anth 1974), #25 (anth 1975), #26 (anth 1975), #27 (anth 1976), #28 (anth 1976), #29 (anth 1976) and #30 (anth 1978). At this point the market for ANTHOLOGIES was looking even gloomier than usual in the UK, and the series ended.Seldom groundbreaking but always reliable, NWISF did not have any impact comparable to the major original-anthology series in the US (e.g., ORBIT, UNIVERSE), which mostly began somewhat later. Associated anthologies are The Best from New Writings in SF: First Selection (anth 1971) ed Carnell and 3 omnibus volumes: New Writings in SF: Special 1 (anth 1975), containing #21 and #23; #2 (anth 1978), containing #26 and #29; and #3 (anth 1978), containing #27 and #28. [MJE/PN] NEW YORK REVIEW OF SCIENCE FICTION US critical magazine, published Dragon Press, Pleasantville, New York; ed (in 1995) by Kathryn CRAMER, L.W. CURREY, Samuel R. DELANY, David G. HARTWELL, Robert J. Killheffer, Gordon Van Gelder and Donald G. Keller; current; monthly, beginning with the trial issue (#0) Aug 1988 and #1 Sep 1988. It had reached #79 by Mar 1995. Too highbrow and professional - many of its staff being sf/fantasy writers and publishers - to be called a FANZINE, too informal to be called an academic journal, NYROSF is a somewhat unusual critical SEMIPROZINE. It publishes general articles of remarkably varying quality on sf, as well as some of the best long reviews in the field. Its tone is far from homogeneous; it moves disconcertingly (and fast) from chatty to pompous, and there is something to irritate everyone. But, as one might expect from the very well informed staff producing its 24 large-format pages a month with astonishing regularity, it is also irreplaceable. Certainly its coverage of GENRE SF and FANTASY is both wider and deeper than anything in the academic journals with the possible exception of FOUNDATION: THE REVIEW OF SCIENCE FICTION. [PN] NEW ZEALAND One of the last lands discovered by Europeans, New Zealand was a convenient setting for moral and UTOPIAN tales. The anonymous Travels of Hildebrand Bowman, by Himself (1778 UK) anticipates Samuel BUTLER's satirical Erewhon (1872) and Erewhon Revisited (1901). Utopian fiction by New Zealanders includes Anno Domini 2000, or Woman's Destiny (1889 UK) by the NZ Premier Sir Julius VOGEL, a dreary novel of a UK/US empire formed through dynastic marriage, and Godfrey SWEVEN's difficult novel sequence Riallaro: The Archipelago of Exiles (1901 US) and Limanora: The Island of Progress (1903 US), the latter described by E.F. BLEILER as "probably the greatest of all early utopian novels". Some 19th-century works, mostly published in England, are extrapolated from a remark of Lord Macaulay (1800-1859) in Critical and Historical Essays (coll 1843): ". . . when some traveller from New Zealand shall, in the midst of a vast solitude, take his stand on a broken arch of London Bridge to sketch the ruins of St Paul's." The UK writer Francis Carr's Archimago (1864), partly set in a ruined London of 1964, is an example.A more popular taste is seen in the end-of-the-century boom in romance. The Great Romance (1881) by "The Inhabitant" is NZ's first space story. The heroes in Ajor's The Secret of Mt Cook (1894) revive frozen people; in Hedged with Divinities (1895) by Edward Tregear (1846-1931) all men die; the subject of The Elixir of Life (1907 UK) by William Satchell (1860-1942) is self-evident.A puritan realist mode dominates NZ MAINSTREAM fiction and criticism, yet writers within the tradition often use sf and fantasy tropes. Robyn Hyde's Wednesday's Children (1937 UK) is fantasy; Maurice GEE has written fantasies for children; M.K. JOSEPH wrote the speculative The Hole in the Zero (1967 UK) and The Time of Achamoth (1977); Janet FRAME's metafictions Scented Garden for the Blind (1963) and Living in the Maniototo (1979 US) are fantastic; and the dystopian Smith's Dream (1971) - filmed as Sleeping Dogs (see below) - by C.K. STEAD tells of a future military dictatorship. Current writers such as Russell Haley, Marilyn Duckworth (1935- ) and Rachel McAlpine (1940- ) are adept at using sf devices for mainstream audiences.Works marketed as sf include Adrian Geddes's The Rim of Eternity (1964), in which aliens invade, Colin GIBSON's tale of nuclear winter, The Pepper Leaf (1971 UK), and the novels of Hugh COOK, which are fantasy. Peter Hooper's fantasies and Craig HARRISON's thrillers have escaped the genre label. Phillip MANN and Cherry WILDER (who now lives in Germany) are the best-known contemporary NZ sf writers, along with Sandi HALL. NZ sf in the CINEMA started with the now lost A Message from Mars (1909), based on Richard Ganthony's popular 1899 UK stage play, which he and Lester LURGAN novelized (1912), the play itself being published much later (1924). There was no further NZ sf film until the successful Sleeping Dogs (1977) dir Roger Donaldson, a NEAR-FUTURE political thriller envisaging a totalitarian government. The industry flourished from this time until the mid-1980s with government subsidies, its sf titles including the routine, post- HOLOCAUST Battletruck (1982), the violent, lunatic brain-surgeon-and-his-experimental-subjects story Death Warmed Up (1984), the sf thriller DEAD KIDS (1981; vt Strange Behavior) and The QUIET EARTH (1985); then subsidies were withdrawn. Subsequent films, such as the deliberately disgusting BAD TASTE (1987) and the TIME-TRAVEL fantasy The Navigator: A Medieval Odyssey (1988), plus tv shows such as Space Knights (1988), seem to show that, in the visual media, NZ sf and fantasy must cross genre boundaries if they are to be viable. [MM] NEXUS US COMIC-book series (1981-91), 80 issues, published first by Capital Comics and later by First Comics, created by writer Mike Baron and artist Steve Rude. Set in the 25th century, when Earth is the political hub of the interstellar society known as the Cohesive Web and humanity just one of many intelligent races, the comic had as title character a superpowered agent of vengeance, driven to kill tyrants and criminals by targeting them with dreams. N explored the moral ambiguity of execution and the often logical motivations behind the atrocities of those killed by the hero; but it also had a lighter side, much humour deriving from Nexus's problems in dealing with his homeworld, Ylum. N began with 3 black-and-white issues, changed to colour with #4, was cancelled by Capital with #6 and picked up by First Comics from #7 a year later, in 1985. Declining sales - partly due to long absences by Rude and the poor reception given to the fill-in artists - led to N's demise in 1991. First Comics have published reprints of #1-#26; spin-offs have been Nexus Legends (1989-91; 4 issues) and the one-shot Nexus Files. [RH] NEY, FERENC [r] HUNGARY. NICHOLLS, PETER (DOUGLAS) (1939- ) Australian writer and editor, critic and historian of sf, resident in the UK 1970-88, co-editor of this volume. He became first Administrator of the SCIENCE FICTION FOUNDATION 1971-7, and edited its journal FOUNDATION: THE REVIEW OF SCIENCE FICTION 1974-8, part of this work being republished as Foundation Numbers 1-8: March 1972-March 1975 (anth 1978). PN ed Science Fiction at Large (anth 1976; vt Explorations of the Marvellous 1978), collecting essays written for a 1975 sf symposium by Philip K. DICK, Thomas M. DISCH, Alan GARNER, Ursula K. LE GUIN, himself and others. His major work, of which he was General Editor and John CLUTE Associate Editor, has been The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction (1979); vt The Science Fiction Encyclopedia US; rev 1993 with Clute and PN co-editors), for which he won the first Non-Fiction HUGO (1980), also winning a PILGRIM AWARD in that year for services to sf scholarship. The Science in Science Fiction (1983), ed PN and written with David LANGFORD and Brian M. STABLEFORD, is a study of sf's scientific content. Fantastic Cinema (1984; vt The World of Fantastic Films 1984 US), PN's first solo book, is a critical history of sf, horror and fantasy films; it was shortlisted for the British Film Institute Award for Best Film Book. PN has also worked as an academic in English literature (1962-8, 1971-7), scripted tv documentaries, been Harkness Fellow in Film-making (1968-70) in the USA, worked as a publisher's editor (1982-3), often broadcast film and book reviews on BBC Radio from 1974 and published much sf criticism - generally waspish but unsnobbish - in newspapers and magazines. [PN]See also: BIBLIOGRAPHIES; CINEMA; COLLECTIONS; CRITICAL AND HISTORICAL WORKS ABOUT SF; DEFINITIONS OF SF; PROTO SCIENCE FICTION; SF IN THE CLASSROOM; SENSE OF WONDER. NICHOLS, LEIGH Dean R. KOONTZ. NICHOLS, ROBERT (MALISE BOWYER) (1893-1944) UK poet and playwright whose lyrical talent did not survive the end of WWI; he wrote plays and verse epics thereafter. The Smile of the Sphinx (1920 chap), a fantasy, was later revised and assembled in Romances of Idea, Volume One: Fantastica: Being the Smile of the Sphinx and Other Tales of Imagination (coll 1923). The largest item in that volume is the book-length "Golgotha & Co", set some time after a second world war and assaulting capitalist dreams of the Earthly paradise; the Wandering Jew (who is also a defiant Antichrist) appears and the Messiah is recrucified (off-stage). No second volume of the "Romances" appeared. Wings Over Europe: A Dramatic Extravaganza on a Pressing Theme (1929 US) with Maurice Browne (1881-1955), a play, features the son of a UK prime minister who gains the secret of atomic energy but is killed in an accident before he can do the harm he intends. [JC]Other work: Under the Yew (1928 chap), a marginal fantasy. NICHOLSON, J.S. [r] ANONYMOUS SF AUTHORS. NICK CARTER Nick CARTER. NICOLSON, [Sir] HAROLD (GEORGE) (1886-1968) UK diplomat, MP and writer, married to V. SACKVILLE-WEST, knighted in 1953. His sf novel Public Faces (1932), set in 1939, describes the international conflicts aroused through the UK knowing how to make atomic bombs, developing a ballistic