SF&F encyclopedia (T-T)TABOOS Many sf stories are set in imaginary or alien societies, where taboos are an important part of the social structure; Robert SHECKLEY and Jack VANCE both wrote a lot of them. Several such stories are discussed under ANTHROPOLOGY. And sf has a reputation, not always deserved, for attacking the sacred cows and breaking the taboos of our own society; while a few examples of this are necessarily discussed below, this entry focuses on those taboos set up not by society or by the law but by sf publishers ( PUBLISHING).Sf by MAINSTREAM WRITERS has been subjected to no more censorship than fiction in general, and indeed has often been a medium for discussing "taboo" subjects with comparative freedom, even since before the time of The Great Taboo (1890) by Grant ALLEN. Things were very different within GENRE SF, where publishers were unwilling to alienate any part of their readership, and therefore set a great many taboos into operation for a period that lasted at least from the inception of the SF MAGAZINES in 1926 until well into the 1950s. Most of these taboos related to SEX, profanity and RELIGION. Several examples of stories which broke religious or sexual taboos, and consequently had difficulty in finding publishers, are discussed under ALIENS. To mention a single example, Harry HARRISON had great difficulty placing "The Streets of Ashkelon" (1962) - a not extraordinarily daring story about the anthropological ignorance and stupidity of a Christian missionary on an alien planet, and about the damage he does - on the grounds that Christians might find it offensive. Similarly, although since (at least) WWII MAINSTREAM WRITERS have had considerable freedom in discussing sexual matters, magazine sf and genre sf generally remained downright prudish even after the pioneering work ( SEX) of Theodore STURGEON and Philip Jose FARMER.Not all subjects were taboo. Violence, for example, was (and is) all right, and extreme conservative POLITICS ( LIBERTARIANISM, SOCIAL DARWINISM) was acceptable to editors like John W. CAMPBELL Jr, whose own editorials on possible justifications for slavery (though not just for Blacks) were notorious. Campbell's ASF also exercised several quite subtle taboos in addition to those regarding sex and profanity; notably, he strongly disliked publishing downbeat stories in which humanity was somehow unsuccessful, or outwitted by aliens. This sort of prejudice did not precisely take the form of censorship, but the writers all knew very well what sort of stories would be acceptable to which editors. (Later Roger ELWOOD, who for a while in the 1970s controlled a large percentage of the ANTHOLOGY market, was well known for his extremely conservative views, both religious and sexual.) There seems to have been a kind of unspoken agreement not to publish stories of a socialist orientation - although it may just have been that few were written, unlike the position in the early decades of the century when socialist writers like Jack LONDON were at work and being readily published. And until the 1960s Black writers, and indeed Black issues, were rare in magazine sf. Racial problems tended to be discussed symbolically, in terms of meetings with alien races, rather than directly.In the nations which until recently were often described as the communist-bloc countries, political censorship of sf, as of most forms of writing, remained ruthless, especially from the 1940s through the 1960s. As late as 1966 the Soviet writers Yuli DANIEL and Andrey SINYAVSKY were first imprisoned and then exiled. Political censorship in these nations had its ups and downs in the 1970s, relaxing only in the late 1980s, not long before the Communist Party began losing power throughout Eastern Europe and Russia. The entries for BULGARIA, CZECH AND SLOVAK SF, HUNGARY, POLAND, ROMANIA, RUSSIA and YUGOSLAVIA all (to various degrees) document this phenomenon. Sf, of course, because of its metaphoric flexibility, whereby stories apparently set in the future on other worlds actually tell us something about our world right now, is an ideal medium for subdued political protest, as many Communist-bloc writers (and some Capitalist-bloc writers) knew very well.Moving away from politics, we find that until the 1960s pessimism in magazine sf was largely if not entirely taboo ( OPTIMISM AND PESSIMISM). Cannibalism, on the other hand, was perfectly acceptable in genre sf. It turned up quite often even before the 1960s, and has been central in more recent stories like Harlan ELLISON's "A Boy and his Dog" (1969). Ellison was prominent among the ORIGINAL-ANTHOLOGY and magazine editors of the NEW WAVE in consciously breaking taboos, notably in his DANGEROUS VISIONS anthologies, although a decade later most of these stories seemed tame enough (indeed, many were quite tame even at the time). The magazine NEW WORLDS, under Michael MOORCOCK, performed a similar function, rather earlier, in the UK; other original-anthology series like ORBIT and NEW DIMENSIONS also had an important liberating effect on what could or could not be discussed in genre sf. By 1976 Damon KNIGHT had no qualms about publishing a story advocating incest in a post- HOLOCAUST situation, Felix GOTSCHALK's "The Family Winter of 1986" in Orbit 18 (anth 1976); Knight's editorial foreword itself contained a vulgarity which would have been impossible not long before: "The family that lays together stays together." But the ground-breaking incest story in genre sf is very much older: Ward MOORE's classic "Lot's Daughter" (1954).While the 1980s have been seen, rather like the 1960s, as a period when just about anything controversial could be published in the USA and the UK, there was, especially in the USA, a kind of covert censorship operating in some areas. Sometimes this could perhaps be justifiable: Knight's vulgarity, cited above, seemed less funny once the prevalence of child abuse became publicly known. Otherwise, though, this was the period when infantilism forcefully re-entered the field, after it had been discovered how extremely young much of the audience was for smash-hit films like STAR WARS. Whenever mass-market publishers believe there is big money to be won from the youthful market, then a whole series of taboos comes into operation. (The same syndrome has always been visible in US tv programmes like STAR TREK whose audiences are known to be predominantly young; Star Trek scriptwriters still have "bibles" to tell them what issues cannot be tackled, and what kinds of language cannot be used.) Thus the 1980s saw the reverse of, say, the 1950s, when book publishers offered more freedom than magazine publishers. The genre magazines of the 1980s could generally be as broad-minded as their editors wished, notably in the cases of ISAAC ASIMOV'S SCIENCE FICTION MAGAZINE in the USA and INTERZONE in the UK. But book publishers, especially those publishing series for the semi-juvenile market, were very cautious about any undue cleverness or sophistication; though, disgracefully enough, editors as usual did not seem too disturbed by violence. Obviously, many publishers paid no attention to restrictions of this sort, but it is fair to say that during the 1980s the proportion of the mass market where writers could expect to have their more sophisticated work published was shrinking relative to the hack-markets operating according to strict (and uncontroversial) formulae.We should note also that there are cultural trends perceived by editors and journalists as not being worth opposing because to do so makes people cross. In other words, new sacred cows appear every decade. It is not clear to what degree some of these trends operate in sf publishing. A good example in the early 1990s was the topic of global warming and the greenhouse effect: to express the opinion that there was no evidence that the world was getting hotter, and precious little evidence that it was likely to, was to say something disgusting. [PN] TABORI, PAUL Working name of Hungarian writer Paul Tabor or (variously) Pal Tabori (1908-1974), who gained a doctorate in economic and political science in 1930 and then worked as a literary agent. He moved to the UK before the outbreak of WWII, about which he would publish several works, including They Came to London (1943), a marginally NEAR-FUTURE tale involving the Second Front, and The Frontier (1950), which reworked the terrible history of Germany in an ALTERNATE-WORLD frame. He cowrote the script for FOUR-SIDED TRIANGLE (1953), adapted from William F. TEMPLE's novel. Some of his later (and increasingly commercial) fiction was sf, the best example being The Green Rain (1961 US), a sour comedy about chemically polluted rainfall turning people green. Sex and the occult infused much of his later work, like The Cleft (1969 US), the fissure of the title being nearly as symbolic as the crack in Emma TENNANT's The Time of the Crack (1973). PT was an effective writer who sometimes allowed haste to spoil his results. [JC]Other works: Solo (1948); The Talking Tree (1950); The Survivors (1964), a post- HOLOCAUST tale; the Hunters series, comprising The Doomsday Brain (1967 US), The Invisible Eye (1967 US) and The Torture Machine (1969 US); The Demons of Sandorra (1970 US); Lily Dale (1972); The Wild White Witch (1973) as by Peter Stafford.See also: HUNGARY. TACHYONS There is an only half-facetious precept in PHYSICS stating that "anything which is not prohibited is compulsory". Olexa-Myron Bilaniuk and E.C. George Sudarshan suggested in 1962, and Gerald Feinberg in 1967, that the idea of a particle that can only travel FASTER THAN LIGHT does not violate any of the basic maxims of relativistic physics. Such a hypothetical particle (a tachyon, as opposed to the more familiar tardyon, or slower-than-light particle) might emit Cerenkov radiation analogous to the bow wave of a ship, and thus might perhaps be detected. The mass (or metamass) of a tachyon must be imaginary, in the same sense that the square root of minus one is imaginary.If tachyons were shown to exist we might have to rethink the idea of causality, since they would appear in some circumstances to go backwards in time, so that to a hypothetical observer the emission of a tachyon would appear to be its absorption. However, a negative-energy tachyon propagating backward in time could be reinterpreted as a positive-energy tachyon propagating forward in time; some physicists think that such a reinterpretation would be the loophole through which the principle of causality might be preserved. J. Richard Gott proposed in 1973 that, after the Big Bang, a tripartite Universe may have been formed, consisting of universes of matter, ANTIMATTER and tachyons.The tachyon became an item of sf TERMINOLOGY in the 1970s (though never to any great extent), because it suggests a more rational basis on which TIME-TRAVEL stories - or (more plausibly, since we cannot, even theoretically, convert tardyonic into tachyonic matter) stories of COMMUNICATION through time - can be written. The physicist-writer Gregory BENFORD was the first to do this with some care, in his major novel TIMESCAPE (1980), which describes an attempt to change future history by transmitting a tachyonic message from that future to our present. [PN] TAFF AWARDS. TAINE, JOHN Pseudonym for all his fiction of Eric Temple Bell (1883-1960), US mathematician and writer, born in Scotland; he also wrote academic and popular works on mathematics under his own name. JT's first novel was a LOST-WORLD fantasy, The Purple Sapphire (1924), and he published several further sf books before writing for the sf PULP MAGAZINES. The Gold Tooth (1927) concerns a quest for a magical element. Quayle's Invention (1927) features a device for making gold. Green Fire (1928) is one of many contemporary stories about super- WEAPONS. His best and most interesting work includes a long sequence of mutational romances ( MUTANTS) involving rapid and uncontrolled EVOLUTION: The Greatest Adventure (1929); The Iron Star (1930); The Crystal Horde (1930 AMZ Quarterly as "White Lily"; 1952), featuring crystalline life, and Seeds of Life (1931 AMZ Quarterly; 1951), an important early SUPERMAN story, both much later assembled as Seeds of Life and White Lily (omni 1966); "The Ultimate Catalyst" (1939); and The Forbidden Garden (1947). Before the Dawn (1934) is a didactic prehistoric romance in which the end of the dinosaurs is observed through a time-viewer. The Time Stream (1931 Wonder Stories; 1946) is an elaborate TIME-TRAVEL adventure which, like the mutational romances, helped to extend the horizons of pulp sf and is one of the outstanding products of the early SF MAGAZINES; it was much later assembled with The Greatest Adventure and The Purple Sapphire, all texts slightly edited, as Three Science Fiction Novels (omni 1964). The title story of The Cosmic Geoids and One Other (coll 1949) is an interesting but not altogether successful literary experiment, taking the form of a series of imaginary scientific reports dealing with strange extraterrestrial objects; the "one other" is the novella "Black Goldfish". Two inferior novels were the superweapon story "Twelve Eighty-Seven" (1935 ASF) and the DISASTER story "Tomorrow" (1939 Marvel Science Stories). JT's last book was the sympathetic- MONSTER story G.O.G. 666 (1954).JT's prose style is sometimes crude, and his characterization usually lacks finesse, but his best work shows an admirable imaginative flair. He loved to do things on a grand scale, and many of his novels end with catastrophes which overwhelm whole continents. [BS]Constance Reid, The Search for E T Bell, Also Known as John Taine (1993).See also: BIOLOGY; DEVOLUTION; FANTASTIC VOYAGES; HISTORY OF SF; INTELLIGENCE; METAPHYSICS; MONEY; PSEUDO-SCIENCE. TAIT, STEPHEN [r] Kenneth ALLOTT. TAIWAN CHINESE SF. TAKEI, GEORGE (1939- ) US actor and writer, best known for his role as Mr Sulu in STAR TREK. Mirror Friend, Mirror Foe (1979) with Robert Lynn ASPRIN places a Japanese mercenary in a free-for-all corporate world. [JC] TALBOT, BRYAN [r] COMICS. TALBOT, LAWRENCE [s] Edward BRYANT. TALES OF TOMORROW 1. UK pocketbook-size magazine. 11 issues 1950-54 (none in 1951), numbered but undated, published irregularly by John Spencer, London; ed (uncredited) by Sol Assael and Michael Nahum. One of the 4 low-quality Spencer juvenile-sf magazines, the others being FUTURISTIC SCIENCE STORIES, WONDERS OF THE SPACEWAYS and WORLDS OF FANTASY.2. US tv series (1951-6). ABC TV. Created and prod George Foley, Dick Gordon. 25 mins per episode. B/w.One of the earliest and most successful sf-anthology tv series, TOT was ambitious but, like most tv of the period, limited by the restrictions imposed by live studio shooting. It drew its material from a variety of sources, including the sf PULP MAGAZINES, as well as using original teleplays. The first 2 episodes dramatized Jules VERNE's Vingt mille lieues sous les mers (1870; trans as Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Seas 1872 UK), starring Thomas Mitchell as Captain Nemo; Leslie Nielsen co-starred. [FHP/JB] TALES OF WONDER UK magazine, PULP-MAGAZINE size. 16 issues [Summer] 1937-Spring 1942, quarterly to 1940, thereafter slightly irregular, numbered consecutively, #1 undated. Published by World's Work, London; ed Walter GILLINGS.TOW, though preceded by SCOOPS (1934), the sf BOYS' PAPER, was the first adult UK sf magazine. It used both original UK and reprinted US material, and prospered until wartime paper restrictions and the drafting of the editor caused its demise. William F. TEMPLE and Frank Edward ARNOLD were among the authors who made their debuts in TOW, as, with nonfiction, was Arthur C. CLARKE. Stories included "Sleepers of Mars" (1938) by John Beynon - title story of Sleepers of Mars (coll 1973) as by John WYNDHAM-and, as reprints, "The Mad Planet" (1920; 1939) by Murray LEINSTER and "City of the Singing Flame" (1931; 1940) by Clark Ashton SMITH. Other writers were John Russell FEARN, Benson HERBERT, Festus PRAGNELL and Eric Frank RUSSELL. [FHP/PN] TALIB, IMRAN [r] ARABIC SF. TALL, STEPHEN Pseudonym of US writer and biology professor Compton Newby Crook (1908-1981), who began his writing career under various undisclosed pseudonyms in the 1930s; none of this early work was apparently sf, which he began publishing as ST with "The Lights on Precipice Peak" for Gal in 1955. He did not start to be active in the field until more than a decade later, becoming known initially for the Stardust sequence, beginning with The Stardust Voyages (coll of linked stories 1975), a SPACE-OPERA saga of the crew of the Stardust, whose mission is to assess the potential of various planets and the nature of their ALIEN inhabitants. Though the stories exhibit a sameness of effect, they are capable expressions of ST's concern for ECOLOGY, in which discipline he was professionally trained. A sequel, The Ramsgate Paradox (1976), carries the crew into a novel-length adventure. The People Beyond the Wall (1980), is a remarkably late LOST-WORLD tale set under an Alaskan glacier, where a placid UTOPIA is invaded by the usual suspects.The Compton Crook/Stephen Tall Memorial AWARD for Best First Novel of Sf was established 1983. [JC]See also: ANTHROPOLOGY. TALLO, JOZEF [r] CZECH AND SLOVAK SF. TAMMUZ, BINYAMIN [r] ISRAEL. TANAKA, YOSHIKI [r] JAPAN. TARANTULA Film (1955). Universal. Dir Jack ARNOLD, starring John Agar, Mara Corday, Leo G. Carroll. Screenplay Martin Berkeley, Robert M. Fresco, based on an episode of SCIENCE FICTION THEATRE called No Food for Thought by Fresco. 