missile, destroying part of Florida in error, and insisting on world nuclear disarmament. [JC]See also: END OF THE WORLD; NUCLEAR POWER; POLITICS; WEAPONS. NICOLSON, MARJORIE HOPE (1894-1981) US scholar and university professor, with a PhD from Yale. Her useful pioneering study in PROTO SCIENCE FICTION was Voyages to the Moon (1949) - subtitled "Discourse on Voyages to the Moon, the Sun, the Planets and Other Worlds generally, written by divers authors from the earliest times to the time of the First Balloon Ascensions made during the years 1783-84 with remarks on their sources and an epilogue about a few selected later works of this kind; to which is appended a Bibliography of 133 works up to the year 1784 with an added listing of 58 books and articles dealing with the theme itself and with related sciences". The works dealt with are primarily English. MHN was the second winner of the PILGRIM AWARD, in 1971. [PN]See also: CRITICAL AND HISTORICAL WORKS ABOUT SF; MOON. NIEBO ZOWIET Roger CORMAN; PLANETA BUR. NIEKAS US FANZINE (1962-current) ed from New Hampshire by Ed Meskys alone for the first 5 issues, when it was a small, personal fanzine, then with Felice Rolfe and Anne Chatland from #6, Chatland dropping out after #8. Under Meskys and Rolfe, N established itself as a large and variegated magazine containing a mixture of articles, but with particular emphasis on FANTASY. Al Halevy's "Glossary of Middle Earth" was first published in N. N ceased publication with #20 in 1968, then was revived with #21 in 1977. Currently Meskys, now blind, is listed as editor-in-chief and Mike Bastraw as editor and designer.Contributors to N have included Piers ANTHONY, Isaac ASIMOV, Anthony BOUCHER, Algis BUDRYS, Avram DAVIDSON, Philip K. DICK, Raymond Z. GALLUN, Jack GAUGHAN, Harry HARRISON, Sam MOSKOWITZ, Andre NORTON, Alexei PANSHIN, Jerry POURNELLE, Donald A. WOLLHEIM and Roger ZELAZNY. N won the HUGO for Best Fanzine in 1967. [PR/RH] NIELSEN, NIELS E. [r] DENMARK. NIGHBERT, DAVID F(RANKLIN) (1948- ) US writer who began publishing sf with his Stryker sequence-Timelapse (1988) and Clouds of Magellan (1991)-which engages its thrillerish protagonist first in a complicated TIME-PARADOX tale whose villain tricks him into falling in love with his own mother, and second in a traditional search for the long-gone ALIEN "Builders" responsible for an enormous artifact ( BIG DUMB OBJECTS) called The Wheel. Strikezone (1989), an associational thriller, again shows DFN's competence but also a disturbing tendency to rifle his genres for material without showing much concern for establishing a bailiwick of his own. [JC] NIGHT CALLER, THE (vt Blood Beast from Outer Space) Film (1965). Armitage Films. Dir John Gilling, starring John Saxon, Maurice Denham, Patricia Haines, Alfred Burke. Screenplay Jim O'Connolly, from The Night Callers (1960) by Frank R. CRISP. 84 mins. B/w.Very-low-budget UK film, made with some genuine style by Gilling, who had previously made good horror films for Hammer. However, the story - an ALIEN aims to provide women (whom he finds by advertising for models) for genetic experiments back home on Ganymede - is pure pulp. The alien is tracked down by two SCIENTISTS (he strangles the female one, well played by Haines) who have come across his energy transmitter. The film should not be confused, under its US title, with the US NIGHT OF THE BLOOD BEAST (1958) or the British The Blood Beast Terror (1967). [PN] NIGHT GALLERY ROD SERLING'S NIGHT GALLERY. NIGHT OF THE BIG HEAT (vt Island of the Burning Damned) Film (1967). Planet. Dir Terence Fisher, starring Christopher Lee, Peter Cushing, Patrick Allen, Sarah Lawson, Jane Merrow. Screenplay Ronald Liles, Pip Baker, Jane Baker, based on The Night of the Big Heat (1959) by John LYMINGTON. 97 mins, cut to 94 mins. Colour.An island off the UK coast experiences a freak heatwave, during which there are a number of mysterious killings involving fire. The culprits turn out to be ALIENS who resemble giant fried eggs and are attracted to any source of heat. At the climax the few survivors are saved when a thunderstorm destroys the aliens: water, it seems, dissolves them. Lymington's pulp novel was certainly not rational sf, but it built up an atmosphere of claustrophobic tension which the film lacks. [JB] NIGHT OF THE BLOOD BEAST Film (1958). Balboa/AIP. Dir Bernard Kowalski, starring Michael Emmet, Angela Greene, John Baer. Screenplay Martin Varno, based on a story by Gene Corman. 65 mins. B/w.In this typically cheap 1950s Corman production (the executive producer was Roger CORMAN; his brother Gene produced it from his own story), a rocket pilot has cells implanted in his body by a deeply unconvincing-looking ALIEN who returns to Earth with him. Embryos grow inside him, making him the first (but not the last) effectively pregnant movie astronaut. Several plot twists suggest an attempt to cash in on the popularity of The QUATERMASS XPERIMENT (1955). [JB/PN] NIGHT OF THE COMET Film (1984). Atlantic 9000/Film Development Fund. Dir Thom Eberhardt, starring Catherine Mary Stewart, Kelli Maroney, Robert Beltran, Mary Woronov. Screenplay Eberhardt. 100 mins cut to 95 mins for UK release. Colour.This likable exploitation movie, witty throughout, opens with the light from a comet (an idea stolen from John WYNDHAM's Day of the Triffids [1951]) destroying almost everybody by turning them into red dust or, in less severe cases, cannibal zombies. Two spunky teenage girls survive, team up with a truck driver, raid department stores for fashionable clothes, destroy the evil government agency that wants to kill them for serum, do disco dances and shoot submachine guns. As one might expect from the producers of Valley Girl (1984), the women are shown as self-reliant, intelligent, unmotivated and vain. [PN] NIGHT OF THE LEPUS Film (1972). Lyles/MGM. Dir William F. Claxton, starring Stuart Whitman, Janet Leigh, Rory Calhoun, DeForest Kelley. Screenplay Don Holliday, Gene R. Kearney, based on The Year of the Angry Rabbit (1964) by Russell BRADDON. 88 mins. Colour.Braddon's satirical novel was set in Australia, but the film dropped the SATIRE and switched the setting to Arizona. A test rabbit full of experimental hormones breaks loose and breeds with local rabbits. Suddenly hordes of gigantic carnivorous rabbits are attacking people, eating horses and demolishing houses. The film is endearing for its unintentional humour, enhanced by the commendably serious if wooden performances of all concerned, rabbits included. [JB/PN]See also: MONSTER MOVIES. NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD 1. Film (1968). Image 10 Productions/Walter Reade-Continental. Dir George A. ROMERO, starring Duane Jones, Judith O'Dea, Karl Hardman, Keith Wayne. Screenplay John A. Russo. 96 mins, cut to 90 mins. B/w.This unrelenting and downbeat HORROR film, Romero's astonishing debut, tells of a horde of walking, cannibalistic corpses who lay siege to an isolated house. Their revival is explained by "space radiation" brought to Earth on an aborted rocket launch, but the absurdity of this barely detracts from the concentrated Gothic PARANOIA of the action, whose intensity won the film a cult following, especially from those who saw the savagery - and helplessness - of both ordinary people and zombies (whose bite infects the victim with zombiism) as symbolic of the horrors of the Vietnam War. NOTLD was independently financed and made during weekends by a small group based in Pittsburgh. The sequels, making up a Living Dead trilogy, are DAWN OF THE DEAD (1978) and DAY OF THE DEAD (1985).2. Film (1990). 21st Century/George Romero/Menahem Golan/Columbia. Dir Tom Savini, starring Tony Todd, Patricia Tallman, Tom Towles, McKee Anderson, William Butler, Katie Finneran. Screenplay George ROMERO, based on the 1968 screenplay by Romero and Russo. 89 mins. Colour.It was a risky and possibly cynical undertaking to remake, in colour, the 1968 b/w classic. However, while the original remains the stronger, this was an accomplished feature-film debut for Savini, best known for his ghoulish special make-up on Romero's zombie movies. Generally the story-line of the original is followed closely, but there is a greater emphasis on the female character, Barbara (Tallman), who does not succumb so quickly to frozen fear as did her original. The 1968 film made a virtue of its ramshackle production values, with a cinema verite style resulting from a shoestring budget; the greater smoothness of the remake makes it strangely less compelling - more obviously a movie. [PN/JB]See also: CINEMA; MONSTER MOVIES; SUPERNATURAL CREATURES. NIGHT OF THE SILICATES ISLAND OF TERROR. NIGHT SHADOWS MUTANT. NIGHT STALKER, THE KOLCHAK: THE NIGHT STALKER. NIGHT STRANGLER, THE KOLCHAK: THE NIGHT STALKER. NIGHT THAT PANICKED AMERICA, THE Made-for-tv film (1975). ABC TV. Dir Joseph Sargent, starring Vic Morrow, Cliff De Young, Michael Constantine, Paul Shenar. Screenplay Nicholas Meyer, Anthony Wilson, based partly on the text of the original 1938 radio play WAR OF THE WORLDS by Howard Koch. 100 mins, cut to 78 mins. Colour.The film recreates the 1938 Orson Welles broadcast of an updated version of H.G. WELLS's THE WAR OF THE WORLDS (1898) which, due to its news-bulletin format, caused many US citizens to believe that a Martian invasion was actually taking place. When the film concentrates on events inside the broadcast studio it is fascinating, conjuring up a realistic picture of work in 1930s US RADIO; but when it shows the resulting panic it degenerates into a routine DISASTER movie with hackneyed characters reacting in predictable ways. [JB] NIHIL [s] P. Schuyler MILLER. NI KUANG [r] CHINESE SF. NILSON, PETER [r] SCANDINAVIA. 1984 Film (1955). Holiday Film Productions. Dir Michael Anderson, starring Edmond O'Brien, Michael Redgrave, Jan Sterling, Donald Pleasence. Screenplay William P. Templeton, Ralph Bettinson, based on NINETEEN EIGHTY-FOUR (1949) by George ORWELL. 