80 mins. B/w.This better-than-average MONSTER MOVIE belongs to the Luddite technology-out-of-control genre. Three idealistic biochemists experiment with nutrients that cause gigantism in animals (which would help feed the world) but (unexpectedly) acromegaly in humans, a horrible deformity that destroys two scientists and then, rather later, the third (an affecting performance by Carroll). A tarantula injected with the nutrient escapes into the desert and grows to a vast size. It preys on cattle and people before being incinerated by the USAF using napalm. Arnold makes strong use of the desert setting, creating a kind of watchful stillness, where the giant spider seems natural rather than alien. [PN/JB]See also: MUTANTS. TARDE, GABRIEL Writing name of French sociologist Jean Gabriel de Tarde (1843-1904). His sf novel, Fragment d'histoire future (1896 Revue internationale de sociologie; 1904; trans Cloudesley Brereton as Underground Man 1905 UK with intro by H.G. WELLS), depicts first a world society on the surface of the Earth, then, with the exhaustion of the Sun's energy, a sanitary underground UTOPIA. The author seems to evince satirical doubts about the value of the latter as a model for human conduct. [JC]See also: END OF THE WORLD. TARDIVEL, JULES-PAUL (1851-1905) US-born journalist and writer, in Canada from about 1868; there he founded a newspaper, La Verite, espousing Quebec nationalism, and published in it his separatist UTOPIA, Pour la patrie: roman du xxe siecle (1895; 1895; trans Sheila Fischman as For my Country 1975). Set in a 1945 characterized by electric trains and other sf projections, it describes a conservative, Catholic "Laurentian Empire" which is opposed - vainly - by the forces of Satan. [JC] TARGET EARTH! Film (1954). Abtcon Pictures/Allied Artists. Dir Sherman A. Rose, starring Richard Denning, Virginia Grey, Kathleen Crowley, Richard Reeves. Screenplay William Raynor, based on "Deadly City" (1953 If) by Paul W. FAIRMAN (as Ivar JORGENSON). 75 mins. B/wIn this film, whose low budget is reflected in its appearance, robots from Venus invade the Earth, using a beam that kills people. They are eventually defeated by scientists, who find that ultrasonic sound will break open their glass faceplates, thus destroying them. Critic Bill WARREN, while he regards it as poor, aside from lonely, atmospheric sequences in a deserted city, adds that it is "better than the story it came from". [JB/PN] TARKOVSKY, ANDREI (1932-1987) Russian film-maker. A graduate of the Soviet State Film School, AT attained prominence in RUSSIA with his first film, Ivanovo Detstvo (1962; vt Ivan's Childhood; vt My Name is Ivan), the story of an orphan cut off behind enemy lines during WWII. With his next feature, Andrei Roublev (1966; release delayed until 1971), AT fell foul of the Soviet censors with his dark vision of the life of the 15th-century icon painter. His sf reputation rests on two long films, SOLARIS (1971), based on SOLARIS (1961) by Stanislaw LEM, and STALKER (1979), based on "Piknik na abochine" (1972; trans as Roadside Picnic 1977) by the STRUGATSKI brothers. Alternating between b/w and colour, and featuring many static scenes prolonged to the point of tedium, AT's sf films have been both much lauded and much reviled by critics, but there is no denying the startling power of such crystal-clear images as the country house marooned on an alien lake in SOLARIS or the gradual telekinetic movement of a glass on a table at the finale of Stalker. More personal are AT's linked pair of non-sf films, Zerkalo (1974; vt Mirror) and Nostalghia (1983; vt Nostalgia), the latter made in Italy after his emigration from the USSR. Not long before his death from cancer, AT made a borderline-sf film in Sweden, Offret (1986; vt The Sacrifice), a contemplation on faith and responsibility, heavily influenced by Ingmar Bergman (1918- ), which contains a central section visualizing WWIII and the dilapidation of society. [KN]See also: CINEMA; MUSIC. TATE, PETER (1940 - ) Welsh journalist and author who began publishing sf with "The Post-Mortem People" for NW in 1966; this was assembled with his other short fiction as Seagulls under Glass and Other Stories (coll 1975 US). His first novel, The Thinking Seat (1969 US), began a loose sequence of tales featuring the charismatic and guru-like Simeon; it was followed by Moon on an Iron Meadow (1974 US) and Faces in the Flames (1976 US). All demonstrate an interest in POLITICS, and Moon on an Iron Meadow in particular shows a deep concern about biological weapons - it also manifests the extent to which PT had been influenced by Ray BRADBURY, the bulk of the story taking place in Bradbury's imaginary Green Town, Illinois. PT published 3 other novels: Gardens 12345 (1971; vt Gardens One to Five 1971 US), Country Love and Poison Rain (1973), probably the first sf novel about Welsh Nationalism - it concerns the political repercussions of the discovery of a secret NATO cache of deadly nerve gas in the Brecon Beacons-and Greencomber (1979 US), a surly and metaphor-choked tale of a battered NEAR-FUTURE UK rather reminiscent of the work of Keith ROBERTS, but without that writer's shaping power. [MJE]See also: POLLUTION. TATE, ROBIN [s] R.L. FANTHORPE. TAUSEND AUGEN DES DR MABUSE, DIE (vt The Thousand Eyes of Dr Mabuse; vt The Diabolical Dr Mabuse) Film (1960). CCC Filmkunst/CEI Incom/Criterion. Dir Fritz LANG, starring Dawn Addams, Peter Van Eyck, Gert Frobe, Wolfgang Preiss, Werner Peters. Screenplay Lang, Heinz Oskar Wuttig, based on characters created by Norbert Jacques (1880-1954), author of Dr Mabuse, Master of Mystery (trans Lilian A. Clare 1923 UK). 103 mins. B/w.After a gap of 27 years Fritz Lang returned, in this West German, Italian and French coproduction, both to the character who had helped make him famous and from the USA in order to do it; it was to be his last film. His other films about Dr Mabuse - the evil genius who seeks world conquest - were the 2-part DR MABUSE, DER SPIELER (1922), also borderline sf, and Das Testament des Dr Mabuse (1933). DTADDM, which received a very mixed critical reception, tells of a kind of Mabuse REINCARNATION (whose identity - or identities - is not revealed until the end) who operates from a hideout, fitted with monitors, in a grand hotel whose every room is bugged with hidden tv cameras; he seeks control of an atomic-weapons empire as part of his scheme for international anarchy. The film is absurdly plotted and slow-moving, but is powerful in its single-minded pursuit of images of vision (and of its distortion): screens, one-way mirrors, a blind seer, dark glasses, disguises, masquerades. It has been described as Lang's masterpiece. In Germany it was successful enough to catalyse the making of 5 further Mabuse films (1961-4) which Lang, now in his 70s, refused to direct; they feature, successively, zombies, invisibility, post-mortem hypnotism, a hypnotizing machine and death rays. [PN] TAVARES, BRAULIO Working name of Brazilian writer Braulio Fernandes Tavares Neto (1950- ), whose O que e FC ["What is SF?"] (1986) is an introduction to the subject for younger readers. His first story collection, A Espinha Dorsal da Memoria ["The Backbone of Memory"] (coll 1989 Portugal), won a Portuguese sf award. He wrote the notes on Brazilian sf in this encyclopedia ( LATIN AMERICA). [PN] TAYLOR, KEITH [r] AUSTRALIA; Andrew J. OFFUTT. TAYLOR, ROBERT LEWIS (1912- ) US writer, often of HUMOUR, in whose Adrift in a Boneyard (1947) the few survivors of a mysterious DISASTER come to a peaceful ISLAND where they must decide, in terms both farcical and serene, what it will now mean to be human. [JC] TECHNOLOGY Although various literary traditions supplied inspiration and continued support to PROTO SCIENCE FICTION, it was the perception of the power which the new MACHINES of the Industrial Revolution had to transform the world which gave birth to sf itself, inspiring Jules VERNE's imaginary voyages, George GRIFFITH's future- WAR stories, H.G. WELLS's SCIENTIFIC ROMANCES, the hi-tech UTOPIAN fantasies of Edward BELLAMY and others, and the mechanized DYSTOPIAN nightmares which dissented from them. The demands of melodrama have always ensured that, even in those specialist magazines whose editors were outspoken champions of technological advancement - most notably Hugo GERNSBACK and John W. CAMPBELL Jr - most stories were about dangerous products or about technology running out of control. Many particular aspects of general technological progress require individual treatment as themes in sf: AUTOMATION, CITIES, COMPUTERS, CYBORGS, DISCOVERY AND INVENTION, GENETIC ENGINEERING, NUCLEAR POWER, POWER SOURCES, ROBOTS, ROCKETS, SPACESHIPS, TRANSPORTATION and WEAPONS.The attitude of sf to technology has always been deeply ambivalent ( OPTIMISM AND PESSIMISM). The 18th-century idea that moral progress and technological progress were inseparably bound together has never been universally accepted, and literary images of the future have always recognized doubts as to the essential goodness of technology, even when their purpose has been to argue that technological progress is the principal facilitator of moral progress. GENRE-SF writers may take it for granted - it is a central ideological tenet of almost all HARD SF - but writers of futuristic fantasy outside the genre have always been more likely to take the position that moral, social and spiritual values essential to human happiness are actually placed in hazard by technological advancement. Leading genre-sf writers like Isaac ASIMOV and Arthur C. CLARKE have become enormously influential apologists for technological progress in an era when many voices are raised in outspoken criticism of the supposed "dehumanizing" effects of technology. More tellingly - as Jacques Ellul (1912- ) suggests in La Technique (1954 France; trans John Wilkinson as The Technological Society 1964 US) - it is possible to argue the high cost to human consciousness of emphasizing means over ends, "technic" over understanding, in a world which is bound to the measurable and blind to the unique.Sf is, of course, the natural medium of antitechnological fantasies as well as of serious extrapolations of technological possibility. There is a good deal of PASTORAL sf which glorifies a nostalgically romanticized quasi-medieval way of life, often with PSI-POWER-jargonized MAGIC thrown in to help with the chores. Such imagery bears no relation whatsoever to the brutal reality of actual medieval existence, but its phenomenal psychological power is even more elaborately reflected in modern genre FANTASY; and stories of LIFE ON OTHER WORLDS and the depiction of ALIEN societies frequently deal in similar imagery. No doubt the appeal of low-tech societies to sf writers has much to do with the fact that the strategic elimination of known technology is easier by far to accomplish than elaborate technological innovation, but there is clearly also some powerful force at work endowing such visions with a special glamour. E.M. FORSTER's question - posed in reaction to Wells's technological utopianism - about what happens when "The Machine Stops" (1909) is by no means purely practical; he and many others who followed in his footsteps were arguing - as Aldous did HUXLEY in BRAVE NEW WORLD (1932) - that the "Machine" will rot our minds down to intellectual compost. It is worth noting, however, that in pastoral writings within genre sf, rather than from outside it, the joy and triumph of technological rediscovery and redevelopment provide a frequent theme - one particularly prevalent in tales of the HOLOCAUST AND AFTER.If genre sf needs a defence, it is quite simply that technological progress has allowed us to become in almost every way healthier, wealthier and in some senses wiser, and may well continue to perform that role. If Gernsback's advocacy of that case was naive and Campbell's eccentric, the writers for whom they created a home were sufficiently various, intelligent and heterodox to make sure the question was examined in all kinds of ingenious ways. The wide-eyed optimism of Gernsback's own Ralph 124C 41+ (1911-12; fixup 1925) and the curiously convoluted explorations of Campbell's "Don A. Stuart" stories were soon supplemented by David H. KELLER's fabular cautionary tales, Robert A. HEINLEIN's celebration of all-purpose problem-solving aptitudes and Asimov's die-hard championship of technical improvisation as the favourite offspring of maternal necessity. Even if the conventions of melodrama demanded that things must go wrong in story after story, true sf writers always put the blame on the greed and vainglory of rogues, politicians, military men or business tycoons, never on the march of progress itself. Criminal or mad SCIENTISTS were often required as VILLAINS, but scientists figured more prominently in genre sf as HEROES - or, at least, as key supporting players whose endeavours enabled Everyman heroes to succeed. It was perhaps unfortunate that Campbell developed in "Forgetfulness" (1937 as by Don A. Stuart) - and was ever after willing to play host to - the notion that human society might one day "transcend" technology by developing powers of the mind which would obviate its necessity. And genre sf has also generated its own perverse brand of technological scepticism, enshrined in images of technology literally moving beyond human control by establishing its own independent processes of EVOLUTION, an idea first broached satirically in Samuel BUTLER's Erewhon (1872) but given a new edge by genre stories of self-replicating machines which - as, for instance, in some of Gregory BENFORD's recent works - may become involved in an ultimate and universal struggle for existence against biological organisms.Like the Romantics before them, genre-sf writers have generally been on the side of Faust, convinced that the quest for knowledge was a sacred one, no matter how fondly a jealous God might prefer blind faith. Characters in bad Hollywood MONSTER MOVIES might be able to sign off with a resigned admission that "there are things Man was not meant to know", but nothing could be more alien to the ethos of genre sf. Even in early pulp sf, technology was a means rather than an end, and, however much Campbell's writers were inclined to the celebration of the competence of the engineer, there remained a visionary element in their work which centralized the CONCEPTUAL BREAKTHROUGH as the peak experience of human existence. The hi-tech future of pulp sf was not the "Utopia of Comforts" so bitterly criticized by such sceptical writers as S. Fowler WRIGHT but rather a reaching-out for further horizons. SPACE FLIGHT became and remained the central myth of sf because it was the ultimate window of opportunity, through which the entire Universe could be viewed - and, ultimately, known. In genre sf, the ultimate aim of technological progress is, in the words of Mack REYNOLDS, "total understanding of the cosmos". This is clearly reflected in the increasing interest which post-WWII sf has taken in the traditional questions of RELIGION and in the evolution of sciencefictional ideas of the SUPERMAN.Genre sf has played a key role in the development of modern images of future technology. The ILLUSTRATIONS of the pulp magazines were remarkably potent in this respect - particularly the cityscapes of Frank R. PAUL. The imagery of futuristic vehicles and cities, especially spaceships, has a glamour all of its own, carried forward in the work of artists like Chris FOSS and Jim BURNS. Much of this has, of course, been absorbed into the CINEMA, although technical limitations put a severe restraint on its evolution until films like STAR WARS (1977) were able to deploy models which looked far more real than the impressive but obvious fakes used in, say, METROPOLIS (1926). William GIBSON's dismissal of much of this imagery as an obsolete dream of "The Gernsback Continuum" (1981) is not altogether fair, although Gibson has played a leading role in updating and supplementing sf's visual imagery by providing CYBERSPACE with "inner-spatial landscapes" reflective of the types of graphics which modern computers are particularly adept at generating.As anxieties about impending ecocatastrophes increase ( Hyperlink to: ECOLOGY; OVERPOPULATION; POLLUTION), sf stories which focus closely on controversies regarding the goodness or badness of technology have inevitably increased in number, and will presumably continue to do so. Such debates are the central issue of such novels as Norman SPINRAD's lyrical Songs from the Stars (1980), Poul ANDERSON's dogged Orion Shall Rise (1983) and Marc LAIDLAW's satirical Dad's Nuke (1985). Perhaps the most apt verbal image of modern humanity's relationship with technology is that enshrined in the title of Marc STIEGLER's collection The Gentle Seduction (coll 1990); the title story (1989) is one of the more eloquent of the many contemporary sf tales arguing that the development of NANOTECHNOLOGY will eventually bring us into a much more intimate and rewarding association with our machines than we could ever, until recently, have imagined. [BS/PN] TECHNOTHRILLER A common term, used in this encyclopedia to designate a tale which, though it often makes use of sf devices, in fact occupies an undisplaced, entirely mundane narrative world. Technothrillers may be set in the NEAR FUTURE and invoke technologies beyond the capacities of the present moment, but they differ from sf in two respects: first, like the unknown in HORROR novels, science in the technothriller is either inherently threatening or worshipfully (and fetishistically) exploited; second, a typical technothriller plot evokes a technological scenario whose world-transforming implications are left unexamined or evaded, often through the use of MCGUFFIN plots. Any novel in which future developments in science play a central role is not a technothriller at all: it is sf.Examples of technothrillers by sf writers are Frank M. ROBINSON's and Thomas N. SCORTIA's successful collaborations from The Glass Inferno (1974) to Blow Out! (1987), Robin COOK's tales of medicine gone awry, and the films loosely based on Ian FLEMING's James Bond novels. The latter are examples of the most common variety - the political thriller in which the artefacts of science serve as gear (or fetish) and as a target for the PARANOIAS of our century. [JC] TEDFORD, WILLIAM G. (? - ) US writer whose sf activities long seemed to have been restricted to the publication, in a single year, of not only the 3 books of the Timequest sequence - Time Quest #1: Rashanyn Dark (1981), #2: Hydrabyss Red (1981) and #3: Nemydia Deep (1981) - but also Silent Galaxy (1981), a singleton. But a decade later he did publish a horror novel, Liquid Diet (1992). [JC] TEENAGE CAVEMAN Roger CORMAN. TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLES 1. A team of 4 pizza-loving humanized turtle troubleshooters created by US artists Kevin Eastman (1962-) and Peter Laird (1954- ) in a self-published black-and-white COMIC book from May 1984. Initially seen as a parody of martial-arts SUPERHERO team-ups, they became so enormously popular that their creators are reputed to have received about $600 million from merchandising rights alone, and a veritable tsunami of imitators was rushed into print, including Adolescent Radio-Active Black-Belt Hamsters and Naive Interdimensional Commando Koalas.TMNT was published bimonthly from 1985, and within 18 months sales had reached 100, 000 copies per issue. The original story concerned 4 turtles living in New York's sewers who become engulfed in radioactive mud which causes them to become humanized and very considerably enlarged. The characters' names are shared with artists of the Italian quattrocento: Leonardo, Raphael, Donatello and Michaelangelo (sic). In 1987 Archie Comics began publishing a children's version of the strip in colour, and four untitled GRAPHIC NOVELS (numbered I-IV) were published by First Publishing 1986-8. A hugely successful US animated tv series was spun off from the comic in the late 1980s. [RT]2. Film (1990). Golden Harvest. Dir Steve Barron, starring Judith Hoag, Elias Koteas. Screenplay Todd W. Langen, Bobby Herbeck. 93 mins. Colour.After the comic, the tv series and the marketing campaign came the film. This was the biggest independently made hit in film history, though in fact production had been planned before the success of the tv series. The surprise was that it was good. The splicing of live action with puppetry from the Jim Henson workshop - Henson (1936-1990) died just after the film's release - is seamless, the direction is clean and purposeful, the script is amusing and succinct. The 4 teenage outsider SUPERHEROES, the mutant turtles, are junk-food-eating vigilante good guys up against a Ninjutsu villain who plays a Japanese Fagin to the teenage pickpockets of New York. The martial-arts fights are excellent (their violence, subject of many parental complaints, is nominal and stylized); the affable turtles' shabby rat father-figure, Splinter, is as tatty a Zen master as ever seen on screen.The sequel, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: The Secret of the Ooze (1991), dir Michael Pressman, played it much safer. Sales of Turtles were falling off, and the blandness of this movie, intended to reassure the family market, renders its story of the discovery by a villain of more mutant-creating radioactive ooze almost without interest. The second sequel was Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles III (1992), dir and written Stuart Gillard, 96 mins, which has the turtles time-travelling back to seventeenth-century Japan in a conflict involving Japanese samurai, innocent villagers and English pirates. While the creators of the original comic, Estman and Laird, had more to do with this third film, which was touted in advance publicity as "more hard-edged" than no. 2, the critical consensus was that it was a mess, strictly for the younger children, and not hugely enjoyed by them. [PN] TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLES II: THE SECRET OF THE OOZE TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLES. TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLES III TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLES. TEITELBAUM, SHELDON (1955- ) Canadian journalist and film and sf critic, resident 1977-85 in ISRAEL, where he served 5 years as an officer in the paratroop corps. His sf/horror column in the Jerusalem Post was the first such outside the sf magazines; he also had a film column in the Hebrew-language magazine Fantazia 2000. ST is currently Los Angeles correspondent for CINEFANTASTIQUE. [PN] TEK WAR Canadian/US tv miniseries (1994). Atlantis Films/Universal. Exec prods William SHATNER andPeter Sussman; line prod John Calvert; supervising prod Seaton McLean, based on theTek novels by Shatner. First episode written by Alfonse Ruggiero, Jr.and WestbrookClaridge, dir Shatner, starring Greg Evigan, Eugene Clark, Torri Higginson,Barry Morse, Sonja Smits, Sheena Easton and Shatner. Four 88-min episodes.TW was part of a syndicated package called "The Action Pack" inwhich it and other two-hour action/adventure miniseries were broadcast in rotation, 24 episodes inall, four being devoted to TW, and based with moderate fidelity on theTek novels attributed to Shatner. Evigan plays Jake Cardigan, a framed cop doing 15years in cryogenic sleep for murder and drug abuse, but mysteriously paroled after four. The first book was set in twenty-second century Los Angeles, but the miniseries, shot in Toronto, Canada, appears to be in a much closer future than that. The series' most intriguing aspect is its CYBERPUNK elements,and an interesting attempt is made to create a visual equivalent for theexperience of cruising in "cyberspace". In other respects - especially the cars and the cityitself - the series is less successfully futuristic. The story is a fairly routine affair about conspiracies involving drug lords ("tek" is a dangerous drug that enables fantasies to seem, temporarilyreal), android killers and so forth. One critic described it as "Miami Vice meets NEUROMANCER", and the latter aspect is more interesting than the former.The miniseries found a following, and a full series began in Jan 1995, Tek War:The Series, 18 one-hour episodes being planned. [PN/GF] TEK WAR: THE SERIES TEK WAR. TELEKINESIS An important item of sf TERMINOLOGY, from the Greek words for "movement at a distance", developed from the earlier word "psychokinesis" (often shortened to PK), coined by Dr J.B. Rhine (1895-1980) in the 1930s; Charles FORT used the term TELEPORTATION to describe the same phenomenon. Telekinesis is the ability to move objects by the power of the mind, and after telepathy is the most commonly used PSI POWER (which see for details) in sf. The word "telekinesis" was probably not coined in sf, but began to be used in sf (especially in ASF) in the early 1950s. [PN] TELEPATHY ESP; FANTASY; PSI POWERS; SUPERMAN. TELEPORTATION Although a common item of sf TERMINOLOGY, this word is (or has been) used in 3 different ways.1. Charles FORT used it in Wild Talents (1932) as a synonym for "psychokinesis" or, later, TELEKINESIS; i.e., the ability to move objects by the power of the mind alone.2. In sf of the 1950s and 1960s there was a tendency to use "teleportation" as a special case of "telekinesis", meaning the ability to move oneself from one place to another by the power of the mind alone; this is probably the commonest usage.3. Some writers use "teleportation" as the ability to move people or objects from one place to another by MATTER TRANSMISSION; i.e., using scientific equipment to transmit items in the form of information-carrying waves, which at the destination are reconstituted into matter. A particularly implausible version (since there is no transmitting equipment at the far end) is the "Beam me up, Scottie!" gadget in STAR TREK. [PN]See also: PSI POWERS. TELEVISION The first thing to understand about televised sf is that it has never been commercially successful (relative to the top programmes) on US tv, and seldom on UK tv. Advertisers in the USA seek new programmes that are likely to end up in the year's top 20; these are the programmes that get the top advertising and the big budgets. It has been reported that the only US sf tv programme ever to enter the top-20 category was the tabloid-style documentary drama programme PROJECT UFO (1978-9), which exploited widespread PARANOIA already much sensationalized by the popular press, and had little to do with true sf. Because producers know that sf does not normally pull that sort of audience, it tends to be regarded as filler material, with neither budgets, writers nor actors being top-drawer. Every now and then someone with power tries to break the hoodoo, as Steven SPIELBERG did with his anthology-series AMAZING STORIES (1985-7), spending a lot of money and getting good writers and (especially) good directors, but that too disappointed, in terms of both quality and commercial success.To concentrate for a moment on artistic rather than commercial success (though they are linked), we note that for a while everyone thought the turning point would come in about 1978, when sf in the CINEMA had made an enormous breakthrough, especially with STAR WARS (1977), CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND (1977) and SUPERMAN (1978). US tv may have had its chance then, but blew it, partly through the lowest-common-denominator populism of Glen A. LARSON, who created the infantile BATTLESTAR GALACTICA (1978), its successor GALACTICA 1980 (1980) and the only fractionally better BUCK ROGERS IN THE 25TH CENTURY (1979-81). US tv has failed consistently with sf adventure (the various STAR TREK series being, along with The WILD, WILD WEST , the main exceptions, and then only partially so) and SUPERHERO adventure (like The INCREDIBLE HULK [1977-82] and WONDER WOMAN [1974-9]); has had limited success with sf anthology series (like The OUTER LIMITS [1963-5], and The TWILIGHT ZONE [1959-64]); and has done quite nicely with borderline-sf sitcoms (like MY FAVORITE MARTIAN [1963-6] and MORK AND MINDY [1978-82]).Outsiders would argue that much of the problem of US tv rests in the advertisers, who have a vested interest in reaching as wide an audience as possible, and therefore tend to veto (especially in programmes aimed at younger viewers) anything remotely controversial that might upset a section of the potential audience. It would seem to follow that UK commercial tv should have just as bad a record, for the same reasons, but this is not entirely true, as witness The AVENGERS (1961-9), The PRISONER (1967-8) and the original MAX HEADROOM (1985), all originated by UK commercial channels. Nonetheless, most classic sf tv in the UK has come from the BBC - including the first 3 Quatermass serials, DR WHO, BLAKE'S SEVEN, HITCH-HIKER'S GUIDE TO THE GALAXY and RED DWARF - and the BBC operates quite independently from advertising income, though it is open to, and occasionally suffers from, other pressures towards conformity, including ratings.The other main reason why sf has failed on tv in the USA, and to a large degree in the UK, is the almost invariable assumption that it is stuff for the kids. It is difficult to know if adult sf would succeeed on tv; few people have ever tried. The first sf series to appear on US tv, CAPTAIN VIDEO (1949-56), was primarily aimed at children, and it is arguable that the situation, over four decades later, has not changed.Captain Video, which began in 1949, was a series made on a very small budget and transmitted live every night. This situation ensured that sets and special effects were primitive (scenes involving special effects were pre-filmed and then inserted, usually clumsily, into the show, by cutting to a tv camera that was pointing directly into the lens of a movie projector), but its popularity with young viewers quickly produced a host of imitations, like BUCK ROGERS (1950-51), TOM CORBETT, SPACE CADET (1950-55), SPACE PATROL (1950-55), SUPERMAN (1953-7), CAPTAIN MIDNIGHT (1954-6) and COMMANDO CODY: SKY MARSHAL OF THE UNIVERSE (1955). While the later series were more expensively produced and were pre-recorded on film, they all followed in the tradition of the movie and RADIO serials of the 1930s-40s rather than that of written sf. Science had little part in any of these productions, with the exception of Tom Corbett, which had Willy LEY as scientific adviser, but it was prominent in one of the first "adult" sf series on US tv, OUT OF THIS WORLD (1952), which was a mixture of sf and science fact, with guest scientists interrupting the story to discuss scientific points with the narrator. This nonsensational approach to sf was continued in SCIENCE FICTION THEATER (1955-7), in which the host, Truman Bradley, and the show's various writers did their best (presumably unconsciously) to ensure that no trace of any SENSE OF WONDER remained in the stories. Nearer to written sf was TALES OF TOMORROW (1951-6), one of the earliest sf anthology series, which featured stories adapted from sf books and magazines but, like the early children's serials, was handicapped by being transmitted live.The first major UK sf event on tv (apart from Nigel KNEALE's 1949 tv adaptation of George ORWELL's NINETEEN EIGHTY-FOUR [1949]) was the BBC serial The QUATERMASS EXPERIMENT (1953), a horror/sf mixture which was at the time considered suitable only for adults, though today it would probably seem no more disturbing than the children's serial DR WHO (1963-89). Even by the early 1950s the fundamental differences between US and UK tv had been established; instead of having to produce self-contained programme "packages" that would be attractive to sponsors, the BBC producers had editorial freedom. One result was that the most popular format for BBC drama (apart from individual plays) became the serial, usually in 6-10 episodes, whereby the writers could build up atmosphere and concentrate on character development; in the USA, by contrast, the trend was towards long-running series whose episodes were self-contained. (The lack of commercial interruptions was itself an advantage in the pacing of the BBC programmes, which did not have their rhythm broken by false climaxes and cliff-hangers designed to entice the viewer to stay tuned during the ads.) With the arrival of commercial tv in the UK (the first channel in 1955, the second in 1982), US-style programming was also introduced (though the UK commercial-break pattern is much less intrusive), but the serial format still remains popular on all channels of UK tv.BBC TV's first productions of sf for children also took the form of serials, one of the earliest being The LOST PLANET (1954). Its sequel, Return to the Lost Planet (1955), came in the year that saw the first of the Quatermass sequels, QUATERMASS II (1955).1956-8 were sparse years. In the USA most of the juvenile series had ended, with the exception of Superman (already the steady erosion of the boundaries between children's and adult programmes on US tv had begun) and the sober and dull Science Fiction Theater, both of which lasted until 1957. From then until 1959 sf on tv was practically nonexistent. The situation was little different in the UK, though in 1958 there was the third and best of the Quatermass serials: QUATERMASS AND THE PIT (1958-9).In the USA WORLD OF GIANTS had 1 brief season in 1959, but the most important new US series that year for sf fans was The TWILIGHT ZONE (1959-64), an anthology series created by Rod SERLING as a mixture of fantasy and sf stories, more of the former than the latter. The 1960s saw an increase of sf-related series in both countries: the BBC serial A FOR ANDROMEDA (1961) was unusual in that it was cowritten by a scientist, Fred HOYLE. In 1961 The Avengers (1961-9; followed by The New Avengers [1976-7]) began, though at that time it was called Police Surgeon and did not feature any of the sf or fantasy gimmicks that were to dominate this enjoyably bizarre and imaginative show in later years. Another UK series, OUT OF THIS WORLD (1962) - not to be confused with the earlier US series of the same name - tried to repeat the success of The Twilight Zone by adopting a similar format, with episodes based on the stories of many well known sf writers. It lasted only 1 short season.The most remarkable of all sf phenomena on tv began in 1963: the splendid BBC series DR WHO (1963-89), which was aimed at children but came to attract adults as well. It had many serialized stories run consecutively, each normally lasting for at least 4 episodes. Producers, writers and cast changed many times, but Dr Who ran for 26 years and, according to rumour, even now may be in suspended animation rather than dead.In the USA another series inspired by The Twilight Zone began in 1963. The OUTER LIMITS (1963-5) was more sf-oriented than Serling's series and also took itself rather less seriously; though inventive and entertaining, it could hardly be described as adult sf. The same year saw the first of many comedy sf series, MY FAVORITE MARTIAN (1963-6), a relatively sophisticated sitcom that proved popular with audiences. Less successful, though in some ways superior, was MY LIVING DOLL (1964-5), an sf comedy about a ROBOT woman that ran for only 1 season.It was also in 1964 in the USA that Irwin ALLEN, the Glen LARSON of the 1960s, produced the first of his sf action/adventure series for tv, VOYAGE TO THE BOTTOM OF THE SEA (1964-8). His lowest-possible-common-denominator approach to the genre has influenced the style and quality of US tv sf ever since. The same year saw the debut of The MAN FROM U.N.C.L.E. (1964-8), a by-product of the craze for James Bond movies ( Ian FLEMING) but incorporating many sf devices and plot situations. This was better, and better still was The Wild, Wild West (1965-9) which featured two secret agents, equipped with various anachronistic devices, pitted against mad scientists in the 19th-century West. Another Irwin Allen series, LOST IN SPACE (1965-8), was more obviously aimed at children than Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, though that made little difference in quality or plausibility.In the UK, 1965 saw the debut of the adult sf series OUT OF THE UNKNOWN (1965-71), an anthology show that presented