91 mins. B/w.After the success of a 1954 BBC TV production of NINETEEN EIGHTY-FOUR, scripted by Nigel KNEALE and starring Peter Cushing (the second - live - performance won the biggest UK tv audience since the Queen's coronation) it was inevitable that a film would follow. But, for all its technical limitations, the BBC adaptation was superior to the lifeless film, which starred a badly miscast O'Brien as Winston Smith; Anderson has a lame track record with sf ( LOGAN'S RUN). This version of the celebrated totalitarian nightmare focuses on the love affair between Smith and Julia, and leaves Orwell's grim SATIRE foggy and simplified. Two endings were shot, one for the USA and one for the UK. The former followed the book, with Winston and his lover successfully brainwashed and now devoted supporters of Big Brother; the UK version had them overcoming their conditioning, defiantly dying in a hail of bullets, and incidentally vitiating Orwell's theme.For the 1984 remake NINETEEN EIGHTY-FOUR. [JB/PN] NINETEEN EIGHTY-FOUR Film (1984). Umbrella-Rosenblum/Virgin Cinema Films. Dir Michael Radford, starring John Hurt, Richard Burton, Suzanna Hamilton, Cyril Cusack. Screenplay Radford, Jonathan Gems, based on NINETEEN EIGHTY-FOUR (1949) by George ORWELL. 110 mins. Colour.This second film version ( 1984 for the first) is better acted and more intelligent than its predecessor, but still stresses the romantic interest, substituting an orthodoxly liberal lovers-against-the-system sadness for Orwell's sheer savagery and irony. It was eight weeks into shooting before Burton was cast as the treacherous O'Brien, Smith's torturer, and he seems a little cut off from the rest of the film. [PN] 1990 UK tv serial (1977-8). BBC TV. Prod Prudence Fitzgerald. Regular cast included Edward Woodward, Barbara Kellerman, Robert Lang, Tony Doyle, Lisa Harrow. Most episodes written Wilfred Greatorex (1921- ), who devised the series, or Edmund Ward. 16 55min episodes. Colour.Reflecting the fears of the middle classes in the 1970s, this serial, set in a socialist UK of 1990, warns of what could happen if the welfare state continued in its present direction. The country is run by the PCD, an all-powerful bureaucracy that incorporates the trade-union movement within its machinery; the only people free of its control are a select elite possessing Privilege Cards. The story concerns the efforts of a lone journalist (Woodward) to outwit the system in such ways as helping people to escape to the USA, still a bastion of freedom. 1990's political statement, which Orwell made much more powerfully in NINETEEN EIGHTY-FOUR (1949), plays second fiddle to the thriller elements. The novelization by Maureen Gregson (with Greatorex also credited) is 1990 * (1977). [JB] 1990: BRONX WARRIORS 1990: I GUERRIERI DEL BRONX. 1990: I GUERRIERI DEL BRONX (vt Bronx Warriors; vt 1990: Bronx Warriors) Film (1982). Deaf Film International. Dir Enzo G. Castellari, starring Mark Gregory, Vic Morrow, Chris Connelly, Stefania Girolami, Fred Williamson. Screenplay Castellari, Dardano Sacchetti, Elisa Livia Briganti. 84 mins. Colour.Inspired by Walter Hill's The Warriors (1979) and John CARPENTER's ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK (1981), this Italian film is set in a future-Hell New York overrun by street gangs, with a psychotic law-enforcer (Morrow) trying to rescue a corporate princess (Girolami) from a biker hero named Trash (Gregory). Essentially silly, it has three exploitation veterans (Morrow, Connelly, Williamson) to make up for its pouting hero, and throws in an array of intriguing minor characters - a sadomasochist Morticia-Addams figure, a tap-dancing gang of killer Broadway chorines, subway troglodytes - and some pleasantly melodramatic excesses. Its sequel is Fuga dal Bronx (1983; vt Bronx Warriors 2), and Castellari also made a similar post- HOLOCAUST actioner, inspired by MAD MAX 2 (1981), I nuovi barbari (1983; vt The New Barbarians; vt Warriors of the Wasteland). The slew of similar Italian cheapies included L'ultimo guerriero (1983; vt The Final Executioner), Bronx lotta finale (1984; vt Endgame) and Il guerriero del mondo perduto (1984; vt Warrior of the Lost World). [KN] NIPPON CHINBOTSU (vt The Submersion of Japan; vt Tidal Wave US) Film (1973). Dir Shiro Moritani, starring Keiju Kobayashi, Hiroshi Fujioka, Tetsuro Tamba, Ayumi Ishida. Screenplay Shinobu Hashimoto, based on Nippon Chinbotsu (1973; cut trans as Japan Sinks 1976) by Sakyo KOMATSU. 140 mins, cut to 110 mins, then to 81 mins. Colour.This film is more sophisticated than the usual Japanese DISASTER or MONSTER MOVIE, and involves natural rather than fantastic forces. Changes within the Earth's core result in the chain of islands which make up Japan sinking beneath the ocean over a period of two years. Other countries are not eager to accept millions of homeless Japanese citizens, although Australia offers its Northern Territory as a new Japanese homeland. The film has been praised for the elegiac feeling aroused by the dying of Japan and her culture, but not especially for its special effects (by Teruyoshi Nakano), which though spectacular are less than wholly convincing.Tidal Wave is the title of the tawdry 1974 version released to universal execration by Roger CORMAN's New World company. It was cut to 81 mins and little more than the special effects remains; it includes specially shot US footage written and directed by Andrew Meyer and starring Lorne Greene and Rhonda Leigh Hopkins. [JB/PN] NISBET, HUGH A. [r] ROBERT HALE LIMITED. NISBET, HUME (1849-1921) Scottish writer and illustrator, in England or Australia from 1865, author of at least 45 novels, some of which are fantasy or sf, beginning with The "Jolly Roger" (1892), which features a supernatural wind and a hidden pirate island. In Valdmer the Viking: A Romance of the Eleventh Century by Sea and Land (1893) Vikings find a technologically superior LOST WORLD in the Arctic north of North America. The Great Secret: A Tale of Tomorrow (1895), like much of HN's work, mixes genres, here combining posthumous spirits and a this-worldly undersea excursion to ATLANTIS. The Empire Builders (1900) sets its lost world in Africa. [JC]Other works: The Haunted Station, and Other Stories (coll 1893); Stories Weird and Wonderful (coll 1900); A Crafty Foe (1901); A Colonial King (1905). NIVEN, LARRY Working name of US writer Laurence van Cott Niven (1938- ). He was born in California, where he set many of his stories, and gained a BA in mathematics from Washburn University, Kansas. From his first publication, "The Coldest Place" for If in 1964, he set his mark on the US sf field, winning four short-fiction HUGOS, and both Hugo and NEBULA in 1971 for RINGWORLD (1970), a capstone title in his seminal Tales of Known Space sequence, which he began with "The Coldest Place" and has added to ever since. In the novels and stories of this sequence, and in some of his other work, he was seen for some time as HARD SF's last best hope; and there can be no doubt that hard-sf writers dominant in the 1980s, like Greg BEAR, and some of those reaching for eminence in the 1990s, like Paul J. MCAULEY and Roger MacBride ALLEN, owe much to the scope of LN's inventiveness, the sense he conveys of technological ingenuity as being ultimately beneficial, and his cognitive exuberance.The Tales of Known Space, a title LN himself selected for the sequence, is a wide-ranging, complex, unusually well integrated future HISTORY which, within an essentially optimistic and technophilic frame, provides an explanatory structure for the expansion of humanity into space, one notable from the first for the complexity of the Universe into which it introduces the burgeoning human race. ALIEN races - not normally found in the first generation of future histories, those created in ASF under the influence of the homocentric John W. CAMPBELL Jr - have dominated Known Space for eons, beginning with the Thrintun, extinct a billion years ago with the exception of one deadly Thrint held in a stasis field (one of LN's numerous terminological coups) and released with deadly effect in his first novel, World of Ptavvs (1966). Millions of years closer to the present, humanity's ancestors, the Pak, spread their seed through the local arm of the Galaxy. Protectors are the "adult" form of Homo sapiens, the yam necessary to transform humans into full-grown Paks not being available on Earth; the Pak protagonist of Protector (1967 Gal as "The Adults"; exp 1973), set in human times, has travelled from afar at terribly slow sublight speeds to take care of us and protect us against other Protectors who find our slightly evolved species loathsome. The novel spans many years; its complex, casually-alluded-to background demonstrates the value of a coherent sequence in buttressing SPACE-OPERA conventions, though at the same time, as LN himself once admitted, the Universe-changing plot of Protector made it difficult to maintain internal consistency within Known Space stories set after the Pak incursion. Less dangerously, A Gift From Earth (1968) sticks to less transformative material, being set on a planet colonized from Earth whose inhabitants, descended from the ship's lowly passengers, rebel against the ruling caste descended from its crew; the story is interfused with arguments for personal and entrepreneurial liberty whose connection, as in much US sf, is taken as axiomatic. Centuries of relative peace follow, until the start of the Man-Kzin Wars, treated by LN as a sort of sideshow; the relevant stories were delegated mainly to others in four SHARED-WORLD anthologies, The Man-Kzin Wars * (anth 1988), The Man-Kzin Wars II * (anth 1989), III * (anth 1990), IV * (anth 1991), V (anth 1992) and VI (anth 1994). Finally, the tales and novels of Known Space culminated in RINGWORLD and its immediate sequel Ringworld Engineers (1979), which feature the alien Puppeteers, who are fleeing the explosion at the Galaxy's core which will within some millennia make space uninhabitable, and who enlist human aid to explore the eponymous BIG DUMB OBJECT - a million miles wide, 600 million miles around - which circles a distant star. This ring, created by Pak ancestors, houses much life and serves as a final home for Teela Brown, whose genetically programmed good luck is the culmination of a long and secret Puppeteer breeding programme; the inevitability of her good fortune might have significantly reduced the chance of LN's writing any successful Known Space stories set after her maturity, which is perhaps why she is killed off in the sequel.In the interstices of this joyfully complicated galactic structure, humanity enters space, solves problems in BIOLOGY and GENETIC ENGINEERING, benefits from local TELEPORTATION and the discovery of a FASTER-THAN-LIGHT hyperdrive for interstellar travel, copes with CORPSICLES and organlegging and a myriad other new challenges, and by the beginning of the fourth millennium has reached a mature plateau. Titles in which Known Space activities are dramatized include: NEUTRON STAR (coll 1968); The Shape of Space (coll 1969), much of which is re-assembled in Convergent Series (coll 1979); All the Myriad Ways (coll 1971); Inconstant Moon (coll 1973 UK; cut 1974), which was assembled from The Shape of Space and All the Myriad Ways; Tales of Known Space: The Universe of Larry Niven (coll 1975), which includes explanatory charts; and The Long ARM of Gil Hamilton (coll of linked stories 1976) and its immediate sequel The Patchwork Girl (1980); and Crashlander (coll 1994).Most of LN's first decade as a writer was occupied with Known Space, with the exception of the tales assembled in The Flight of the Horse (coll 1973)-including the 5 stories of the Svetz series of TIME-PARADOX comedies - A Hole in Space (coll 1974) and, with David GERROLD, The Flying Sorcerers (1971), a tale of a low-tech people who think that high technology is MAGIC. His next - and commercially his most successful move - was to collaborate with Jerry POURNELLE on THE MOTE IN GOD'S EYE (1974), a giant, spectacular SPACE-OPERA epic with all the trappings-interstellar shenanigans, aliens with unhealthy proclivities they must keep hidden, galactic aristocracies, intricate solutions to hard-sf problems . . . The book is essentially a development of Pournelle's CoDominium series, and may fruitfully be read in that context. Several critics have taken the book to task for what they regard as its human chauvinism, the discrepancy between its imaginative plot and its old-fashioned characterization, and its conservative political stance; but the combination of Pournelle's ability to shape novel-length plots (an ability his partner has always lacked) and LN's brilliant conceptual knack make for an enticing book. The sequel, The Gripping Hand (1993; vt The Moat Around Murcheson's Eye 1993 UK), lacks the drive of the original, concentrating on heavy-handed spacewar shenanigans which have been fatally overtaken by events, as the problem of the Moties's breeding pattern is solved before any of the battles actually occur.Further collaborations with Pournelle ensued. Inferno (1975) reworks DANTE ALIGHIERI's Inferno, an act notable for its apparently conscious vulgarity, interesting in its theological explanation of evil - that God's "sadism" is in fact designed to encourage self-help among the damned - and amusing in its placing of anti- NUCLEAR-POWER propagandists in Hell. Lucifer's Hammer (1977) is a long, ambitious DISASTER novel which sophisticatedly marries sf techniques with the bestseller idiom familiar from the many disaster films of the early 1970s. In Oath of Fealty (1981) a Los Angeles arcology - without the aid of an ineffective, bureaucratic government - defends its wealthy inhabitants from ECOLOGY freaks and terrorists. The internal government of this arcology being a conveniently infallible hierarchy culminating in one brilliant man in constant communication with a great COMPUTER, no significant dissent is necessary, or heard. Footfall (1985), about an alien INVASION of Earth, became an example of RECURSIVE SF through its enlisting of a readily identifiable group of sf writers to brainstorm solutions to the threat from space. The Legacy of Heorot (1987 UK), with Pournelle and Steven BARNES, replays the Beowulf saga on a colony planet: the natives of the planet have the unenviable role of the dragon. Fallen Angels (1991), with Pournelle and Michael FLYNN - in which the US Government betrays its own astronauts - once again treats environmentalists as villains in a planetary drama of the NEAR FUTURE.LN has increasingly made use of collaborators; in fact, in later years he has written only 4 solo novels outside the Known Space canon: A World Out of Time (fixup 1976), a complexly contemplative look through one protagonist's eyes at millions of years of human history; The Magic Goes Away (1977), a fantasy in which MAGIC is treated as a non-renewable resource; and The Integral Trees (1984) and its immediate sequel The Smoke Ring (1987), both linked to A World Out of Time. The Dream Park sequence - Dream Park (1981), The Barsoom Project (1989) and Dream Park: The Voodoo Game (1991 UK; vt The California Voodoo Game 1992 US), all with Barnes - is set in a GAME-WORLD environment (see also VIRTUAL REALITY) in the 21st century, with the eponymous corporation involved in running complex role-playing games as well as enterprises in the real world and on Mars. Other collaborations include The Descent of Anansi (1982) and Achilles' Choice (1991), both with Barnes. LN's late collections - likeNiven's Laws (coll 1984), Limits (coll 1985), N-Space (coll 1990), Playgrounds of the Mind (coll 1991) and Bridging the Galaxies (coll 1993) - have tended increasingly to re-sort earlier material. It cannot be denied that the fresh inventive gaiety characteristic of LN's early work has not survived the passing of the years, nor that the political agendas ( POLITICS) exposed in the collaborations have become more rancorous over the same period. He will perhaps be best remembered for the Tales of Known Space, the most energetic future history ever written, for his bright and profligate technophilia, for his astonishingly well conceived aliens, and for his early joy. [JC]Other works: The Time of the Warlock (coll 1984), fantasies; The Magic May Return * (anth 1981) and More Magic * (anth 1984), shared-world successor anthologies to The Magic Goes Away.About the author: The Many Worlds of Larry Niven (last rev 1989 chap) by Chris DRUMM.See also: ASTEROIDS; BLACK HOLES; CITIES; CLICHEES; CLUB STORY; COMICS; COMMUNICATIONS; CRIME AND PUNISHMENT; CRYONICS; DC COMICS; DEL REY BOOKS; END OF THE WORLD; ESCHATOLOGY; FANTASTIC VOYAGES; GALAXY SCIENCE FICTION; GAMES AND TOYS; GODS AND DEMONS; GRAVITY; LEISURE; MATTER TRANSMISSION; MEDICINE; MERCURY; MOON; MYTHOLOGY; NEUTRON STARS; OUTER PLANETS; OVERPOPULATION; PARALLEL WORLDS; PHYSICS; PROTO SCIENCEFICTION; Julius SCHWARTZ; SERIES; SOCIAL DARWINISM; SPACESHIPS; STARS; SUN; SUPERMAN [character]; SUSPENDED ANIMATION; TERRAFORMING; TRANSPORTATION; UTOPIAS; VENUS; WAR; WRITERS OF THE FUTURE CONTEST. NOBEL, PHIL R.L. FANTHORPE. NO BLADE OF GRASS Film (1970). Symbol/MGM. Dir Cornel Wilde, starring Nigel Davenport, Jean Wallace, Anthony May, Lynne Frederick. Screenplay Sean Forestal, Jefferson Pascal, based on The Death of Grass (1956) by John CHRISTOPHER. 96 mins cut to 80 mins. Colour.Cereal crops all die and society breaks down. A family journeys across chaotic England, battling armed groups of marauders who are searching for food, and reach sanctuary in the Lake District. Wilde had previously dealt well with the stripping away of civilized instincts in The Naked Prey (1966), so this story must have attracted him, but NBOG has an amateurish quality, reinforced by poor acting, though the depiction of anarchy is zestful. The film is disjointed, partly due to drastic cutting before release. [JB/PN]See also: HOLOCAUST AND AFTER; PANIC IN YEAR ZERO. NOBLE, MARK [r] Bob STICKGOLD. NOEL, ATANIELLE ANNYN (1947- ) Now the legal name of the US writer who, under her earlier legal name, Ruth S(wycaffer) Noel, published 2 studies of J.R.R. TOLKIEN: The Mythology of Middle-Earth (1977) and The Languages of Tolkien's Middle-Earth (1980). Her 3 novels as AAN rather mercilessly tumble together fantasy, sf and thriller modes into spoof plots, through which some excitements emerge willy-nilly. The Duchess of Kneedeep (1986) is a humorous fantasy with ROBOTS. Speaker to Heaven (1987), set in post- HOLOCAUST California, conflates PSI POWERS and MAGIC. Murder on Usher's Planet (1987), evoking Edgar Allan POE, sends its investigator protagonists to a planet containing a secret, which they uncover. [JC] NOEL, STERLING (1903-1984) US writer and journalist, author of 2 sf novels: I Killed Stalin (1951), a NEAR-FUTURE thriller in which WWIII is staved off by the deed described in the title, and We who Survived (1959), which depicts the life of the survivors of the sudden onslaught of a new ice age. [JC] NO ESCAPE (vt Penal Colony; vt The Prison Colony; vt Escape From Absalom) Film (1994). Pacific Western/Allied Filmmakers/Columbia Tristar. Prod Gale Ann HURD; dir Martin Campbell; screenplay Michael Gaylin, Joel Gross, based on The Penal Colony (1987) by Richard Herley; starring Ray Liotta, Lance Henriksen, Stuart Wilson, Kevin Dillon, Kevin J. O'Conner, Don Henderson, Ian McNeice, Jack Shepherd, Michael Lerner and Ernie Hudson. 