adaptations of the work of sf writers including (among many others) Isaac ASIMOV, Clifford D. SIMAK and J.G. BALLARD; from this practice it derived an authority not often visible in televised sf, which is normally written by professional tv screenwriters. The standard of the adaptations varied and the small budgets were a handicap (another major difference between US and UK tv is that the former is usually produced on much larger budgets), but overall it was superior to most sf series before or since. This view was not shared by the BBC itself, however; after a couple of seasons it was turned into a series about the supernatural.Also from the UK came THUNDERBIRDS (1965-6), a series that used sophisticated puppets and clever special effects. Produced by Gerry ANDERSON, it proved very popular with children on both sides of the Atlantic. Anderson had pioneered the use of puppetry for children's sf with SUPERCAR (1961-2) and FIREBALL XL5 (1962-3). Anderson's SuperMarionation puppet programmes are fun, but are really for quite young children.In 1966 began TIME TUNNEL (1966-7), another Irwin Allen production, but it was not as popular as his other series. The important new US series of 1966 was STAR TREK, whose ever-swelling following (largely garnered during re-runs) has become legendary. Aimed primarily at adolescents, it featured the work of several established sf writers in the first 2 seasons, though their scripts were usually rewritten by the show's resident writers. Aside from Jerome BIXBY, no well known sf names appeared in any of the credits for the final season, which may account in part for the plunge in quality.The INVADERS (1967-8) was another US series of the late 1960s but, as based on a single plot gimmick that had to be repeated each episode, it lasted only 2 seasons. More interesting, and equally reliant on evoking total PARANOIA, was The PRISONER (1967-8), a KAFKA-esque UK series created by actor Patrick McGoohan (1928- ), who also starred. But at the time it was popular neither with the UK company that produced it (ITC) nor with the public, and it came to a premature end, although its supporters continue to argue passionately that it was the finest sf ever to appear on the small screen, and it has been rescreened more successfully since. In the USA Irwin Allen launched yet another series, LAND OF THE GIANTS (1968-70), but the vogue for his type of programme was coming to an end. Also fairly short-lived was The IMMORTAL (1969-71), based on The Immortals (fixup 1962) by James E. GUNN, who also produced a novelization, The Immortal * (1970).In the UK Gerry Anderson switched from puppets to live actors in his new children's series UFO (1970-73). A UK series with more serious intentions was DOOMWATCH (1970-72), which exploited popular anxiety about the dangers of scientific research; one of the creators of the series was the scientist Kit PEDLER.Rod Serling began another anthology series with ROD SERLING'S NIGHT GALLERY (1970-72), but it was less sf-oriented than The Twilight Zone and proved less successful as well. Then, in 1973, came the series which had the greatest influence on US sf tv in the 1970s, The SIX MILLION DOLLAR MAN (1973-8), which, though basically a live COMIC strip rather similar to the 1950s Superman series for children, was successfully cloned; there were several near-duplications of the formula.The UK children's serial The TOMORROW PEOPLE (1973-9) began on commercial tv in 1973, and at times approached the level of Dr Who. The BBC in the same year attempted a more adult series with MOONBASE 3 (1973), a nonsensational serial set on the Moon, but it was not a success. That year the awful GENERATION-STARSHIP programme The STARLOST (1973) came from Canada ( Harlan ELLISON). The following year in the USA saw 2 further short-lived series, PLANET OF THE APES (1974), based on the popular movie, and (much better) KOLCHAK: THE NIGHT STALKER (1974-5), an anthology series primarily about the supernatural, which included a few sf episodes.In 1975 Gerry Anderson, after the failure of UFO, created a pale UK imitation of Star Trek with SPACE 1999 (1975-8). Surprisingly, it enjoyed some success in the USA, but only briefly, and it ended after 2 seasons. The series represents a nadir in the quality of scientific thought in televised sf. A more typically UK series of the same year was SURVIVORS (1975-7), created by Terry NATION, a post- HOLOCAUST series in the UK manner established by John WYNDHAM and John CHRISTOPHER.One of the first of the many Six Million Dollar Man imitations was The INVISIBLE MAN (1975-6), but it did not prove as popular as expected, despite some ingenious special effects and the use of David McCallum, the star of The Man from U.N.C.L.E. It returned the following season with a different actor in the lead role and a new title: The Gemini Man (1976), neither of which saved the series from being cancelled. Yet another short-lived series was The FANTASTIC JOURNEY (1977) which utilized the Star Trek formula without spaceship or other planets (different cultures being encountered via "time zones" on a lost island in the Bermuda Triangle). WONDER WOMAN (1974-9), derived from the fantasy comic strip of the same title, had made her debut in 1974; she was followed by The BIONIC WOMAN (1976-8), a spin-off from Six Million Dollar Man. In 1977 the comic-book style trend was continued - but with none of the verve of the best comics - with The MAN FROM ATLANTIS (1977), LOGAN'S RUN (1977-8) and The INCREDIBLE HULK (1977-82). But while fantasy- and sf-related series were proliferating in the USA, mostly in a vain attempt to capture the charisma of the various SUPERHERO comics, UK tv was producing only the gloomy, Orwellian serial 1990 (1977-8) and, of course, the never-ending and still sprightly Dr Who. It was not until 1978 that UK tv made a comparatively formidable entry into the world of SPACE OPERA with Terry Nation's series BLAKE'S SEVEN (1978-81), which also began in Orwellian vein. While proficiently produced, and disarmingly cynical, it was still too close to the Star Trek formula.In the 1970s such anxiety-ridden UK series as Doomwatch, Survivors and 1990 reflected the fears of a society that seemed to find itself on the brink of something unpleasant, whereas, whatever fears may have been preying on the US mass-consciousness, the apparent reaction to them was (and is) to plunge wholeheartedly into a second childhood, not only with tv, but also in the CINEMA, as with STAR WARS and SUPERMAN.The 1980s in the USA saw increasing infantilism in sf series. Short-lived movie spin-offs included BLUE THUNDER (1984), STARMAN (1986-7) and ALIEN NATION (1989-90), and a spin-off from a tv miniseries, SOMETHING IS OUT THERE (1989). Ray BRADBURY's stories barely survived the miniseries The MARTIAN CHRONICLES (1980), although they did rather better in RAY BRADBURY THEATRE (1985-6). A US series based on a UK original, MAX HEADROOM (1987-8), looked promising for a time but deteriorated rapidly. So did the big-budget sf series of the decade (whose budget shrank with each succeeeding segment), "V" (1983-5). This was an object lesson in the corrupting influence of the US tv system, for it worsened practically minute by minute. In the first part of the first miniseries, this story of alien invasion (for "aliens" read "Nazis") was interesting; by the end it was pure pabulum.Until the end of the decade, the most interesting US experiments in sf were probably the uneven anthology series TWILIGHT ZONE (2nd series 1985-6) and AMAZING STORIES (1985-7), but in both cases glutinous sentiment hovered too closely overhead. Then things perked up a little, with the romantic and sometimes very imaginative BEAUTY AND THE BEAST (1987-90)-which may have been helped by the input of sf writer George R.R. MARTIN - and the TIME-TRAVEL series QUANTUM LEAP (1989-current), which was sometimes amusing and certainly infinitely better than the earlier VOYAGERS (1982-3) on a similar theme. The end of the decade also saw the vigorous but silly WAR OF THE WORLDS (1988-90). But for many the most exciting development was STAR TREK: THE NEXT GENERATION (1987-current), which surprisingly enough was made for syndication (a demonstration of the effects of cable, and of the consequently reduced market sway of the old networks like NBC, home of the first series). Once viewers recovered from their sorrow at the absence of the geriatric Kirk, Spock, Scottie, Bones, etc., most agreed that it was rather better than its famous original.In the UK the 1980s were ushered in with the fourth (and slightly old-fashioned) Quatermass serial, QUATERMASS (1979), no longer from the BBC. The BBC was having a semi-success with Blake's Seven, the prisoners-on-the-run-pursued-by-the-evil-empire series mentioned above; it also successfully serialized John Wyndham's 1951 novel with The DAY OF THE TRIFFIDS (1981). By casting cult-figures from earlier sf series, David McCallum (Man From U.N.C.L.E, Invisible Man) and Joanna Lumley (New Avengers), commercial tv signalled high hopes with the time-police series SAPPHIRE AND STEEL (1979-82); in the event it was incomprehensible, but atmospheric and fun for Surrealism fans. The big UK sf theme of the 1980s was anarchic comedy, with two big successes from the BBC, The HITCH-HIKERS GUIDE TO THE GALAXY (1981), based on a cult BBC RADIO programme, and RED DWARF (1988-current), and one failure from the commercial side, Nigel KNEALE's disappointing KINVIG (1981). The 1980s also saw the so-so STAR COPS (1987) and Dr Who repeatedly changing his persona but somehow losing the plot; the 1970s had been Dr Who's peak decade.The pressures towards conformity and formula, especially in the USA but also in the UK, have meant that televised sf, in a history spanning well over 40 years, has never approached the intellectual excitement of the best written sf, or indeed the best sf in the cinema. Because televised sf cleaves to the expected, we are seldom surprised by it: we seldom feel any sense of wonder or even stimulation. At best we are amused by the occasional adroit variation on a familiar theme, or by bits of rather good acting. Televised sf is a cultural scandal; it is, on average, so much worse than it could be or needs to be. But there seems no way to combat the entropic forces that make it that way. The tv industry is something of a "closed shop", with its own well established writers and producers - one reason why it has generally proven inhospitable to sf writers - and it is difficult to influence from the outside. Until this is done, the standard of televised sf will not improve.Good references on televised sf are hard to come by, and the subject is surprisingly difficult to research, since tv is more ephemeral than cinema and is not nearly as well documented. The most up-to-date book on the subject is The Encyclopedia of TV Science Fiction (1990) by Roger Fulton, which is descriptive rather than critical, and good on UK sf, rather poor on US sf. A slightly amateurish monthly US magazine with useful episode synopses (but much vital information, including production companies, omitted) is Epi-Log, whose #1 was Summer 1990, published by William E. Anchors Jr from Tennessee. Also useful is Science Fiction, Horror & Fantasy Film & Television Credits (1983) by Harris M. Lentz, which has a supplement (1989) through 1987.This encyclopedia includes a number of made-for-tv movies which we treat as if they were actual movies. Some have been good - like The NIGHT THAT PANICKED AMERICA (1975) and The LATHE OF HEAVEN (1980) - but most have not. We also include one entry on what, so far as we can trace, is the only tv series about sf, the eccentric Canadian talk show PRISONERS OF GRAVITY (1990-current). The 96 entries for tv serials and series in this encyclopedia (excluding made-for-tv movies and variant titles) are: A FOR ANDROMEDA; ALF; ALIEN NATION; AMAZING STORIES; The ANDROMEDA BREAKTHROUGH ; The AVENGERS ; BATTLESTAR GALACTICA; BEAUTY AND THE BEAST; The BIG PULL ; The BIONIC WOMAN ; BLAKE'S SEVEN; BLUE THUNDER; BUCK ROGERS IN THE 25TH CENTURY; CAPTAIN MIDNIGHT; CAPTAIN SCARLET AND THE MYSTERONS; CAPTAIN VIDEO; The CLONING OF JOANNA MAY ; COMMANDO CODY: SKY MARSHAL OF THE UNIVERSE; The DAY OF THE TRIFFIDS ; DOOMWATCH; DR WHO; The FANTASTIC JOURNEY ; FIREBALL XL5; GALACTICA 1980; The HITCH-HIKERS GUIDE TO THE GALAXY ; The IMMORTAL ; The INCREDIBLE HULK ; The INVADERS ; The INVISIBLE MAN ; JOE 90; KINVIG; KOLCHAK: THE NIGHT STALKER; LAND OF THE GIANTS; LOGAN'S RUN; LOST IN SPACE; The LOST PLANET ; The MAN FROM ATLANTIS ; The MAN FROM U.N.C.L.E. ; The MARTIAN CHRONICLES ; MAX HEADROOM; MOONBASE 3; MORK AND MINDY; MY FAVORITE MARTIAN; MY LIVING DOLL; 1990; The OUTER LIMITS; OUT OF THE UNKNOWN; OUT OF THIS WORLD; PLANET OF THE APES; The PRISONER ; PRISONERS OF GRAVITY; PROJECT UFO; QUANTUM LEAP; QUATERMASS; QUATERMASS AND THE PIT; The QUATERMASS EXPERIMENT ; QUATERMASS II; RAY BRADBURY THEATRE; RED DWARF; ROD SERLING'S NIGHT GALLERY; SAPPHIRE AND STEEL; SCIENCE FICTION THEATER; The SIX MILLION DOLLAR MAN ; SOMETHING IS OUT THERE; SPACE 1999; SPACE PATROL; STAR COPS; STARLOST; STAR MAIDENS; STARMAN; STAR TREK; STAR TREK: THE NEXT GENERATION; STINGRAY; The STRANGE WORLD OF PLANET X ; SUPERBOY; SUPERCAR; SUPERMAN; SURVIVORS; TALES OF TOMORROW; TERRAHAWKS; THUNDERBIRDS; TIME TUNNEL; TOM CORBETT, SPACE CADET; The TOMORROW PEOPLE ; The TROLLENBERG TERROR ; The TWILIGHT ZONE (1st and 2nd series); UFO; "V"; VOYAGE TO THE BOTTOM OF THE SEA; VOYAGERS; WAR OF THE WORLDS; The WILD, WILD WEST ; WONDER WOMAN; WORLD OF GIANTS. Some further tv series are mentioned in passing in film entries and elsewhere, but not normally with full production data. [PN/JB]See also: JAPAN. TELLUS TERRA. TEMNE SLUNCE (vt The Black Sun) Film (1980). Filmove studio Barrandov. Dir Otakar Vavra, starring Radoslav Brzobohaty, Magda Vasaryova, Rudolf Hrusinsky. Screenplay Vavra, Jiri Sotola, loosely based on Krakatit (1924; trans 1925) by Karel CAPEK. 133 mins. Colour.This is the better-known of Vavra's 2 films of Capek's novel; the earlier and more faithful adaptation, Krakatit (1948), is the better. TS, a very free version, is set in a stylized Cold-War world of the late 1970s. Where in the earlier film it is the aristocracy who wish to control "krakatit" - an energy source which is also an incredibly powerful explosive (symbolic of nuclear weapons) - in TS it is the imperialist military-industrial establishment that attempts to misuse it. This high-budget production, with a prestigious cast, was intended as propaganda on behalf of the peaceful communists against the warmongering capitalists. It is less artistic than its predecessor. [SC/JO] TEMPLE, ROBIN Samuel Andrew WOOD. TEMPLE, WILLIAM F(REDERICK) (1914-1989) UK writer who began his activities in the sf world before WWII as an active fan, a member of the British Interplanetary Society and editor of its Bulletin, and housemate of Arthur C. CLARKE. He published a horror story, "The Kosso" in Thrills (anth 1935) ed anon Charles Birkin (1907-1986); his first sf story was "Lunar Lilliput", for Tales of Wonder in 1938. War service interrupted his career for more than half a decade. His first and best-known novel, Four-Sided Triangle (1939 AMZ; exp 1949), is a love story in which a girl who is loved by two men is duplicated by the one she has refused, but unfortunately both clones are attracted to the same man; it was filmed as FOUR-SIDED TRIANGLE from a script cowritten by Paul TABORI. WFT then became active in the magazines for about a decade, continuing to produce at a moderate rate until about 1970, though it cannot be suggested that he built his post-WWII career with anything like the energy of more famous colleagues like Clarke or John WYNDHAM, nor during this period were his book-length fictions remarkably distinguished. The Martin Magnus series of sf juveniles - Martin Magnus, Planet Rover (1954), Martin Magnus on Venus (1955) and Martin Magnus on Mars (1956) - was followed by some undistinguished sf adventures: The Automated Goliath (fixup 1962 dos US), The Three Suns of Amara (1961 SF Adventures as "A Trek to Na-Abiza"; exp1962 chap dos US) and Battle on Venus (1953 Authentic as "Immortal's Playthings"; rev 1963 dos US). His last 2 novels, however, are far more impressive. Shoot at the Moon (1966), parodying many of the more routine sf conventions concerning trips to the MOON and the gallery of characters usually involved, is a ship-of-fools extravaganza of some hilarity. The Fleshpots of Sansato (1968) is a remarkable SPACE OPERA replete with interstellar agents, a corrupt city in the stars, and much symbolism. [JC]Other works: The Dangerous Edge (1951), a crime novel; The True Book about Space Travel (1954; vt The Prentice-Hall Book about Space Travel 1955 US).See also: CLONES.The Work of William F. Temple: An Annotated Bibliography & Guide (1994) by Mike ASHLEY. TEMPLE BAR PUBLISHING CO. FANTASY [magazine]. TENN, WILLIAM Pseudonym of US writer and academic Philip Klass (1920- ), who taught writing and sf at Pennsylvania State College from 1966. After serving in WWII, WT began writing sf, publishing in 1946 in ASF his first story, "Alexander the Bait", a tale that demonstrates the pointed (and, in terms of the sf shibboleths of 1946, iconoclastic) intelligence of his work in its PREDICTION that SPACE FLIGHT would be achieved institutionally rather than through the efforts of an individual inventor-industrialist-genius ( EDISONADE) - a prediction that sf as a whole was remarkably loth to make, and with the reality of which it proved subsequently loth to live. WT soon became one of the genre's very few genuinely comic, genuinely incisive writers of short fiction, sharper and more mature than Fredric BROWN and less self-indulgent than Robert SHECKLEY. From 1950 onwards he found a congenial market in Gal, where he published much of his best work before falling relatively inactive after about 1960. Among the finer stories assembled in his first collection, OF ALL POSSIBLE WORLDS (coll 1955; with 2 stories cut and 3 added, rev 1956 UK), were "Down Among the Dead Men" (1954), about the use of ANDROIDS reconstituted from human corpses as front-line troops in a savage interstellar war, "The Liberation of Earth" (1953), in which liberation is imposed upon Earth alternately by two warring ALIEN races (in a prescient satirical model for much of the revolutionary activity of later decades), and "The Custodian" (1953), an effective variant on the last-man-on-Earth theme. WT's occasional post-1960 stories maintained the high calibre, comic manner and dark vision of his early work. Most of the contents of his 5 further collections, however, date from the late 1940s through the mid-1950s: The Human Angle (coll 1956), Time in Advance (coll 1958), comprising 4 longer stories, The Seven Sexes (coll 1968), The Square Root of Man (coll 1968) and The Wooden Star (coll 1968), each containing at least some examples of his best work. In The Human Angle, for instance, can be found "Wednesday's Child" (1956), in which a rather simple young woman's biological peculiarities climax in her giving birth to herself, and "The Discovery of Morniel Mathaway" (1955), which involves TIME TRAVEL and (unusually in GENRE SF) evolves into a serious look at the nature of the making of ART.OF MEN AND MONSTERS (1963 Gal as "The Men in the Walls"; exp 1968), WT's only full-length novel-released at the same time and in the same format as the 3 1968 collections listed above, and cursed with a title that seemed to indicate merely a further assembly - had little impact on publication, although its reputation has justifiably grown. Giant aliens have occupied Earth and almost eliminated mankind, except for small groups living, like mice, within the walls of the aliens' dwellings. These humans manage to survive, and even prosper after a fashion - though the rites of passage they engage upon, and the CONCEPTUAL BREAKTHROUGHS they experience, can only be seen as ironically reversing the implications of such moments as they occur in "normal" sf. As the novel closes, humanity is about to spread, again like mice, hiding in niches in the holds of the aliens' spaceships, to the stars. Also published in derisory book form at this time was A Lamp for Medusa (1951 Fantastic Adventures as "Medusa was a Lady"; 1968 chap dos), a fantasy-like tale in which a young American falls into a kind of PARALLEL WORLD where, as Perseus, he is given an opportunity to rewrite human history.Despite his cheerful surface and the occasional zany HUMOUR of his stories, WT, like most real satirists, was fundamentally a pessimist; and, when the comic disguise was whipped off, as happened with some frequency, the result was salutary. The sf community has granted WT no awards.WT is not to be confused with Philip J. Klass (1919- ), US electrical engineer and UFO debunker, for many years senior editor of Aviation Week & Space Technology, whose books include UFOs Identified (1968), Secret Sentries in Space (1971), UFOs Explained (1974), UFOs: The Public Deceived (1983) and UFO-Abductions: A Dangerous Game (1988). [JC]As Editor: Children of Wonder (anth 1953; vt Outsiders: Children of Wonder 1954); Once Against the Law (anth 1968) with Donald E. WESTLAKE.About the author: William Tenn (Philip Klass) (1987 chap) by Gordon BENSON Jr.See also: AUTOMATION; CHILDREN IN SF; ECOLOGY; GREAT AND SMALL; HISTORY OF SF; MATHEMATICS; MEDICINE; POLITICS; PSYCHOLOGY; TIME PARADOXES. TENNANT, EMMA (CHRISTINA) (1937- ) UK writer whose first acknowledged novel - her true first, The Colour of Rain (1964) as by Catherine Aydy, was not sf - was The Time of the Crack (1973; vt The Crack 1978), an sf tale about an inexplicable faultline - described in terms that imply a gamut of meanings, from SEX to apocalypse - that opens through the heart of London. The Last of the Country House Murders (1974) is a rather shoddy and very short pastiche of a classic detective novel set in a hazily realized, depressed NEAR FUTURE in which the last country house is maintained as a relic of a culture which ET - a member of the eminent Tennant family - views with considerable ambivalence. Some sf devices figure in Hotel de Dream (1976), whose obsessively nostalgic residents begin to find themselves in each other's dreams: the nostalgia they share - for a cleansed and triumphant royal Britain, the kind of land Edwardians might have anticipated, but which WWI destroyed any chance of - somewhat resembles in detail and ironical import the Edwardian futures promulgated by Michael MOORCOCK in his Jerry Cornelius and Oswald Bastable series and elsewhere. ET's next several books - like The Bad Sister (1978), Wild Nights (1979), Alice Fell (1980), Queen of Stones (1982) and Woman Beware Woman (1983; vt The Half-Mother 1985 US) - tend to combine GOTHIC furniture, a complex FEMINISM, supernatural intrusions and an abiding ambivalence. This refusal to settle meaning upon her characters, her plots or her generic surrounds results in books of dream-like vivacity which, through their tendency to close insecurely, occasionally diminish the insights they have dodged towards. At the same time, her clearly non-genre novels are relatively unconvincing. Of her more recent titles, the most interesting are fables in the indeterminate mode of her best work. Two Women of London: The Strange Case of Ms Jekyll and Mrs Hyde (1989) plays on its classic source an intricate game of female possession in the late 20th century. Sisters and Strangers: A Moral Tale (1990) is a feminist reconstruction of history in which ADAM AND EVE survive to the present day. Faustine (1992) replays the Faust myth with a female protagonist whose beauty chills the world.In 1975-8 ET ed the journal Bananas, which published J.G. BALLARD and others. Bananas (anth 1977) was taken from the journal, and Saturday Night Reader (anth 1979) fairly represents its bent. [JC]Works for children: The Boggart (1980); The Search for Treasure Island (1981); The Ghost Child (1984).See also: WOMEN SF WRITERS. TENNESHAW, S.M. Floating pseudonym used 1947-58 by ZIFF-DAVIS and by the other Chicago magazines IMAGINATION and IMAGINATIVE TALES. Initially SMT was probably used by William HAMLING as a personal pseudonym, many of the 22 stories whose authors have not been identified being perhaps by him; later it was used once by Randall GARRETT alone, 3 times by him in collaboration with Robert SILVERBERG, once by Silverberg alone, once by Milton LESSER and once by Edmond HAMILTON. [PN] 10 STORY FANTASY US magazine, PULP-MAGAZINE size. 1 issue, Spring 1951, published by Avon Periodicals, ed Donald A. WOLLHEIM. 10SF is primarily remembered for its poor arithmetic (there were 13 stories), for the fact that many of its writers were very eminent - John Beynon (John WYNDHAM), L. Sprague DE CAMP, Lester DEL REY, Fritz LEIBER, C.M. KORNBLUTH, Kris NEVILLE and A.E. VAN VOGT - and for publishing Arthur C. CLARKE's "Sentinel of Eternity" (vt "The Sentinel"), on which was based 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY. 10SF was published simultaneously in Canada. [FHP/PN] TENTH VICTIM, THE La DECIMA VITTIMA . TEPPER, SHERI S. (1929- ) US writer whose first genre publications were poems under her then married name Sheri S. Eberhart, the earliest being "Lullaby, 1990" in Gal, Dec 1963. She then fell silent as a writer, beginning to write again only once she was in her 50s. Her first-written novel, a long, complex fantasy, eventually appeared as The Revenants (1984). Her first-published novel was King's Blood Four (1983), #1 in the long and very interesting True Game series, which continued with Necromancer Nine (1983), Wizard's Eleven (1984), The Song of Mavin Manyshaped (1985), The Flight of Mavin Manyshaped (1985), The Search of Mavin Manyshaped (1985), Jinian Footseer (1985), Dervish Daughter (1986) and Jinian Star-Eye (1986). The first 3 were assembled as The True Game (omni 1985 UK), the next 3 as The Chronicles of Mavin Manyshaped (omni 1986 UK) and the final 3 as The End of the Game (omni 1987). In terms of internal chronology, the middle trilogy precedes the first.Their readers knew almost at once that something very unusual was happening in these books, but most serious critics ignore paperback fantasy trilogies, and it took some years before SST was spoken of much at all. In the True Game books some of the human colonists on a planet also inhabited by aliens have, long before the story opens, evolved PSI POWERS; the best term for these books would be SCIENCE FANTASY. They show an astonishing assuredness of narrative voice; for SST is that unusual kind of writer, the apparently born story-teller. Further evidence of her narrative fluency (and her seemingly endless inventiveness) came with the Marianne fantasy trilogy: Marianne, the Magus and the Manticore (1985), Marianne, the Madame and the Momentary Gods (1988) and Marianne, the Matchbox and the Malachite Mouse (1989), all 3 assembled as The Marianne Trilogy (omni 1990 UK). SST also showed real accomplishment in HORROR fiction with Blood Heritage (1986) and its sequel The Bones (1987) - both humorous and both involving some very practical modern witchcraft-and the later (and better) horror novel Still Life (1989 as E.E. Horlak; 1989 UK as by SST).SST's first novel of sf proper was initially split by the publisher into 2 vols, The Awakeners: Northshore (1987) and The Awakeners: Volume 2: Southshore (1987), but was soon sensibly released as The Awakeners (1987). As a work of speculative sociobiology and ecology it is ebullient, but the plotting of this tale of a theocratic riverside civilization where it is forbidden to travel eastwards is sometimes a little awkward. The same year saw the shorter and more confident After Long Silence (1987; vt The Enigma Score 1989 UK), a melodrama set on a planet whose crystalline native lifeforms are very dangerous, and can be lulled only by MUSIC.From this point SST concentrated on sf, although during and in between sf books she published crime and mystery fiction as by A.J. Orde (the Jason Lynx series) and B.J. Oliphant. Her first truly ambitious sf work was THE GATE TO WOMEN'S COUNTRY (1988), which surprised some readers for the ferocity with which it imagined a post- HOLOCAUST world where social separation by gender is almost complete, but where the supposedly meek women outmanoeuvre the really dreadful men on almost all grounds. All SST's subsequent work is fierce; indeed, with hindsight, the same controlled anger is visible in the apparently affable science-fantasy books.The next year saw the beginning of her major sf work to date, the loosely and thematically connected Marjorie Westriding trilogy: Grass (1989), Raising the Stones (1990) and Sideshow (1992). To describe the trilogy by naming its villains somewhat distorts the ease and glow of these books' telling, and labours their melodramatic elements (which are only sometimes insistent): the villains are Nature-ruiners, fundamentalist religionists and - it is a category which comprehends the previous two - men (whom SST sees as almost doomed by their own sociobiological nature). SST interrupted this trilogy with Beauty (1991; preferred text 1992 UK), part MAGIC REALISM, part fairy tale, part sf, in which Sleeping Beauty is taken to a savagely DYSTOPIAN future and meets (in various guises, including that of Prince Charming) the Beast; this is a book about despoliation, not just of womanhood but of Earth. A Plague of Angels (1993) puts its protagonists through the long ordeal of coming to an understanding of a world complexly crafted out of sf and fantasy conventions; and Shadow's End (1994) returns directly to the theme of environmental destruction at the hands of the fundamental religionists whom she dubs, in this instance, Firsters, after their insistence that only humans, of all creatures in the galaxy, have any right to live.SST requires the engine of story to provide impulsion for the other things she can do, which tends to tilt her work towards melodrama and excess, and thus to obscure a little her remarkable sophistication. In the space of only a few years she has become one of sf's premier world-builders; the diversity of invented societies in Sideshow - this diversity being the actual point of the book - is breathtaking, as is the vivid ecological mystery of Grass and the bizarre discovery of a bona fide "god" in Raising the Stones. She is one of the most significant new - and new FEMINIST - voices to enter 1980s sf. The kindly grandmother, who tells romantic tales around the campfire, has jaws that bite and claws that snatch. [PN]See also: ECOLOGY; FANTASY; GOTHIC SF; MAGIC; PASTORAL. TERAS, KAPTEENI [r] FINLAND. TERENCE X. O'LEARY'S WAR BIRDS US PULP MAGAZINE. 3 issues, #84-#86, Mar, Apr and May/June 1935, published by Dell; ed Carson Mowre. These were futuristic, pure-sf issues (the story was of O'Leary vs the Ageless Men, who are malign immortals, with DEATH RAYS, from ATLANTIS) bringing O'Leary over from the aviation pulp War Birds, whose numeration they followed. Extremely rare collector's items, they have little interest for anyone else, being very ill written by Arthur Guy Empey. #85 was reissued as a facsimile paperback book, Terence X. O'Leary's War Birds (1974). [FHP/PN] TERMINAL MAN, THE Film (1974). Warner Bros. Prod/dir/written Mike Hodges, starring George Segal, Joan Hackett. Based on The Terminal Man (1972) by Michael CRICHTON. 107 mins, cut to 104 mins. Colour.Segal plays a man who suffers from violent blackouts as a result of brain damage suffered in a car accident. Doctors use him as an experimental guinea pig: into his brain they insert electrodes linked to a tiny computer implanted in his shoulder, so that when a convulsion starts the computer will automatically send soothing impulses to the brain. However, the brain enjoys the soothing effect so much that it induces the blackouts at an ever-increasing rate; the man is driven to commit further acts of violence and finally has to be shot down. Quotes from T.S. Eliot, music by Bach, colour-coded visual symbolism (with lots of black) - all seem to aspire to a significance that does not, in the end, seem very profound. The mutually destructive relationship between man and machine is interesting; the stereotypes (monstrous doctors, etc.) are crude. [JB/PN]See also: CINEMA. TERMINATOR, THE Film (1984). Cinema '84/Pacific Western/Orion. Prod Gale Anne HURD. Dir James CAMERON, starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, Michael Biehn, Linda Hamilton. Screenplay Cameron, Hurd. 107 mins. Colour.In AD2029 a vicious war between humans and machines is raging. To ensure their victory, the machines send back a CYBORG Terminator (apparently human, with flesh and blood coating a metal armature and electronic implants) to California in 1984 to murder the mother (Hamilton) of the human leader, thus deleting him from history. The humans send back a man to protect her. Their desperate efforts to escape the inexorable Terminator form the main part of this virtuoso film, which also has remarkably vivid if modestly budgeted sequences of the future war. A virtue is made of Schwarzenegger's rather robotic appearance as the Terminator; when reduced to metal, the still-stalking creature - now an actual ROBOT - is as designed by Stan Winston, who specializes in convincing, nasty aliens ( ALIENS; PREDATOR 2).A lawsuit against the production company was brought by Harlan ELLISON, alleging similarities with several of his teleplays, notably Soldier (The OUTER LIMITS [1964]). It was settled out of court and a credit to Ellison was inserted into prints of TT. The sequel is TERMINATOR 2: JUDGMENT DAY (1991). [PN]See also: CINEMA; MUSIC. TERMINATOR 2: JUDGMENT DAY Film (1991). Lightstorm/Carolco/Tri-Star. Prod/dir/written James CAMERON. Executive prods Mario Kassar, Gale Anne HURD. Starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, Linda Hamilton, Edward Furlong, Robert Patrick, Joe Morton. Screenplay Cameron, William Wisher. 