115 mins. Colour.Curiously, this is one of two future-privatised-prison movies released in 1993/94 and shot in Australia, the other being the fractionally better FORTRESS. Despite Hurd's impeccable credentials as an independent producer of action sf movies, this is a messy internationalised adaptation of a very British original novel. Apart from the first five minutes, there is nothing futuristic about this world of 2022 (1997 in the novel) in which private corporations run prisons, and the hardest cases are dumped on a high-security island (actually Queensland rainforest) to rot. Two tribes exist on the island, the civilised Insiders and the barbarian and psychotic Outsiders. (Among the myriad visible sources are ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK, LORD OF THE FLIES and MAD MAX.) Captain Robbins (Liotta), imprisoned for killing his superior officer as a protest against the slaughter by US forces of 342 women and children, is the hero who battles the evil Outsiders, helps the Insiders, and eventually escapes to tell the world about governmental cover-ups, corrupt prisons and wartime slaughters. Narrative glitches abound, and little attempt is made to confront questions of future penology; there is, however, a genuine bid to characterise the two societies that have arisen on the island, and there are surprisingly contemplative moments in what is otherwise an adolescent action POW escape movie. But how could the corporation running this corrupt system possibly make money from it, since its elaborate security systems are clearly incredibly expensive? [PN] NOLAN, WILLIAM F(RANCIS) (1928- ) US writer and editor who trained and for a time practised as a commercial artist; he also raced cars, publishing several books on the subject. He became a full-time writer in 1956. Of his 55 books since then, at least 30 have related directly to sf or fantasy. WFN first became active in sf as a fan, cofounding the San Diego Science Fantasy Society, editing a fanzine, the Rhodomagnetic Digest, publishing The Ray Bradbury Review, and serving as managing editor of #1-#3 of GAMMA (1963-4). He published his first sf story, "The Joy of Living", in If in 1954, subsequently writing some short stories and criticism as by Frank Anmar and F.E. Edwards. His first sf book, Impact 20 (coll 1963), assembles some of his early work. His second, for which he remains best known, Logan's Run (1967) with George Clayton JOHNSON, begins the Logan sequence, which continued with Logan's World (1977) and Logan's Search (1980), both by WN alone; all 3 are assembled as Logan: A Trilogy (omni 1986). The premise of the books is melodramatic: after a strange act of nuclear terrorism a youth culture takes over, instituting the rule that all those over 21 must be killed to combat OVERPOPULATION; the protagonist, first an enforcer and then posing as a fugitive, escapes Earth with a genuine female rebel, returning (now authentically rebellious) in the later volumes to confront the COMPUTER controlling Earth. The first volume was unsuccessfully filmed as LOGAN'S RUN (1976) and adapted as a short-lived tv series. Written in part as an homage to Dashiell Hammett's Sam Spade (WFN's Hammett: A Life on the Edge [1983] is an effective biography), the Sam Space sequence, about an sf detective, comprises Space for Hire (1971), Look Out for Space (1985) and3 for Space (coll 1992). WFN's later short fiction, some of it of high quality, was assembled in Alien Horizons (coll 1974), Wonderworlds (coll 1977 UK) and Things Beyond Midnight (coll 1984).WFN has also been active as an anthologist, mostly of reprinted material, though The Future is Now (anth 1970) assembles original stories. He also compiled a detailed bibliography of Ray BRADBURY, with copious annotations: The Ray Bradbury Companion (1975). [JC/PN]Other works: The Work of Charles Beaumont (1985 chap; rev 1991 chap); How to Write Horror Fiction (1990); Helltracks (1991), a horror novel; Blood Sky (1991 chap); Helle on Wheels (1993).As Editor: The Fiend in You (anth 1962) with Charles BEAUMONT, WFN anon; Man Against Tomorrow (anth 1965); The Pseudo-People (anth 1965; vt Almost Human 1966 UK); 3 to the Highest Power (anth 1968); A Wilderness of Stars (anth 1969); A Sea of Space (anth 1970), no connection to the Sam Space books; The Human Equation (anth 1971); Science Fiction Origins (anth 1980) with Martin H. GREENBERG; Urban Horrors (anth 1990) with Greenberg; The Bradbury Chronicles (anth 1991) with Greenberg.About the author: The Work of William F. Nolan: An Annotated Bibliography & Guide (1988) by Boden Clarke (R. REGINALD) and James Hopkins (WFN himself).See also: ANDROIDS. "NONAME" House name for the Frank Tousey publishing firm, used in the late 19th century for boys' fiction in several genres, including mysteries and Westerns as well as sf. Of most sf interest were the Frank Reade, Jr. tales ( FRANK READE LIBRARY; Luis SENARENS) and the slightly later Jack Wright tales ( Luis SENARENS). Authors whose sf work appeared as by "Noname" include Harold Cohen (1854-1927), Francis Worcester DOUGHTY, Senarens and possibly Cecil Burleigh and Frederic Van Rensselaer Dey (1861-1933). [EFB] NOON, JEFF (1957- ) UK writer whose first novel, Vurt (1993), places in NEAR-FUTURE Manchester a CYBERPUNK tale, complete with Mean-Streets idiom and a driven (though occasionally tangled) narrative line; Vurt itself is a reality-shifting drug. The novel won the 1994 ARTHUR C. CLARKE Award. A second novel, Pollen (1995), has similar virtues. [JC] NOONE, EDWINA Michael AVALLONE. NORBERT, W. Norbert WIENER. NORDEN, ERIC (? - ) US writer who began publishing work of genre interest with "The Final Quarry" for FSF in 1970, assembling his short work in Starsongs and Unicorns (coll 1978). His novel, The Ultimate Solution (1973), depicts a Nazi-dominated New York ( HITLER WINS), a state of affairs made possible by the assassination of Franklin Delano Roosevelt in 1933, as a consequence of which the USA remained too long a noncombatant in WWII. Slavery has been reinstituted. [JC] NORMAN, BARRY (1933- ) UK journalist, tv personality and writer whose sf novel is End Product (1975), a NEAR-FUTURE story in which Blacks are lobotomized at birth and provide the civilized world with ample meat. The allegorical and political messages of the novel, though highly loaded, tend to clash. [JC] NORMAN, ERIC (? - ) US writer whose routine sf novel The Under-People (1969) is not to be confused with The Underpeople (1968) by Cordwainer SMITH. [JC] NORMAN, JOHN Pseudonym used for his fiction by US writer and philosophy teacher John Frederick Lange Jr (1931- ). His fiction mainly comprises a series of borderline-sf PLANETARY ROMANCES set on Gor, a planet sharing Earth's orbit but - because it is on the other side of the Sun - always invisible to us. This astrophysical impossibility is never argued in the texts, which might consequently read as either antiquarian sf or fantasy were it not that the development of the series precludes any reading of Gor as an exercise in sf nostalgia while at the same time demonstrating its great remove from category FANTASY. In Tarnsman of Gor (1966), as the series begins, Earthman Tarl Cabot abruptly finds himself on Gor, where - after the fashion of Edgar Rice BURROUGHS's Barsoom novels - he undergoes numerous adventures, alarms, fights and romances of a SWORD-AND-SORCERY nature. However, as the series progresses, the plots begin to revolve around a singularly invariant sexual fantasy in which a proud woman-often abducted for the purpose from Earth - is humiliated, stripped, bound, beaten, raped, branded and enslaved, invariably discovering in the process that she enjoys total submission to a dominant male, and can derive proper sexual satisfaction only from this regime. Later volumes feature interminable discussions which end, invariably, in an affirmation of the Gorean status quo. The sequence, now terminated, includes: Outlaw of Gor (1967) and Priest-Kings of Gor (1968), both assembled with Tarnsman of Gor as Gor Omnibus (omni 1972 UK); Nomads of Gor (1969); Assassin of Gor (1970); Raiders of Gor (1971); Captive of Gor (1972); Hunters of Gor (1974); Marauders of Gor (1975); Tribesmen of Gor (1976); Slave Girl of Gor (1977); Beasts of Gor (1978); Explorers of Gor (1979); Fighting Slave of Gor (1980); Rogue of Gor (1981); Guardsman of Gor (1981); Savages of Gor (1982); Blood Brothers of Gor (1982); Kajira of Gor (1983); Players of Gor (1984); Mercenaries of Gor (1985); Dancer of Gor (1985); Renegades of Gor (1986); Vagabonds of Gor (1987); and Magicians of Gor (1988). Imaginative Sex (1974), a nonfiction text, details some Gor-like games for Earthlings. JN's two out-of-series novels are Ghost Dance (1969) and Time Slave (1975). Unless the new Telnarian Histories sequence - beginning with The Chieftain (1991), The Captain (1993) and The King (1993) - strikes a new note, JN will be remembered - and widely detested - for Gor alone. [JC]See also: DAW BOOKS; SEX. NORMYX Norman DOUGLAS. NORST, JOEL Kirk MITCHELL. NORTH, ANDREW Andre NORTON. NORTH, DAVID (? - ) US writer whose Time Warriors sequence of military-sf adventures - Time Warriors #1: Fuse Point (1991), #2: Forbidden Region (1991) and #3: The Guardian Strikes (1991) - sends its protagonist, accompanied by a barbarian named Brom, back and forth through time into various conflicts. [JC] NORTH, ERIC Pseudonym used by Australian novelist Charles Bernard Cronin (1884-1968) for his sf work; he used other pseudonyms in other genres. As EN he published sf in Australian journals such as the Melbourne Herald and The Bulletin. "The Satyr" (1924 Melbourne Herald; vt "Three Against the Stars" Argosy 1938 US) tells of invaders from another DIMENSION; it was not published in book form. The eponymous villain of Toad (1924 Melbourne Herald as "The Green Flame"; 1929 UK) has invented an ingredient which sets water aflame, and threatens to use it against first Australia and then the world.The Ant Men (1955 US) is a LOST-WORLD juvenile about giant intelligent ants. [JC] NORTH, VALENTINE [s] Thomas P. KELLEY. NORTON, ANDRE Initially the working name of Alice Mary Norton (1912- ), but for some years now her legal name. A librarian for two decades before turning to full-time writing, she was one of the few sf figures of any stature to enter the field via CHILDREN'S SF, and, though much of her work is as adult in theme and difficulty as most general sf, she was for many years primarily marketed as a writer