135 mins. Colour.A decade after The TERMINATOR (1984), two more Terminators (human-seeming killer ROBOTS) have been sent back to the present from the human-machine wars of AD2029, one to eliminate John Connor, the future human leader (the initials are shared with Jesus Christ), while he is still a child (well played by Furlong), the other (Schwarzenegger) to protect him. Linda Hamilton again plays Sarah Connor, John's mother, but, where once she was cute, now she is a chain-smoking, violent obsessive in a psychiatric ward, body rippling with muscles, awaiting with a frozen snarl the nuclear HOLOCAUST-due to arrive in August 1997 - of which she has been forewarned. T2:JD is fundamentally an action thriller, choreographed with precision, probably the most expensive film ever made (budget estimated at $95 million), and very exciting indeed. It does, however, project images of pain and impotence in the shadow of a dark future: the imminence and immanence of nuclear disaster (powerfully rendered in a dream sequence), Sarah's wrecked psyche, the irony of a MACHINE becoming a father figure, the boy struggling inarticulately to explain the sanctity of life to a killer robot (even if a "good" one this time). There is a clear awareness in Cameron of the intractability of human anger and violence; it is precisely these qualities, we must suppose, on which the nihilistic machines, our killer children, are modelled. This awareness runs half-hidden beneath the cynicism of the son/daddy mawkishness aimed directly at the older, softer viewer, and the dishonesty of so violent a film hawking a dove message.As sf the film becomes embedded in its own causal loop, whereby a future technology sent into the past catalyses the creation of the very technology that caused the trouble in the first place. The second Terminator - played by the interestingly cast Patrick, a slightly built actor with a wholly affectless face-has the ability to flow from shape to shape like quicksilver. Though silly, this makes for great special effects. Commercial considerations demand an upbeat ending, which leaves us with the unlikelihood of a plot in which the most efficient killing machine ever created is shown as lacking the competence to kill. [PN]The film was awarded a HUGO in 1992.See also: ACE BOOKS; CINEMA. TERMINOLOGY Newcomers to sf are occasionally dismayed by its jargon. Certain concepts have become so useful in sf (and also in talking about it) that they tend to be referred to - especially by GENRE-SF writers - in a kind of shorthand and without explanation. Many receive entries in this volume, sometimes brief ( CREDITS), sometimes detailed ( ANDROIDS, CLONES, ROBOTS). We regard the briefer entries, mainly devoted to definition, as "terminology" entries and the fuller entries as "theme" entries. This encyclopedia contains 64 terminology entries and 211 theme entries. In the listing below we have marked the latter with an asterisk ( TIE).Many but not all sf jargon words and phrases are now recognized by dictionaries. The ones to which we have chosen to give entries are as follows. First is a cluster of terms used by sf readers and critics to describe different aspects of the genre, including CYBERPUNK*, DYSTOPIAS*, EDISONADE*, GAME-WORLDS*, GENRE SF, HARD SF, HEROIC FANTASY, LOST WORLDS*, MONSTER MOVIES*, NEW WAVE*, PLANETARY ROMANCE*, SCIENCE FANTASY*, SF, SCI FI, SCIENTIFIC ROMANCE, SCIENTIFICTION, SHARECROP, SHARED WORLDS*, SLIPSTREAM SF, SOFT SF, SPACE OPERA*, SPECULATIVE FICTION, STEAMPUNK*, SWORD AND SORCERY*, UTOPIA*. Second is a cluster of terms borrowed from outside sf, usually from science, but much used within sf, sometimes with modified meanings: ALIENS*, ANDROIDS*, ANTIMATTER*, AI, BIONICS, BLACK HOLES*, CLONES*, CRYOGENICS, CRYONICS*, CULTURAL ENGINEERING, CYBERNETICS*, DIMENSIONS, DYSON SPHERE, ENTROPY*, ESP*, EXTRATERRESTRIAL, GALACTIC LENS, HOLLOW EARTH*, ION DRIVE, LAGRANGE POINT, MUTANTS*, NANOTECHNOLOGY*, NEUTRON STAR*, PARSEC, PULSARS, SOLAR WIND, SPACE HABITATS*, SUPERMAN*, SUSPENDED ANIMATION*, TACHYONS, TELEKINESIS, TELEPORTATION, TERRA, UFOS*, VIRTUAL REALITY*, WHITE HOLES, WORMHOLES. The final cluster is of terms which either originate within sf or would be almost unknown were it not for sf: ALTERNATE WORLDS*, ANSIBLE, ANTIGRAVITY*, ASTROGATION, BIG DUMB OBJECTS, BEM, BLASTER, CORPSICLE, CREDITS, CYBERSPACE, CYBORGS*, DALEKS, DEATH RAYS, DIRAC COMMUNICATOR, DISINTEGRATOR, ESPER, FORCE FIELD*, FRANKENSTEIN MONSTER, FTL, GAS GIANT, GENERATION STARSHIPS*, HIVE-MINDS*, HYPERSPACE*, INNER SPACE, MATTER TRANSMISSION*, PANTROPY, PARALLEL WORLDS*, POSITRONIC ROBOTS, PRESSOR BEAM, PSIONICS, PSI POWERS*, PSYCHOHISTORY, RIMWORLD, ROBOTS*, SPACESHIPS*, SPACE WARP, SPINDIZZY, STARSHIP, TERRAFORMING*, TIME MACHINE, TIME PARADOXES*, TIME TRAVEL*, TRACTOR BEAM, WALDO.Sf fans have also developed a specialist terminology, but this is quite distinct, generally, from the terminology of sf itself. It is discussed under FAN LANGUAGE.Terminology entries not listed above are BRAID, DIANETICS, DOS, GENERAL SEMANTICS, IMAGINARY VOYAGES, MAGAZINES, MAGIC REALISM, ORIGINAL ANTHOLOGIES, OULIPO, ROBINSONADE, SCIENTOLOGY, SEMIPROZINE, SOFT SCIENCES, SPLATTER MOVIES, XENOBIOLOGY. [PN] TERMINUS PUBLISHING CO. WEIRD TALES. TERRA Common item of sf TERMINOLOGY. In sf the Latin form is that conventionally given to the name of our planet, since Earth is ambiguous, meaning both the planet itself and soil. (The irony is that the same ambiguity exists in Latin, where terra can mean anything from soil or the ground, as in terra firma, to the whole world.) Similarly, our Sun is often, in sf, called Sol. The other Latin word for Earth, commoner in poetry than in prose, was tellus, and Tellus and its adjective Tellurian make occasional appearances in sf. [PN] TERRAFORMING If the COLONIZATION OF OTHER WORLDS is not to be restricted to those that prove almost-exact duplicates of the Earth, some form of adaptation will be necessary; the colonists might adapt themselves by GENETIC ENGINEERING, as in James BLISH's PANTROPY series, or cyborgization ( CYBORGS), as in Frederik POHL's MAN PLUS (1976), but if they are bolder they might instead adapt the worlds, by terraforming them. The term was coined by Jack WILLIAMSON in the series of stories revised as Seetee Ship (1942-3; fixup 1951; early editions as by Will Stewart), where it is used in a minor subplot, but such a project had earlier been envisaged in Olaf STAPLEDON's LAST AND FIRST MEN (1930), where VENUS is prepared for human habitation by electrolysing water from its oceans to produce oxygen. Stapledon's project was primitive (and unworkable); most sf stories envisage plant life being used to generate a breathable atmosphere on terraformable planets, just as it once did on Earth.As it gradually became accepted that the other planets in the Solar System could not sustain human life, terraforming projects became commonplace in sf, especially in relation to MARS. Stories like Arthur C. CLARKE's The Sands of Mars (1951) and Patrick MOORE's series begun with Mission to Mars (1956) envisage relatively small-scale modifications, but, as the true magnitude of the problem has become apparent, writers have been forced to imagine much more complex processes. Ian MCDONALD's Desolation Road (1988) tends to the frankly miraculous, but compensates with some memorable imagery; its echoes of Ray BRADBURY seem slightly more appropriate than the echoes of Edgar Rice BURROUGHS in The Barsoom Project (1989) by Larry NIVEN and Steven BARNES. In the real world, however, people have been hatching long-term plans ever since the idea of terraforming was first treated seriously by such nonfiction popularizations as Carl SAGAN's The Cosmic Connection (1973) and Adrian BERRY's The Next Ten Thousand Years (1974). Kim Stanley ROBINSON has begun to elaborate a trilogy of novels around his novella Green Mars (1985; 1988 dos), which will endeavour to describe a realistic series of procedures; RED MARS (1992 UK) begins the series, which is projected to continue with Green Mars (no textual connection with the novella) and Blue Mars.Other writers have followed Stapledon in imagining the terraforming of Venus, among them Poul ANDERSON in "The Big Rain" (1954) and "Sister Planet" (1956). This project has recently become the subject of an ambitious and extensive series by Pamela SARGENT, begun in VENUS OF DREAMS (1986) and continued in Venus of Shadows (1988).The only other worlds in the Solar System which seem to be plausible candidates for terraforming are some of the satellites of JUPITER and Saturn ( OUTER PLANETS). Ganymede is the favourite, featuring in Robert A. HEINLEIN's Farmer in the Sky (1950), Poul Anderson's The Snows of Ganymede (1955; 1958 dos) and Gregory BENFORD's Jupiter Project (1975). Jack VANCE's "I'll Build Your Dream Castle" (1947), about custom-terraformed ASTEROIDS, is decidedly tongue-in-cheek.The idea that the terraforming of worlds might be reduced to a matter of routine as mankind builds a GALACTIC EMPIRE is occasionally featured in sf novels, although generally as a throwaway idea. Elaborate descriptions of terraforming in such a context are rare, but David GERROLD's Moonstar Odyssey (1977) and Andrew WEINER's Station Gehenna (1987) both involve terraforming projects whose methods are more-or-less scrupulously sketched out. Some of Roger ZELAZNY's works assume that terraforming projects can be so routinized that "worldscaping" might become a kind of art form; his Isle of the Dead (1969) features a protagonist who is in this godlike line of work. The same notion surfaces in Douglas ADAMS's Hitch Hiker series and in the film Time Bandits (1981) dir Terry Gilliam, and technologically powerful worldmakers with a mischievous bent hover (unfathomably) in the background of Terry PRATCHETT's STRATA (1981). It is probable, though, that it is the realistic treatments of Sargent and Robinson which will set the pattern for the most significant future uses of the theme in sf. [MJE/BS] TERRAHAWKS UK tv series (1983-6). Anderson Burr Pictures/London Weekend Television. Created Gerry ANDERSON, prod Anderson, Christopher Burr; dirs Alan Pattillo, Tony Bell, Tony Lenny, Desmond Saunders; all episodes written Tony Barwick (1 with Trevor Lansdown) except for pilot, by Anderson. 3 seasons, 39 25min episodes in all.Using more advanced puppets than in all his SuperMarionation series, with more electronic movements built in, this was the last of Anderson's sf puppet series for children, made after he had been working for some years with live-action tv ( SPACE: 1999). The Terrahawks are an elite special force who must save Earth from the depredations of Zelda, the ANDROID witch-queen of Guk. To help, they have the silver ROBOTS the Zeroids, commanded by Sgt Major Zero, who has a funny Sgt-Major voice. Most of the old Anderson ingredients are shuffled about in this attack-from-space series, but the results are tired and self-parodic. [PN] TERRORE NELLO SPAZIO (vt Planet of the Vampires) Italian film (1965). Italian International/Castilla Cinematografica/AIP. Dir Mario Bava, starring Barry Sullivan, Norma Bengell, Angel Aranda, Evi Morandi. Screenplay: US Louis M. Heyward, Ib Melchior; Italian Callisto Cosulich, Antonio Roman, Alberto Bevilacqua, Bava, Rafael J. Salvia; based on a story by Melchior, based in turn on an Italian story by Renato Pestriniero. 86 mins. Colour.This Italian/Spanish/US co-production is directed by Mario Bava, whose baroque, erotic and sometimes sadomasochistic HORROR films have won him a cult following; he also dir DIABOLIK (1967). He was once a notable cameraman, and this sf/horror film is visually intense. Astronauts land on a strange planet and immediately and inexplicably start killing each other. Three corpses are buried but, in a striking sequence, rise from the grave, still shrouded in polythene. It turns out they are possessed by alien spirits. Two possessed astronauts and the still-human captain (Sullivan) take the spaceship to return to Earth, where the pickings will be rich. The discovery in TNS of an ancient, alien SPACESHIP on the surface, occupied by a giant skeleton, was echoed with some fidelity in the later film ALIEN (1979). The florid, dreamlike atmospherics of TNS almost make up for the silliness of the story. Originally to be shot simultaneously in Italian and US versions, with pages of script delivered only on the day, it must have presented a challenge to even Bava's celebrated inventiveness. [PN]See also: CINEMA; MONSTER MOVIES; PARANOIA. TERROR OF MECHAGODZILLA GOJIRA. TERROR STRIKES, THE The AMAZING COLOSSAL MAN . TERRORVISION Film (1986). Altar/Empire. Executive prod Charles BAND. Dir Ted Nicolaou, starring Mary Woronov, Gerrit Graham, Diane Franklin, Chad Allen, Jonathan Gries. Screenplay Nicolaou. 83 mins. Colour.This lurid exploitation-movie-cum-satire has good moments. A hungry beast first appears on the tv screen, then materializes in the house, of wife-swapping vulgarians, a SURVIVALIST grandfather, military-minded son and heavy-metal-obsessed daughter. With admirable joviality the beast eats and dissolves most of them one by one, along with others, later reproducing their heads when necessary. Earth's only hope, the interstellar policeman who pursues it, is summarily dispatched by a tv horror-show hostess who mistakes him for the monster. [PN]See also: MONSTER MOVIES. TERTZ, ABRAM Andrey SINYAVSKY. TESSERACTS CANADA. TESTAMENT Film (1983). Entertainment Events/American Playhouse. Dir Lynne Littman, starring Jane Alexander, Ross Harris, Lukas Haas, William Devane, Leon Ames. Screenplay John Sacret Young, based on "The Last Testament" by Carol Amen (?1934-1987). 90 mins. Colour.We follow the ordinary, loving, quarrelsome life of one family in a small Californian town, Hamlin. Without warning, all US cities are destroyed by nuclear weapons. Hamlin, not far from San Francisco, is spared the immediate blast (in which the husband is killed), but loses most of its population to radiation sickness. Two children die. The mother and her surviving son, at the end, decide not to commit suicide.This is an intimate film about the END OF THE WORLD. Too well observed to be simple soap opera, it is nevertheless formidably and touchingly domestic, and (deliberately) declares itself in every scene a film made by a woman; even the death of a child is evoked by the careful sewing of a shroud. It treats the vast scale of the DISASTER obliquely, the small standing for the large, and seems not interested in causes, only in effects - in marked contrast to The DAY AFTER , made the same year. Also in contrast to that film, T is diffident to the point of shrinking about the physical effects of the HOLOCAUST; radiation sickness is merely symbolized, by dark shadows round the eyes. The Hamlin/Hamelin parallel of the "Pied Piper" school play focuses the tightly controlled anger of the film on the adult negligence that makes children innocent victims. T is potent and sentimental, one of a number of 1980s films about nuclear destruction - e.g., SPECIAL BULLETIN, THREADS and WHEN THE WIND BLOWS. [PN] TETSUO (vt Tetsuo: The Iron Man) Film (1989) Produced, directed, written, art directed, special effects, co-photographed by Shinya Tsukamoto, who also plays one of the two leading roles; also starring Tomorah Taguchi and Kei Fujiwara. 67 mins. Black and white.A metal fetishist (Tsukamoto) is hurt in a hit and run car accident; the driver of the car, a conservative office worker (Taguchi), notices a metal splinter growing out of his cheek the next day. As time passes his body metamorphoses into metal; his penis becomes a power drill, with which he makes love to his girlfriend (Fujiwara) in an ecstasy of blood. Meanwhile the fetishist, now telepathic, is also changing into rusty junk metal. Eventually the two metal men merge, to form a single metallic monster, the harbinger of a new conjunction of flesh and metal that will engulf the world.Though not strictly science fiction-no rational explanation is offered for the metamorphoses-this Japanese film has been assimilated by CYBERPUNK enthusiasts as a major cyberpunk document in its portrayal of the unification of the world of the machine with the world of humans. The machinery, however, is everyday junk, not high-tech computer stuff. It is an astonishing film, made on an amateur basis on 16mm film, with nearly all major production roles taken by its maker, Tsukamoto (b. 1960). Chaotic and indescribable-the synopsis above takes no account of the jump cuts and surreal juxtapositions in the story as witnessed-it is at once hardcore exploitation and an art film, whose nearest Western equivalent may be David Lynch's Eraserhead (1976), though elements of J.G. BALLARD's fiction also come to mind. While owing much to the violent, sexist traditions of Japanese manga (comic books) and anime (animated films), it is in fact live action throughout. The name "Tetsuo", borrowed from the hero's name in AKIRA (1987), is spelled by the director, punningly, with two Japanese characters which individually mean "iron" and "man". The film was first shown in student clubs, rock-and-roll venues and so on, before its cult success ensured that it was taken up for distribution in cinemas. It is insanely powerful, though all too clearly low budget and in some ways completely unprofessional; the hysterical metallic sound track is also astonishing in its neurotic machine-like edginess. The somewhat smoother but still extraordinary sequel, made with financial backing, is TETSUO II: BODYHAMMER (1991). [PN] TETSUO: THE IRON MAN TETSUO. TETSUO II: BODYHAMMER Film (1991). Kaiju Theatre Production for Toshiba EMI.Co-exec prod, dir, co-cinematographer, ed, screenplay Shinya Tsukamoto; starring Tsukamoto, Tomoroh Taguchi, Nobu Kanaoka, Toraemon Utazawa. 83 mins. Colour.This is in many ways a remake two-years later of TETSUO, this time with professional backing and shot in colour. An office-worker (Taguchi, who also starred in the previous film) who is amnesiac about his childhood is maddened by the kidnapping and murder of his own child, sprouts guns from his chest (to his astonishment) and sets out on revenge. The kidnappers proveto be a group of skinhead body builders who with special injections can become partly metallic. They are led by another metal-sprouting mutant, Yatsu (Tsukamoto), who turns out to be the office worker's kid brother. Flashbacks reveal that their insane scientist father had conducted experiments on them. The bad brotherYatsu and the good brother clash. Good brother wins, but ends up barely human; now resembling a tank, he later shatters the city. The greater coherence of the remake - in the manner of an American SUPERHERO comic - comes at a cost; this is more like a straight exploitation film (there is some arbitrary sexual sadism); the sound track is brilliant, but some of the deranged surrealist vigour is lost. However, the idea, stronger in this version, of aggression altering body image is an interesting metaphor and the cynicism about family values is unusual in a Japanese film. [PN] TEVIS, WALTER (STONE) (1928-1984) US writer, professor of English literature at the University of Ohio, who perhaps remains best known as the author of The Hustler (1959), filmed in 1961, and its sequel, The Color of Money (1984), filmed in 1986. He began publishing sf with "The Ifth of Oofth" for Gal in 1957 as Walter S. Tevis - his early work, and the tales he wrote around 1980, are assembled as Far from Home (coll 1981) - but he first came to wide notice as an sf writer with The Man who Fell to Earth (1963), the basis of Nicolas Roeg's film The MAN WHO FELL TO EARTH (1976). It is the delicately crafted story of an ALIEN who comes to Earth from Anthea in an attempt to arrange asylum for his dying race; in return, he will pass on the benefits of Anthean science. Becoming as physically and emotionally human as his technology and his powers of empathy permit, he finds the xenophobic bureaucracy of humanity's response to him, when he reveals himself and his quest, impossible to bear; and the blinding he suffers fairly represents the dying of any hope he might have had of making sense of us. WT's subsequent novels were less darkly inspired. Mockingbird (1980) rather mechanically runs its ANDROID protagonist through a process of self-realization in a senescent USA 500 years hence. The Steps of the Sun (1983) is the story of an impotent tycoon who revivifies himself and perhaps the entire world by finding a sentient, motherly and cornucopian planet on his first space flight and bringing her gifts back home; too often the plot fades away into psychodrama. WT himself said that his work was autobiographical. His early death perhaps kept him from telling a whole story. [JC]See also: ROBOTS. TEZUKA, OSAMU (1928-1989) The premier artist in the world of Japanese manga ( COMICS) and animation, in both of which he established a standard. He began contributing serial comic strips to a regional newspaper in 1946 while in junior college. He became a leader in Japanese comics with Shin Takarajima ["The New Treasure Island"] (1947). Most of today's Japanese comics illustrators grew up strongly influenced by OT. His most famous creation was the Tetsuwan Atom series (1952 on; in trans as Astroboy], which began as a series in the children's magazine Shonen. It was eagerly welcomed not only by comics lovers but also by sf fans all over JAPAN, because his stories showed a real sense of the feeling of modern sf which at that time had been grasped by few Japanese writers. Most of his work was for children, but he published in general magazines also, and 2 pure-sf serials appeared in SF Magajin ["SF Magazine"], SF Fancy Free (1963) and Chojin Taikei ["Rise and Fall of the Bird-Human Race"] (1971-5). These were highly esteemed by sf fans, who are normally severe towards comics.In 1952 OT established an animation studio, Mushi Productions, produced several full-length animated films, and then began work on the first animated series for Japanese tv, Tetsuwan Atom (1963 onwards), famous in the West as Astroboy. This was the dawn of "Japanimation". He is often looked upon as a Japanese Walt Disney, but failed to elevate his company to a major enterprise, being a better artist than businessman. His main other comics series were Jungle Taitei (1950 on; trans as Kimba, The White Lion), later a tv series, the Black Jack series (1973 on), and the Hi No Tori ["The Phoenix"] series (1966 on), selected sections of which were made into feature films, some live and some animated: one which appeared in the West was the animated Hi No Tori: 2772 (1979; vt Space Firebird 2772; vt Phoenix 2772), dir OT with Suguru Sugiyama, which tells of the attempted capture of a cosmic space firebird whose life-blood may rejuvenate Earth. [TSh] THAMES, C.H. [s] Milton LESSER. THANET, NEIL R.L. FANTHORPE. THAYER, TIFFANY (ELLSWORTH) (1902-1959) Prolific and once immensely popular US novelist - his first novel, the courtroom drama Thirteen Men (1930), was reprinted 40 times in 20 years. After the success of Tiffany Thayer's Three Musketeers (1939), he devoted most of his remaining years to an enormous historical work, Tiffany Thayer's Mona Lisa; of 7 projected instalments, only the 1200pp The Prince of Taranto (1956) ever appeared. TT's sf includes The Greek (1931), about a NEAR-FUTURE dictatorship, Doctor Arnoldi (1934), which recounts the grisly implications of being both immortal ( IMMORTALITY) and unkillable, and One-Man Show (1937), a Thorne-Smith-like comedy of the afterlife. He was an enthusiastic follower of Charles FORT, founding the Fortean Society and editing its publication Doubt for many years. Although unknown today except for this affiliation, TT exerted an influence that has yet to be assessed: his highly kinetic, sardonic prose was almost certainly known to Alfred BESTER, and his Mona Lisa project may well have coloured the description of Fellowes Kraft's opus in John CROWLEY's AEGYPT (1987). [GF]Other works: 33 Sardonics I Can't Forget (anth 1946).About the author: Charles Fort, Prophet of the Unexplained (1970) by Damon KNIGHT contains some material on TT. THEATRE Sf literature and theatre have much in common, as both rely heavily on the audience's imagination, yet the two forms have rarely been combined in a significant dramatic work. The principal reason seems to be a widely held assumption that the theatre, with its physical limitations, cannot plausibly present the fantastic vistas which sf writers envision. "Writing an sf play is a bit like trying to picture infinity in a cigar box," Roger ELWOOD declared in his introduction to Six Science Fiction Plays (anth 1976), the only such anthology in existence. Thus, though more than 300 sf dramas have been catalogued, the history of theatrical sf is largely that of various playwrights influenced by the genre, but with no commitment to it. (The parenthetical references given in this article are to cities and years of premieres; only when no such date is known is the earliest publication date used.)Although some scholars detect speculative elements in the plays of Aristophanes and even Shakespeare's The Tempest, the earliest dramas with sf premises were adaptations. Richard Brinsley Peake's Presumption, or The Fate of Frankenstein (London, 1823) began a history of more than 100 plays inspired by Mary SHELLEY's novel Frankenstein, or The Modern Prometheus (1818; rev 1831). Adaptations of Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1886) appeared almost immediately after Robert Louis STEVENSON's novel was published. Jacques Offenbach's opera Les contes d'Hoffman ["Tales of Hoffman"] (Paris, 1881), based on stories by E.T.A. HOFFMANN, includes an episode based on "The Sandman", in which a poet falls in love with a scientist's mechanical doll.The first significant original plays appeared in the 1920s and 1930s. Karel CAPEK's R.U.R., in which an army of rebellious ANDROIDS destroys the human race, introduced the Czech word ROBOT to our language, and enjoyed successful runs in New York and London after its 1921 premiere in Prague. (Capek wrote 2 other plays with sf themes.) New York's Theatre Guild premiered the first play to deal with EVOLUTION, George Bernard SHAW's Back to Methuselah (1922), and the first atomic-weapons play, Wings Over Europe (1928) by Robert NICHOLS and Maurice Browne. Russian satirists Vladimir MAYAKOVSKY (The Bedbug, Moscow, 1929; The Bathhouse, Moscow, 1930) and Mikhail BULGAKOV (Bliss, 1934; Ivan Vasilievich, 1935-6) used TIME TRAVEL to expose the foibles of the Soviet bureaucracy.Through the 1950s many other famous writers produced full-length sf-related dramas of varying quality, some of them never staged. Arthur KOESTLER's dark comedy Twilight Bar (Paris, 1946) features 2 ALIENS who threaten to destroy Earth unless the inhabitants of a small island achieve happiness within 3 days. J.B. PRIESTLEY (Summer Day's Dream, London, 1949) and Upton SINCLAIR (A Giant's Strength, Claremont, California, 1948; The Enemy Had it Too, 1950) were among the many playwrights to speculate on the consequences of nuclear WAR in the post-Hiroshima period. Elias Canetti (1905- ) wrote 2 plays in which societies strive towards UTOPIA: by numbering all citizens according to their predicted death dates (Die Befristeten, Oxford, 1956; trans as The Numbered; vt Life-Terms), or by banishing mirrors and other tools of vanity (Komodie der Eitelkeit, written 1934; 1950 Germany; trans as Comedy of Vanity). Egypt's Tawfik al- HAKIM sent 2 convicted killers into space in search of a second chance in Voyage to Tomorrow (1950). Gore VIDAL's play Visit to a Small Planet (1956; 1960), filmed in 1960, is claimed as one of the most successful sf plays ever staged.Since the 1950s various writers have adapted sf narratives for the theatre, but their results have seldom been satisfactory. An exception is Ray BRADBURY, who relied on simple staging techniques to dramatize 3 of his short stories in The World of Ray Bradbury (Los Angeles, 1964; New York, 1965) and THE MARTIAN CHRONICLES (Los Angeles, 1977). Other sf classics to be adapted have included H.G. WELLS's THE WAR OF THE WORLDS (1898; Brainerd Duffield, 1955; Albert Reyes, 1977), John HERSEY's The Child Buyer (1960; Paul Shyre, 1962), Aldous HUXLEY's BRAVE NEW WORLD (1932; David Rogers, 1970), George ORWELL's NINETEEN EIGHTY-FOUR (1949; Pavel KOHOUT, 1984) and Walter M. MILLER's A CANTICLE FOR LEIBOWITZ (1960; Richard Felnagle, 1986).The most noteworthy sf dramas since the 1960s have been those by professional playwrights employing familiar sf premises or iconography for non-sf purposes. Antonio Buero Vallejo explored the sociological effects of the Spanish Civil War through the eyes of two scholars from the future in El tragaluz (Madrid, 1967; trans as The Basement Window). Sam Shepard's "The Unseen Hand" (New York, 1969) features an alien fugitive who seeks the aid of 3 Old West outlaws, while his The Tooth of Crime (London, 1972) posits a society ruled by rock'n'roll stars. David Rudkin's The Sons of Light (London, 1977) pits a pastor's sons against an evil scientist who has used myth and brainwashing techniques to create a subterranean slave army. In Eric Overmeyer's Native Speech (Los Angeles, 1983) the monologues of a disc jockey influence events in a devastated urban world; in Overmeyer's On the Verge (Baltimore, 1985) words propel 3 19th-century lady explorers on a journey through time.Sf has also influenced performance art. In The Games (West Berlin, 1983) by Meredith Monk and Ping Chong a future society attempts to preserve its past through Olympic-style rituals. 1000 Airplanes on the Roof (Vienna, 1988), a multimedia collaboration by playwright David Henry Hwang, composer Philip Glass ( MUSIC) and designer Jerome Sirlin, is a single-character narrative about a psychological encounter with aliens.A few playwrights have combined comedy with sf to reflect modern social problems. Alan Spence's Space Invaders (Edinburgh, 1983) and Constance Congdon's Tales of the Lost Formicans (Woodstock, New York, 1988) use the alien-encounter premise as a metaphor for the plight of the individual in a confused world. Alan Ayckbourn employs a mechanical nanny to explore a similar theme in Henceforward . . . (Scarborough, 1987).Despite the failure of the Broadway musical Via Galactica (Galt MacDermot, Christopher Gore, Judith Ross, 1972), sf spectaculars have appeared frequently since the early 1970s. A more successful musical was Bob Carlton's Return to the Forbidden Planet (Blackheath, England, 1983), a 1990 hit in London, which covers much the same ground as FORBIDDEN PLANET (1956) with great good humour and a lot of mainly 1960s rock'n'roll songs. (For further discussion of sf musical dramas and opera see MUSIC.) A cult favourite in the USA was Warp! (Chicago, 1971-2; New York, 1973), a comic trilogy by Stuart Gordon and Lenny Kleinfeld. Its counterpart in England, Ken Campbell's and Chris Langham's Illuminatus! (Liverpool, 1976; London, 1977), was a 5-play epic based on the trilogy by Robert SHEA and Robert Anton WILSON, and was followed by Neil ORAM's 10-part play sequence The Warp (1979), also dir Ken Campbell. These productions employed a variety of modern theatrical techniques to create convincingly fantastic worlds on the stage. [RW] THEM! Film (1954). Warner Bros. Dir Gordon Douglas, starring Edmund Gwenn, James Whitmore, James Arness, Joan Weldon. Screenplay Ted Sherdeman, based on a story by George Worthing Yates. 93 mins. B/w.Unexplained deaths occur, but it is some time before we learn that atomic tests in the US desert have created gigantism ( GREAT AND SMALL) in a species of ant. Their nest is located and destroyed, but a queen ant escapes and lays her eggs in a storm drain beneath Los Angeles, which becomes the setting for the final battle between giant ants and humans. Along with The THING (1951) and The BEAST FROM 20,000 FATHOMS (1953), T! was a template for a series of similar MONSTER MOVIES that followed in the 1950s. It is well made, and handles its absurd subject with an austere but vivid documentary style, thus standing out from most of the cheaper and more sensational variations that followed on the theme. The giant ants were not animated miniatures but full-scale mock-ups. [JB/PN]See also: HIVE-MINDS; MUTANTS. THEMERSON, STEFAN (1910-1988) Polish-born author, scriptwriter and photographer, active in Poland in the 1930s, there editing journals and publishing widely; in the UK from before the beginning of WWII, he continued publishing in Polish and French, but increasingly turned to English. He was a member of the College de 'Pataphysique and founded the Gaberbocchus Press. Given over as they were to paradox, games of logic and the dislocations of Semantic Poetry (his own term), ST's novels have never been easy to pigeonhole but can be thought of - very roughly - as exuberant FABULATIONS. In Professor Mmaa's Lecture (1953), which comes as close to conventional sf as any of his books, the eponymous termite lectures his audience on the vast new primitive creatures called mammals, which are threatening to take over the world; the book had an introduction by Bertrand RUSSELL. Though they radically displace the normal world, none of his other fictions could be called sf; but his last 2 novels - The Mystery of the Sardine (1986) and Hobson's Island (1988) - assemble many characters from previous books into worlds which are mirrors of our own - an Anti-Earth floats in the heavens of the first tale - where they engage in levitations, speculations and prestidigitations galore. [JC]Other works: Bayamus (1949); Wooff Wooff, or Who Killed Richard Wagner? (1951); Cardinal Polatuo (1961); Tom Harris (1967); Special Branch (A Dialogue) (1972 chap); General Piesc, or The Case of the Forgotten Mission (1976 chap). THEOBALD, ROBERT (1929- ) US writer and economist, an exponent of the need for alternative technologies and strategies to survive the turn of the century; his several texts on these issues culminate in An Alternative Future for America's Third Century (1976). His sf novel, Teg's 1994: An Anticipation of the Near Future (1972) with J.M. Scott, carries on these concerns through a series of dialogues between George ORWELL-Fellowship-winner Teg and various interlocutors who discuss the course of history leading up to 1994, a time less bad than it might have been (because alternative technologies were employed), hence the name of the fellowship she has won. The book, originally circulated in mimeographed form in 1969, was written to elicit readers' responses, and 60pp of the first printed edn contain readers' and authors' comments. [JC/PN] THEODORE STURGEON MEMORIAL AWARD Given in memory of Theodore STURGEON, who died in 1985, to the previous year's best sf/fantasy story in English under 17,500 words. The TSMA has been announced annually since 1987 during a July ceremony at the University of Kansas in Lawrence, at which the JOHN W. CAMPBELL MEMORIAL AWARD is also announced. The winner and place-getters are chosen by a committee, largely of sf writers, chaired by Orson Scott CARD, with whose self-published critical magazine Short Form the TSMA is affiliated. [PN]Winners:1987: Judith MOFFETT, "Surviving"1988: Pat MURPHY, "Rachel in Love"1989: George Alec EFFINGER, "Schrodinger's Kitten"1990: Michael SWANWICK, "The Edge of the World"1991: Terry BISSON, "Bears Discover Fire"1992: John KESSEL, "Buffalo"1993: Dan SIMMONS, "This Year's Class Picture"1994: Kij Johnson, "Fox Magic" THERE WILL COME SOFT RAIN VEL'D. THEROUX, PAUL (EDWARD) (1941- ) US writer best known for novels like Saint Jack (1973) and The Mosquito Coast (1982), which cruelly anatomize their far-flung settings, and for travel books which do the same. Some of his slighter books are FABULATIONS, The Black House (1977) is a horror story, and O-Zone (1986) is an extremely long, seemingly ambitious sf novel set in the familiar killing ground of a near-future DYSTOPIAN USA, irradiated with traces of HOLOCAUST, where the rich lurk behind domes and the poor roam a desolated terrain. It may be that PT thought the venue was original to this book. Titles of some fantasy interest include Dr. De Marr (1990 UK) and Millroy the Magician (1993). [JC]See also: MAINSTREAM WRITERS OF SF; POLLUTION; SLIPSTREAM SF. THESE ARE THE DAMNED The DAMNED . THEY CAME FROM BEYOND SPACE Joseph MILLARD. THEY CAME FROM WITHIN The PARASITE MURDERS . THEYDON, JOHN John W. JENNISON. THEY LIVE Film (1988). Alive Films. Dir John CARPENTER, starring Roddy Piper, Keith David, Meg Foster. Screenplay Frank Armitage (pseudonym of Carpenter), based on "Eight O'Clock in the Morning" (1963) by Ray NELSON. 94 mins. Colour.After several not very successful films for major studios ( STARMAN [1984], Christine [1983]), Carpenter went independent again for this, his best film for years and, though it did not do much in the marketplace, most popular with the critics. Based on a 6pp story about the USA being controlled by disguised ALIENS (partly a satirical attack on tv), it expands its original cleverly, and is a model of taut, B-movie narrative skills. In a depression-ridden, conformist USA, Nada (Piper), a labourer, is puzzled by intimations of something not quite right. He accidentally discovers a cache of sunglasses that, when worn, reveal subliminal codes all over the city, urging submission to authority, and also finds that many wealthier-looking citizens are in fact skull-faced aliens, exploiting what to them is a Third-World colony. An excellent formula film, TL is almost something more ambitious as well - but settles for action. [PN]See also: MONSTER MOVIES; PARANOIA. THIESSEN, J. GRANT [r] The SCIENCE-FICTION COLLECTOR . THIJSSEN, FELIX [r] BENELUX. THING, THE 1. Film (1951; vt The Thing from Another World). Winchester Pictures/RKO. Dir Christian Nyby (but see below), starring Kenneth Tobey, Margaret Sheridan, Robert Cornthwaite, Douglas Spencer, James Arness. Screenplay Charles Lederer, based on "Who Goes There?" (1938) by Don A. Stuart (John W. CAMPBELL Jr). 