for children and adolescents. In the 1970s and 1980s, however, as her work changed in emphasis from sf to fantasy and as her popularity continued to grow, new novels and reprints alike were released primarily into the general market.AN began to publish in the 1930s with The Prince Commands (1934) which, like her slightly later WWII espionage trilogy - The Sword is Drawn (1944), Sword in Sheath (1949; vt Island of the Lost 1953 UK) and At Swords' Point (1954) - was not of direct genre interest. She came to sf proper only in 1947 with "The People of the Crater" for Fantasy Book, as by Andrew North, a pseudonym she used also for 3 novels; the story was included in Garan the Eternal (coll 1972) which, along with High Sorcery (coll 1970), The Many Worlds of Andre Norton (coll 1974; vt The Book of Andre Norton 1975), ed Roger ELWOOD, and Perilous Dreams (coll 1976), assembled most of her relatively small output of short fiction.AN's career can, very roughly, be divided into two equal periods: the two decades from 1950 when she concentrated on sf novels, most of them gathered into series which were in turn treated as loose units in a broadly conceived common galactic superseries; and the two decades from 1970 when, after the success of the Witch World SCIENCE-FANTASY sequence, she produced numerous further fantasies. Throughout both periods, her most typical protagonists have been young women or men who must undergo some form of rite de passage into a sane maturity; in so doing, they characteristically discover that the true nature of the Universe lies not in what it might become (hence the lack of CONCEPTUAL-BREAKTHROUGH novels in her oeuvre) but in its history, and in the talismans and icons associated with that history. The Universe revealed in these numerous books - from her first sf novel, Star Man's Son, 2250 A.D. (1952; vt Daybreak-2250 A.D. 1954 dos; vt Star Man's Son 1978), to her most recent - is a colourful, complex and rewarding environment for her typical protagonists to come to terms with; though any advanced technology there deployed- FASTER-THAN-LIGHT space travel, for instance, and at one time or another almost every other instrument of SPACE OPERA - serves mainly to add verisimilitude to AN's romantic SENSE OF WONDER, and to a style in which science and TECHNOLOGY are in fact treated perfunctorily (if at all) and more often than not as inimical to humanity and its friends. Close - sometimes telepathic - rapports might exist among people, or between human and beast as in Catseye (1961), but rarely or never are human beings called to shape their lives in the service of transcendent or objective goals. AN's instincts, in other words, have never been those of the natural sf author; however, in the sense that her books never violate her audience's legitimate expectations, AN has always been an orthodox writer.The sf novels, mostly told against the shared galactic backdrop, were widely varied, featuring a multitude of space-opera themes and plots, along with several comparatively intimate studies of humans and ALIENS and beasts, and their relationships under various circumstances. Series include: the Central Control sequence, comprising Star Rangers (1953; vt The Last Planet 1955 dos) and Star Guard (1955); the Astra or Company of Pax sequence, comprising The Stars are Ours! (1954) and Star Born (1957); the Dane Thorson or Solar Queen sequence, comprising Sargasso of Space (1955 as by Andrew North; 1969 as by AN), Plague Ship (1956 as by North; 1969 as by AN), Voodoo Planet (1959 dos as by North; 1968 as by AN), Postmarked the Stars (1969) and Redline the Stars (1993) with P.M. GRIFFIN; the Blake Walker sequence, comprising The Crossroads of Time (1956 dos) and Quest Crosstime (1965; vt Crosstime Agent 1975 UK); the Ross Murdock sequence, comprising The Time Traders (1958), Galactic Derelict (1959), The Defiant Agents (1962), Key out of Time (1963) and Firehand (1994) with P.M.Griffin; the Hosteen Storm sequence, comprising The Beast Master (1959; cut 1961) and Lord of Thunder (1962); the Forerunner sequence, comprising Storm over Warlock (1960), Ordeal in Otherwhere (1964), Forerunner Foray (1973), Forerunner (1981) and Forerunner: The Second Venture (1985); the Janus sequence, comprising Catseye (1961), Judgment on Janus (1963) and Victory on Janus (1966); the Moon Singer sequence, comprising Moon of Three Rings (1966), Exiles of the Stars (1971), Flight In Yiktor (1986) and Dare to Go A-Hunting (1990); the Murdoc Jern sequence, comprising The Zero Stone (1968) and Uncharted Stars (1969); and the Star Ka'at sequence for younger readers, all written with Dorothy Madlee (1917-1980), comprising Star Ka'at (1976), Star Ka'at World (1978), Star Ka'ats and the Plant People (1979) and Star Ka'ats and the Winged Warriors (1981).Though begun in the 1960s, the Witch World sequence is essentially FANTASY - though it often uses such sf tropes as dimensional gates and force fields - and lacks any connection with the shared background; it soon became both her best known series and a model for her later work. Set centrally in the matriarchal land of Estcarp on an otherwise unnamed planet, and pleasingly sensitive to FEMINIST issues, these tales engage personable young protagonists in SWORD-AND-SORCERY adventures which tend to end well. Variously connected, the series titles include Witch World (1963), Web of the Witch World (1964) and Year of the Unicorn (1965), all 3 assembled as Annals of the Witch World (omni 1994), plusThree Against the Witch World (1965), Warlock of the Witch World (1967), Sorceress of the Witch World (1968), Spell of the Witch World (coll 1972), The Crystal Gryphon (1972), The Jargoon Pard (1974), Trey of Swords (1977), Zarsthor's Bane (1978), Lore of the Witch World (coll 1980), Gryphon in Glory (1981), Horn Crown (1981), 'Ware Hawk (1983), Were-Wrath (1984 chap), Gryphon's Eyrie (1984) with A.C. CRISPIN, Serpent's Tooth (1987 chap), The Gate of the Cat (1987), an internal sequence comprising Witch World: The Turning: Storms of Victory (1991) and Flight of Vengeance (1992) with P.M. Griffin and On Wings of Magic (coll of linked stories 1994) with Patricia Matthews and Sasha Miller, and Songsmith (1992) with Crispin. There were also 4 SHARED-WORLD anthologies edited or authorized by AN: Tales of the Witch World * (anth 1987), Tales of the Witch World II * (anth 1988), Four from the Witch World * (anth 1989) and Tales of the Witch World III * (anth 1990).Though her style has matured over the years, and her plots have tended to darken somewhat, from first to last an AN story will show the virtues of clear construction, a high degree of narrative control, protagonists whose qualities allow easy reader-identification and a Universe fundamentally responsive to virtue, good will and spunk. Her disinclination to publish short material in the sf magazines and her labelling for decades as a juvenile writer both worked to delay proper recognition of her stature, though her actual sales have been very considerable for decades. It has only recently been borne in upon the sf world that AN's 100 or more books - most of them in print - are for very many readers central to what the genre has to offer. [JC]Other works:Non-sf includes:Follow the Drum (1942); Rogue Reynard (1947); Scarface (1948); Huon of the Horn (1951); Murders for Sale (1954; with Grace Allen Hogarth, together as Allen Weston; vt Sneeze on Sunday 1992 as AN and Hogarth); Ten Mile Treasure (1981); Stand and Deliver (1984). Sf and fantasy:Sea Siege (1957); Star Gate (1958; exp 1963); Secret of the Lost Race (1959 dos; vt Wolfshead 1977 UK); Shadow Hawk (1960); The Sioux Spaceman (1960 dos); Star Hunter (1961 dos); Eye of the Monster (1962 dos); Night of Masks (1964); The X Factor (1965); the Magic fantasies, comprising Steel Magic (1965; vt Grey Magic 1967), Octagon Magic (1967) and Fur Magic (1968), all assembled as The Magic Books (omni 1988); Operation Time Search (1967); Dark Piper (1968); Dread Companion (1970); Ice Crown (1970); Android at Arms (1971); Breed to Come (1972); Dragon Magic (1972); Here Abide Monsters (1973); Iron Cage (1974); Outside (1974); Lavender-Green Magic (1974); Merlin's Mirror (1975); The White Jade Fox (1975); The Day of the Ness (1975) with Michael Gilbert; No Night without Stars (1975); Knave of Dreams (1975); Wraiths of Time (1976); Red Hart Magic (1976); The Opal-Eyed Fan (1977); Quag Keep (1978); Yurth Burden (1978); Seven Spells to Sunday (1979); Voorloper (1980); Moon Called (1982); Wheel of Stars (1983); Ride the Green Dragon (1985) with Phyllis Miller (1920- ); Imperial Lady: A Fantasy of Han China (1989) with Susan M. SHWARTZ; Wizards' Worlds (coll 1989); Elvenbane: An Epic High Fantasy of the Halfblood Chronicles (1991) with Mercedes Lackey (1950- ); The Jekyll Legacy (1990) with Robert BLOCH; Black Trillium (1990) with Marion Zimmer BRADLEY and Julian MAY, the second sequel to which, by AN alone, being Golden Trillium (1993); The Mark of the Cat (1992), based on the cat drawings of Karen Kuykendall; Empire of the Eagle (1993) with Susan Shwartz; Brother to Shadows (1993); The Hands of Llyr (1994).As Editor: Bullard of the Space Patrol (coll of linked stories 1951) by Malcolm JAMESON; Space Service (anth 1953); Space Pioneers (anth 1954); Space Police (anth 1956); Gates to Tomorrow: An Introduction to Science Fiction (anth 1973) ed with Ernestine Donaldy; Small Shadows Creep (anth 1974); Baleful Beasts and Eerie Creatures (anth 1976); the Ithkar fantasies, all with Robert ADAMS, comprising Magic in Ithkar #1 (anth 1985), #2 (anth 1985), #3 (anth 1986) and #4 (anth 1987); Cat-fantastic (anth 1989), Cat-fantastic II (anth 1991) and Cat-fantastic III (anth 1994), all with Martin H. GREENBERG.About the author: "Andre Norton: Loss of Faith" (1971) by Rick Brooks in The Many Worlds of Andre Norton (coll 1974); intro by Sandra Miesel to the GREGG PRESS reissue (1977) of the Witch World series; Andre Norton: A Primary and Secondary Bibliography (1980) by Roger C. SCHLOBIN; Andre Norton: Grand Master of the Witch-World: A Working Bibliography (1991 chap) by Phil STEPHENSEN-PAYNE.See also: CRIME AND PUNISHMENT; GAMES AND TOYS; HITLER WINS; LONGEVITY (IN WRITERS AND PUBLICATIONS); MAGIC; NEBULA; ROBERT HALE LIMITED; WOMEN SF WRITERS. NORTON, PHILIP (? -? ) UK clergyman and writer, active in the former capacity 1871-1924. As Artegall Smith he published one sf novel, Sub Sole, or Under the Sun: Missionary Adventures in the Great Sahara (1889), in which the Wandering Jew reveals to Artegall Smith the wonders of an underground LOST WORLD peopled by the Lost Tribes of Israel, who have created there a scientific civilization. Smith soon converts them and marries the girl of his choice. Unusually for UK fiction before 1940, Jews are treated with some respect. [JC] NORTON, ROY (E.) (1869-1942) US author of many Westerns and some sf, beginning with The Vanishing Fleets (1908), in which a group of scientists, having invented an ANTIGRAVITY device, use it to shift the world's fleets mysteriously about, terrifying the bellicose nations into disarming. In his second sf novel, The Toll of the Sea (1909; cut vt The Land of the Lost 1925 UK), the Pacific figures again, this time changing its shape and uncovering a LOST WORLD inhabited by advanced descendants of ATLANTIS. In The Flame (1916) another antigravity device allows its user to force Germany into early surrender. RN was notable both for his didacticism and for a strong narrative imagination. [JC]Other works: The Caves of Treasure (1925). NORVIL, MANNING Kenneth BULMER. NORWAY SCANDINAVIA. NORWOOD, VICTOR (GEORGE CHARLES) (1920-1983) UK traveller and writer who concentrated on Westerns and nonfiction works about exploration. Of some genre interest is the Jacare series of jungle tales, loosely derived from Edgar Rice BURROUGHS's Tarzan and mostly sf or fantasy: The Untamed (1951), The Caves of Death (1951), The Temple of the Dead (1951), The Skull of Kanaima (1951), The Island of Creeping Death (1952), Drums along the Amazon (1953), which was associational, and Cry of the Beast (1953). Night of the Black Horror (1962) is a singleton sf adventure. Among VN's other titles was Island of the Voodoo Dolls (1969) as by Paul Dangerfield. [JC/SH] NORWOOD, WARREN C(ARL) (1945- ) US bookseller and writer who has normally published as Warren Norwood, sometimes as Warren C. Norwood; due to a publisher's error, some titles were published as by Warren G. Norwood. After a number of years in bookselling, during which period he published some not particularly distinguished poetry, WCN began his sf career with the Windhover Tapes sequence - The Windhover Tapes: An Image of Voices (1982), #2: Flexing the Warp (1983), #3: Fize of the Gabriel Ratchets (1983) and #4: Planet of Flowers (1984) - attempting with some success to compose SPACE OPERAS whose baroque inturnings are themselves of some narrative interest; but calling the human protagonist of the series Gerard Hopkins Manley and referring to Hopkins (1844-1889) with some frequency - while implying that Manley himself is ignorant of any connection with the poet - does suggest a disconnectedness deep within the structure of the sequence. The Tapes themselves constitute a record kept by the sentient starship Windhover; they detail Manley's quite various adventures on several planets as troubleshooter and anthropologist. A second series, the Double Spiral War sequence - Midway Between (1984), Polar Fleet (1985) and Final Command (1986) - is less chaotic but also less interesting. The Seren Cenacles (1983) with Ralph Mylius (1945- ) likewise suffers from inattentive bursts of energy; though Shudderchild (1987), set in a genuinely complicated multistate post- HOLOCAUST USA, is engagingly compact and full of action, and True Jaguar (1988), a fantasy, delves intriguingly into Mayan lore.In 1988 WCN publicly announced that he had been diagnosed as having terminal pancreatic cancer; in 1991 he said that he had entered remission, and also indicated his wish to acknowledge assistance in completing the Time Police sequence, a Byron PREISS package comprising Time Police: Vanished! (1988), #2: Trapped! (1989) and #3: Stranded! (1989), with Mel Odom (1950- ) given co-author credit on the final volume; WCN's wife had extensively outlined the second and third volumes and Odom had done the writing work on both. The sequence itself is a fairly unremarkable reworking of the Time Patrol recipe created by Poul ANDERSON and others. Given the enforced hiatus at the end of nearly a decade of intense productivity, it is difficult to know whether or not WCN will eventually harness his knowledge and drive to stories that move beyond the slightly unfocused exuberance of his first work. [JC] NOSILLE, NALRAH [s] Harlan ELLISON. NOT OF THIS EARTH 1. Film (1957). Los Altos/Allied Artists. Prod and dir Roger CORMAN, starring Paul Birch, Beverly Garland, Jonathan Haze, Dick Miller. Screenplay Charles B. Griffith, Mark Hanna. 67 mins. B/w.A sombre humanoid alien (Birch), whose dark glasses conceal blank white eyes, seeks human blood and victims to send by matter transmitter to his home planet, whose inhabitants' blood is being "turned to dust" by radiation from continuing nuclear war. Low-budget nonsense - a typical Corman film of the period - cheaply made, NOTE is nevertheless well scripted and surprisingly powerful; unusually, it shows some sympathy for the lonely, pedantic alien.2. Film (1988). Miracle. "Roger CORMAN presents" a film dir Jim Wynorski, starring Arthur Roberts, Traci Lords, Lenny Juliano. Screenplay R.J. Robertson, Wynorski, based on that of the 1957 film. 76 mins. Colour. Though fairly true to the original script, and played moderately straight apart from a plethora of large-breasted women, this Corman-inspired remake cannot cope with cultural and cinematic changes over the intervening three decades, and what was once mildly serious now emerges as high camp; hence it was promoted as a spoof. [PN]See also: MONSTER MOVIES. NOTT, KATHLEEN (CECILIA) (1910- ) UK poet, novelist and academic, perhaps best known for The Emperor's Clothes (1953), in which she mounted articulate and scathing attacks on the religious pretensions of such writers as T.S. Eliot (1888-1965) and C.S. LEWIS. Her sf novel, The Dry Deluge (1947), describes the founding of an underground UTOPIA devoted to the achievement of IMMORTALITY. [JC] NOURSE, ALAN E(DWARD) (1928-1992) US writer and physician; much of his nonfiction has been in the field of popular MEDICINE - Intern (1965) as by "Doctor X" being a great success. He began publishing sf with "High Threshold" for ASF in 1951, and gained a reputation as a reliable creator of CHILDREN'S SF novels. His first, Trouble on Titan (1954), features rebellion and conflict within a SPACE-OPERA Solar System, as do others of his juveniles, like Raiders from the Rings (1962), where conflict between an oppressive Earth regime and libertarian Spacers is finally halted by the intervention of superior, peaceful ALIENS. In Rocket to Limbo (1957), mankind's destiny is explained to us by alien observers. Star Surgeon (1960) interestingly posits an Earth which, while being the main medical centre of all the inhabited worlds, is still in the position of having to apply to join the Galactic Confederation. The vision of these juveniles is appropriately optimistic, and technologies - especially medical ones - are there for humanity's benefit. AEN's adult novels are also straightforward, frequently making somewhat simple points about bureaucracies and tyrannies, as in The Invaders are Coming! (1959) with J(oseph) A. Meyer and in several stories - some genuinely funny - assembled in Tiger by the Tail (coll 1961; vt Beyond Infinity 1964 UK). Several others make use of his medical knowledge: brain surgery figures in A Man Obsessed (1955 dos; rev vt The Mercy Men 1968), part of a series also including "Nightmare Brother" (1953) and "The Expert Touch" (1955); Rx for Tomorrow (coll 1971) collects stories about medicine in general; The Bladerunner (1974)-which was adapted by William S. BURROUGHS as Blade Runner (A Movie) (1979 chap), neither book having anything to do with Ridley SCOTT's BLADE RUNNER (1982) (although Scott obtained permission from AN for use of the title) - deals with the medical implications of OVERPOPULATION in a framework of coercive sterilization; and The Fourth Horseman (1983) deals with a NEAR-FUTURE plague. A sense of fundamental decency permeates AEN's fiction; and, though sometimes too easily achieved, the victories of decency over bigotry cannot, for the market upon which AEN concentrated, be seriously faulted. [JC]Other works: Junior Intern (1955), not sf; Scavengers in Space (1959); Nine Planets (1960), science fact; The Counterfeit Man and Others (coll 1963); The Universe Between (1951; fixup 1965), which incorporates his first story; PSI High and Others (coll 1967).See also: MERCURY; OUTER PLANETS; PARALLEL WORLDS; SCIENCE FICTION WRITERS OF AMERICA. NOVA US ORIGINAL-ANTHOLOGY series (1970-74) ed Harry HARRISON, published by Delacorte (#1) and then Walker & Co., with paperbacks from Dell (#1, #2, #3) and then Manor Books. All had UK editions also. Its 4 vols were Nova 1 (anth 1970), #2 (anth 1972), #3 (anth 1973; vt The Outdated Man 1975) and #4 (anth 1974). This was a catholic series, the contents ranging from old-fashioned sf adventure stories by such writers as Gordon R. DICKSON through humour by John T. SLADEK to experimental pieces by younger authors. Tom REAMY made his first sale (though not his debut) here with "Beyond the Cleft" (1974). The most regular contributors were Brian W. ALDISS, Barry N. MALZBERG, Robert SHECKLEY and, unusually, Naomi MITCHISON. It was an entertaining series, but had no great impact. [MJE/PN] NOVAE TERRAE The earliest true FANZINE in the UK (1936-9), 33 issues, ed Maurice K. Hanson, first for the Nuneaton chapter of the SCIENCE FICTION LEAGUE, and then, from #10, for the pre-WWII Science Fiction Association, the UK's first national sf organization. NT was given over primarily to discussion of sf and FANDOM, the only fiction it carried being parodies or based on fan doings. In Sep 1937 Hanson moved to London, and from #17 John CARNELL and Hanson's flatmate Arthur C. CLARKE were listed as assistant editors. Hanson's other flatmate, William F. TEMPLE, replaced Carnell with #25, but after #29 Hanson handed NT to Carnell, who issued a further 4 issues - numbered 1 to 4 - under the anglicized title New Worlds, which had always appeared on the title page alongside the Latin version. The title was revived after WWII by Carnell as a professional magazine of fiction, NEW WORLDS. [RH] NOVAK, JOHN LUTHER Christopher PRIEST. NOVA PUBLICATIONS John CARNELL; NEW WORLDS; SCIENCE FANTASY. NOVA SCIENCE FICTION AWARDS AWARDS. NOVELIZATIONS Everyone knows examples of books that were made into films. In science fiction, it often happens the other way around. Novelizations are novels adapted from movie scripts and published in conjunction with the release of a film.The Quatermass Xperiment was a big success as a novelization in 1959 - it was based on the 1955 Hammer film about an ancient Martian spaceship excavated in modern London. Theodore Sturgeon wrote the book version of A Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea in 1961.By the mid-sixties, movies and television were often novelized, including borderline SF shows, such as The Man From U.N.C.L.E. and The Prisoner. Some novelizations, like the ones for Star Trek, remained popular long after the show was cancelled. NOWLAN, PHILIP FRANCIS (1888-1940) US writer whose first sf story, "Armageddon 2419" - published in the same 1928 issue of AMAZING STORIES that featured the inception of E.E. "Doc" SMITH's Skylark saga - introduced Anthony "Buck" Rogers to the world, helping to inaugurate the reign of full-grown interstellar SPACE OPERA in US sf. This and a subsequent story, "The Airlords of Han" (1929), were put together long after PFN's death as Armageddon 2419 AD (1928-9 AMZ; fixup 1962). The Buck Rogers saga takes its hero, via SUSPENDED ANIMATION, to a corrupt 25th-century USA under the thumb of the tyrannous Hans, where Rogers soon becomes a central figure in the successful revolt. His exploits were retold and then extended through space in BUCK ROGERS IN THE 25TH CENTURY, the first sf COMIC strip, scripted by PFN and drawn by Dick CALKINS; it ran 1929-67. PFN worked on it until his death, which also cut short a new series he had begun in ASF. An adaptation of a tale from the comic - each page of text faced with a Calkins illustration - appeared as Buck Rogers 25th Century AD and the Planetoid Plot (1936), and the first 426 daily strips were published in book form as Buck Rogers in the 25th Century, Great Classic Newspaper Comic Strips, No. 1 (graph coll 1964), #2 (graph coll 1965), #7 (graph coll 1967) and #8 (graph coll 1968). [JC]See also: ILLUSTRATION; INVASION; RADIO; TRANSPORTATION. NOYES, ALFRED (1880-1958) UK poet and man of letters, best known during his life for extremely long epic poems like Drake (2 vols 1906-8) and The Torchbearers (3 vols 1922-30), the latter depicting the march of science. He wrote some fantasy and horror - in the form of narrative poems in Tales of the Mermaid Tavern (coll 1914) and in the form of prose tales in Walking Shadows: Sea Tales and Others (coll 1918) and The Hidden Player (coll 1924). Beyond the Desert: A Tale of Death Valley (1920 chap US) and The Devil Takes a Holiday (1955) are fantasies. The Secret of Pooduck Island (1943) is a juvenile. Of sf interest is a post- HOLOCAUST novel, The Last Man (1940; vt No Other Man 1940 US), in which a doomsday ray stops all human hearts, petrifying the corpses. A few survivors - man, woman and (male) evil SCIENTIST-finally reach Assisi, which has been miraculously saved. AN was a fervent Roman Catholic (converted in 1930), an ardent anti-Modernist, an early Japanophile and a defender of VOLTAIRE and Charles Parnell (1846-1891). In several novels Gordon R. DICKSON has praised his lyric poetry. [JC]See also: CLUB STORY; END OF THE WORLD; WEAPONS. NOYES, PIERREPONT B(URT) (1870-1959) US businessman and writer whose The Pallid Giant: A Tale of Yesterday and Tomorrow (1927; vt Gentlemen: You are Mad! 1946) places in an ominous NEAR-FUTURE context the discovery of records of a long-dead ancient race, which destroyed itself with DEATH RAYS. Before the last moments, however, its scientists had through GENETIC ENGINEERING set the ape on an upward course. But now, in the 20th century, death rays have just been invented. The narrator warns the world. [JC] NOYES, RALPH (? - ) UK writer whose sf novel, A Secret Property (1985), depicts an alien INVASION without great originality. [JC] N3F The National Fantasy Fan Federation, formed in the USA 1941, the brain-child of Damon KNIGHT. After a succession of short-lived and factional US fan associations in the 1930s, the N3F proved a stable and enduring national organization. However, despite its long existence, it has maintained only a very low level of membership and activity and has contributed little to sf or FANDOM. It continues to publish The National Fantasy Fan, a newsletter which first appeared under the title Bonfire in 1941. [PR] NUCLEAR COUNTDOWN TWILIGHT'S LAST GLEAMING. NUCLEAR POWER The claim that sf is a realistic, extrapolative literature is often supported by the citing of successful PREDICTIONS, among which atomic power and the atom bomb are usually given pride of place. When the news of the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki was released in 1945, John W. CAMPBELL Jr, editor of ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION, was exultant, claiming that now sf would have to be taken seriously. Campbell was entitled to congratulate himself: it was largely due to his editorial influence that sf writers of the early 1940s had concerned themselves so deeply with atomic power.It could, however, be argued that anticipating the advent of atomic power was not such a tremendous imaginative leap. The notion of "splitting the atom" goes back to antiquity as a philosophical problem raised in the consideration of atomic theories from Democritus (fl 5th century BC) and Epicurus (c341-270BC) onwards. It was not until the end of the 19th century, however, that any evidence relating to the actual structure of atoms became accessible. In 1902 Ernest Rutherford (1871-1937) and Frederick Soddy (1877-1956) demonstrated that certain heavy atoms-including those of uranium and radium - were in a state of continuous spontaneous decay, emitting various types of energetic radiation. The popularization of this and related discoveries had an influence on SCIENTIFIC ROMANCE comparable only to that of evolutionary theory; the first title to reflect this opportunity was probably Robert CROMIE's The Crack of Doom (1895). The power of radioactivity - in many applications, some of them bizarre - quickly became commonplace in sf, especially in relation to WAR. Einstein's famous equation linking mass and energy (E = mc2 NUETZEL, CHARLES (ALEXANDER) (1934- ) US self-styled hack writer; in various genres, under a variety of names, he wrote over 70 paperback novels. He became active in sf in the 1960s, publishing "A Very Cultured Taste" for Jade #1 in 1960. Lost Valley of the Damned (1961 as by Alec River; exp vt Jungle Jungle 1969 as CN) was routine. Lovers: 2075 (1964) as by Charles English, was, like Queen of Blood (1966), mildly erotic, and marketed as such. Images of Tomorrow (coll 1969) assembled satirical tales. Warriors of Noomas (1969) and its sequel Raiders of Noomas (1969) were romantic adventures heavily influenced by Edgar Rice BURROUGHS, as was Swordsmen of Vistar (1969). The last 4 titles were all published by Powell Books, whose sf line CN edited, as was The Slaves of Lomooro (1969) as by Albert Augustus Jr. [JC]Other works: If this Goes On (anth 1965); Last Call for the Stars (1970). NUEVA DIMENSION SPAIN. NUNES, CLAUDE (1924- ) South African writer and statistician, most of whose work was in collaboration with his wife Rhoda (Gwylleth) Nunes (1938- ). They published their first sf story, "The Problem", in Science Fantasy in 1962, and were active for the next two decades. Inherit the Earth (1963 Science Fiction Adventures as by Claude and Rhoda Nunes; exp 1966 dos US) was published as by CN alone, as his wife participated less than usual in the rewrite; in it the telepathic ANDROIDS who inhabit Earth after a nuclear HOLOCAUST has driven humanity to the stars hope one day to teach their makers how to live in peace. Recoil (1971 US) was published as by both; in a rather archaic style it tells of telepathic ALIENS and their attempts to influence humans, specifically a group of children. The Sky Trapeze (1980 UK), by CN alone, again concentrated on the powers of the mind, this time in an alien venue. [JC] NUOVI BARBARI, I George MILLER; 1990: I GUERRIERI DEL BRONX. NUTTY PROFESSOR, THE Film (1963). Jerry Lewis Productions/Paramount. Dir Jerry Lewis, starring Lewis, Stella Stevens, Dell Moore, Kathleen Freeman, Howard Morris. Screenplay Lewis, Bill Richmond. 107 mins. Colour.Even those who do not normally enjoy the heavily overstated comedy of Lewis, which depends a lot on gesticulation and face-pulling, admit this to be one of his best films; it is a remake as a campus comedy of DR JEKYLL AND MR HYDE, with Lewis playing both Professor Kelp, the nerd who takes the potion, and the revoltingly smooth, sexually charged lounge lizard and crooner, Buddy Love, whom he intermittently becomes; the film is an imaginative act of spite against Lewis's former partner and co-star Dean Martin, recognizable even in this broad parody. Not only is it funny, it hits off the subtext of Robert Louis STEVENSON's original rather well. [PN]See also: CINEMA. NYBERG, BJORN [r] L. Sprague DE CAMP; Robert E. HOWARD. NYE, HAROLD G. [s] Lee HARDING. |