86 mins. B/w.TT was by far the most influential of the films that sparked off the sf/ MONSTER-MOVIE boom of the 1950s, and remains one of the most powerful of that decade. The film was actually dir Howard Hawks, who arranged as a favour that Nyby (an editor on previous Hawks films) should receive the directing credit. It is full of Hawks's trademarks: fast pace, overlapping dialogue and an ability to elicit relaxed, naturalistic performances from the cast. It describes the discovery of a UFO in the Arctic ice, its retrieval, and the subsequent series of attacks on a military/scientific base by its thawed-out occupant, a humanoid, vegetable ALIEN, searching for blood. Hawks wisely kept the Thing (Arness) off the screen for most of the film; when seen it is disappointing - and not at all like an "intellectual carrot", as it has been described. The best things in TT are the increasing tension (every time a door is opened the audience jumps) and claustrophobia; the gutsy performance by Sheridan as the wisecracking woman who gives as good as she gets, especially in the astonishing bondage scene; and the convincing sense of a nervous group under siege. Typical of adventure films made during the Cold War, there is a shoot-first-and-ask-questions-later morality (the scientists who want to communicate with the Thing are seen as fools); the Cold-War feeling is heightened by the famous last line, "Keep watching the skies!" [PN/JB]2. Film (1982). Turman-Foster/Universal. Dir John CARPENTER, starring Kurt Russell, A. Wilford Brimley, T.K. Carter, Richard Dysart, Charles Hallahan, Richard Masur. Screenplay Bill Lancaster, based on the Stuart/Campbell story. 109 mins. Colour.Not so much a remake as a return to the original story, this film reinstates Campbell's shapeshifting alien that can kill and duplicate the base workers one by one, with all the PARANOIA that that engenders. It was not very successful commercially, and was widely criticized as being merely a string of curiously disgusting special effects (designed by Rob Bottin, an uncredited Stan Winston and others) without any of the subtlety of the Hawks version. But the Hawks version, though vivid, was itself not very subtle, and Carpenter carries his beleaguered working men much further in extremis emotionally than Hawks would have cared to. Only 2 survive, and either or both may in fact be alien. There is a case for arguing that the Carpenter version goes as far as genre movies normally dare, if not further, in questioning not just the nature of humanity under stress but its value. Faced by the alien, the humans themselves become inhuman in every possible way. It is a black, memorable film, and may yet be seen as a classic. The novelization is The Thing * (1982) by Alan Dean FOSTER. [PN]See also: CINEMA. THING FROM ANOTHER WORLD, THE The THING . THINGS TO COME Film (1936). London Films. Dir William Cameron Menzies, starring Raymond Massey, Cedric Hardwicke, Margaretta Scott, Ralph Richardson, Edward Chapman, Ann Todd, Maurice Braddell. Screenplay Lajos Biro, H.G. WELLS, based on Wells's The Shape of Things to Come (1933). 130 mins, cut to 113 mins. B/w.This Alexander Korda production was the most expensive and ambitious sf film of the 1930s - and, despite the growth of magazine sf over the next 15 years, the last sf film of any importance until the 1950s. Although Wells himself was closely associated with TTC, it is not the most satisfactory of the 1930s films based on his work, and was a box-office failure. The film is divided into 3 parts: the 1st, set in 1940, sees the start of a world WAR that continues for decades; the 2nd, set in 1970, deals with a community reduced by the war to tribalism until the arrival of a mysterious "airman", who announces that a new era of "law and sanity" has begun and quells the local warlords with "Peace Gas"; and the 3rd takes place in AD2036, when the ruling technocrats have built a gleaming white UTOPIA and an attempt is being made to fire a manned projectile into space, using an electric gun, despite (vain) opposition from effete "artists" who are still maintaining that "there are some things Man is not meant to know".Characterization and dialogue are weakly imagined and the rhetoric is preachy and pompous, despite the famously overblown but moving concluding speech delivered by Raymond Massey, as he declares of Man: ". . . and when he has conquered all the deeps of space and all the mysteries of time, still he will be beginning." Wells's belief that the future of humanity lay with a technocratic elite and his scorn for the ARTS seemed oddly old-fashioned even in 1936 - not to say undemocratic. But the visual drama (supported by Arthur Bliss's majestic musical score), despite static compositions, is exhilarating: the special effects were by the imported Hollywood expert Ned Mann and director Menzies was a great production designer (most famously for Gone With the Wind [1939]). TTC is one of the most important films in the history of sf CINEMA for the boldness of its ambitions and for the ardour with which it projects the myth of SPACE FLIGHT as the beginning of humankind's transcendence. Wells published a version of the script as Things to Come * (1935). [PN/JB] THIRY, MARCEL [r] BENELUX. THIS ISLAND EARTH Film (1955). Universal. Dir Joseph Newman, starring Jeff Morrow, Faith Domergue, Rex Reason. Screenplay Franklin Coen, Edward G. O'Callaghan, based on This Island Earth (fixup 1952) by Raymond F. JONES. 86 mins. Colour.TIE came closer than any film of its period to capturing the flamboyant essence of PULP-MAGAZINE sf stories. Unlike most other early-1950s sf films, which were MONSTER MOVIES, TIE becomes a SPACE OPERA halfway through; the high cost of special effects required in films of this type was one reason for their comparative rarity.A nuclear physicist (Reason), having passed what turns out to have been an IQ test set by extraterrestrials - he builds an "interociter" from mysterious components that have arrived in the mail - is conscripted by them, along with other SCIENTISTS. These include an old girlfriend (Domergue). Several adventures later the two are taken unwillingly by flying saucer through the "thermic barrier" to the aliens' planet, Metaluna. The Metalunans hope that the scientists' expertise in the conversion of elements will provide the massive amounts of uranium required to keep their atomic shield functioning, so that it will continue to protect them from meteoritic bombardment by the sadistic Zahgons. Their arrival is too late; they witness the death of Metaluna and are returned to Earth by Exeter (Morrow), the arrogant but sympathetic alien who kidnapped them in the first place.Newman was a run-of-the-mill director, but it is probable that Jack ARNOLD (uncredited) directed the Metaluna sequences with the help of Clifford Stine's extravagant special effects. The sequences are remarkable not for their realism but for their imaginativeness; they are the closest sf cinema ever got to the style of ASF's or AMZ's 1930s magazine covers.TIE can hardly be called a good film, but it is an excellent bad film, a classic of sf cinema. Its most obvious subtext (what would it feel like to be the colonized rather than the colonizers?) seems to point towards isolationism as the best strategy for Earth, but the exoticism of the offworld sequences, and Exeter's dying speech ("our Universe is vast, full of wonders . . .") offer powerful propaganda for the contrary political position, the embrace of otherness. [PN] THIUSEN, ISMAR Pseudonym of Scottish-born US writer and academic John Macnie (1836-1909), whose UTOPIA The Diothas, or A Far Look Ahead (1883; vt A Far Look Ahead, or The Diothas 1890; vt Looking Forward, or The Diothas 1890 UK), set several millennia hence, was prolific with its suggestions of technological progress while presenting a not untypically regimented picture of human relations, which are especially constricting for women - who, if unmarried, go out only with chaperons. Unusually, the book's protagonist and narrator is himself a native of a future time (a few centuries hence, which may explain the strangeness of his name, Ismar Thiusen), and travels from that point into the FAR FUTURE where the main action takes place. [JC]See also: SLEEPER AWAKES. THOLE, KAREL Working name of Dutch illustrator Carolus Adrianus Maria Thole (1914- ), resident in Milan since 1958. The best-known European sf illustrator, KT's book covers have appeared in virtually every country in continental Europe, as well as in the UK and the USA (including some for BALLANTINE BOOKS and DAW BOOKS). But the greatest body of his sf ILLUSTRATION has been for the publishers Mondadori in Italy and Heyne in Germany; for considerable periods he has been the only artist working on their sf lines. His work may be the most sophisticatedly surreal in sf, and it is not absurd to compare it with that of Max Ernst (1891-1976), Salvador Dali (1904-1989) or Rene Magritte (1898-1967), all of whom are visible influences. Symbolic and dreamlike, his covers are often more evocative than the stories they illustrate. He received a Special Award at the World SF CONVENTION in Toronto in 1973. A book of his work ed Carlo Fruttero and Franco Lucentini was published in Italy, and the following year in Germany, where it was entitled Visionen des Unwirklichen: Die phantastichen Bilder des Karel Thole ["Visions of the Unreal: The Fantastic Paintings of Karel Thole"] (1982). [PN/JG] THOMAS, CHAUNCEY (1822-1898) US author of a technocratic UTOPIA, The Crystal Button, or Adventures of Paul Prognosis in the Forty-Ninth Century (1891). The protagonist travels thence in a dream-state, learns how the peace is maintained through a rigorous and worldwide attachment to Truth, and, just as a comet destroys this idyllic civilization, returns to 19th-century Boston. [JC] THOMAS, CRAIG (DAVID) (1942- ) Welsh writer of TECHNOTHRILLERS, most interestingly the Firefox books - Firefox (1977) and Firefox Down (1983) - about a NEAR-FUTURE Russian fighter, the MIG-31, which boasts both anti-radar and weapons operated by thought waves. The former novel was filmed as FIREFOX (1982). Moscow 5000 (1979), as by David Grant, and Sea Leopard (1981) have less sf import. [JC] THOMAS, DAN Pseudonym of US writer Leonard M. Sanders Jr (1922-1991). In his sf novel The Seed (1968) a COMPUTER explains the meaning of life to one of its engineers. [JC] THOMAS, D(ONALD) M(ICHAEL) (1935- ) UK poet and novelist who made use of sf themes most explicitly in early POETRY like "The Head Rape" for NW in 1968. His The Devil and the Floral Dance (1978) is a juvenile fantasy. His first adult novels were densely conceived Freud-inspired FABULATIONS. The Flute-Player (1979), a fable that depicts the intertwining of art and love, is set in an imaginary state much like Russia (to which DMT often returns in his fiction, poetry and translations). Birthstone (1980; rev 1982) features a protagonist whose several personalities have autonomous lives, and whose fantasies leak into the world, transforming it. The most successful of these tales is The White Hotel (1981), in which a graphic and surreal association in the protagonist's mind between sex and images of mass violence proves - long after a 1920s analysis by Freud himself - prophetic of the Final Solution; the book then becomes an extremely dark afterlife fantasy. The later Ararat sequence - Ararat (1983), Swallow (1984), Sphinx (1986) and Summit (1987) - adds futurity, politics and garish SATIRE to the generic mix; and seems, at times, to be sf. [JC] THOMAS, G.K. L.P. DAVIES. THOMAS, MARTIN Working name of UK writer Thomas Hector Martin (1913-1985) in a career that began just after the end of WWII; he also used the floating pseudonym Peter SAXON at least once during his association with W. Howard BAKER, for The Curse of Rathlaw (1968 US) in the Guardians psychic-investigators series. His first novel, The Evil Eye (1958), was, like many of its successors, a routine occult tale. [JC]Other works: Bred to Kill (1960); Assignment Doomsday (1961); Beyond the Spectrum (1964); Laird of Evil (1965); The Mind Killers (1965); Such Men are Dangerous (1965); Sorcerers of Set (1966), a contribution to the Sexton Blake Library; The Hands of Cain (1966; vt The Hand of Cain 1978 US); Brainwashed (1968). THOMAS, SUE (1951- ) UK writer whose sf novel, Correspondences (1992), is a complexly crafted presentation of a range of interweaving material, with regard to which a number of correspondences can be contemplated. The protagonist, having been transformed into a CYBORG, has developed software which allows her interact directly with her audience in the telling of her fantasies; within the frame of this narration, created characters live out lives that are directly correspondent to their creator's. Correspondences between machine and human intelligence are also brought into play; and discussed. [JC] THOMAS, THEODORE L(OCKARD) (1920- ) US writer and lawyer, prolific in the magazines under his own name, sometimes rendered Ted Thomas, and as Leonard Lockhard, the pseudonym he used for his Patent Attorney spoof series (8 stories 1952-64), some of which were with Charles L. HARNESS. He began publishing sf in 1952 with 2 stories, "The Revisitor" for Space Science Fiction and "Improbable Profession" (as Lockhard) for ASF, and appeared frequently in the magazines until about 1980 with tales competently designed for their markets, the most effective perhaps being those, like "The Weather Man" (1962), set on a future Earth dominated by a Weather Control Board. With Kate WILHELM he wrote 2 novels, The Clone (1959 Fantastic as by TLT alone; exp 1965) and The Year of the Cloud (1970), both featuring unnatural DISASTERS. The eponymous menace in the first novel represents a rare use in sf of what is a CLONE in the strict biological sense. [JC]See also: ECOLOGY; MONSTERS; ORIGIN OF MAN; POLLUTION; SUN; TIME TRAVEL. THOMAS, THOMAS T(HURSTON) (1948- ) US writer who began writing sf with The Doomsday Effect (1986), as by Thomas Wren, which won the Compton Crook Best First Novel AWARD. The novel describes-in terms that anticipated Greg BEAR's The Forge of God (1987) and David BRIN's Earth (1990) - the effect upon Earth of a rampaging BLACK HOLE. The narrative efficiency of the tale, and the briskly knowledgeable handling of scientific material, marked TTT as a HARD-SF writer of considerable potential. First Citizen (1987) is a NEAR-FUTURE tale mixing, in a typical hard-sf manner, POLITICS and ECONOMICS. An Honorable Defense * (1988) with David A. DRAKE, tied to the latter's Crisis of Empire sequence (each volume being essentially written by a different collaborator under Drake's supervision), is military sf, featuring a disgraced soldier who may be expected to save the Empire, which will then find that it has been in need of him. The Mask of Loki (1990) with Roger ZELAZNY is a fantasy set in the 13th and 21st centuries. Me: A Novel of Self-Discovery (1991) is sf, told from the point of view of the eponymous AI. Crygender (1992), with an anonymous collaborator, depicts the hermaphrodite owner of a bordello on Alcatraz Island, by now owned by a Japanese consortium. Flare (1992), again with Zelazny, describes with absorbed detail the effects of the short and violent life of a deadly solar flare. [JC]See also: MEDICINE. THOMPSON, EDWARD E.C. TUBB. THOMPSON, E(DWARD) P(ALMER) (1924-1993) UK historian and writer, whose highly articulate Marxist interpretation of the last centuries of UK history is best expressed in The Making of the English Working Class (1963). His studies of William MORRIS - William Morris: Romantic to Revolutionary (1955) and The Communism of William Morris (1965 chap) - are of sf interest, as is his only novel, The Sykaos Papers: Being an Account of the Voyages of the Poet Oi Pas to the System of Strim . . . (1988), a laboured SATIRE of Earth customs seen through the eyes of the poet Oi Pas, who comes from another planet. [JC] THOMPSON, JOYCE (MARIE) (1948- ) US writer, often of works for children. Her sf novel Conscience Place (1984) describes with quiet gravity an apparent UTOPIA hidden in the US West which is in fact populated by MUTANT nuclear- DISASTER victims. These people are threatened by the "need" of the scientists who maintain the refuge to perform GENETIC-ENGINEERING experiments on them. In telling this emotive tale, JT avoids almost all the traps of sentiment. [JC]Other works: The Blue Chair (1977); Harry and the Hendersons * (1987; vt Bigfoot and the Hendersons 1987 UK), a tie based on the film HARRY AND THE HENDERSONS (1987); East is West of Here: New & Selected Short Stories (coll 1987). THOMPSON, VANCE (1863-1925) US writer in various genres whose The Green Ray (1922-3 Munsey's Magazine as "The Man of the Miracle"; 1924) is hoax rather than sf, except for some ambivalence surrounding a Black bleached White and unpleasantly made the basis of a racist denouement. [JC]Other works: The Carnival of Destiny (1916); The Scarlet Iris (1924). THOMSON, AMY (1958- ) US writer whose first novel, Virtual Girl (1993), cunningly updates the icon of the female ROBOT, long a locus for uneasy speculation among older sf writers (see FEMINISM). Maggie, the protagonist of this NEAR-FUTURE tale, is an AI and consequently illegal, as independent artificial intelligences have been outlawed. More humanely, less sharply, but with a happier outcome than the robot Bildungsromanen for which John SLADEK became best-known, Virtual Girl carries its robot into what may be a successful adulthood. AT received the JOHN W. CAMPBELL Award for 1994. [JC] THOMSON, DAVID (1941- ) UK writer long resident in the USA, best known for his nonfiction studies of film. His 2 novels of sf interest were also, in a sense, film studies. Suspects (1985) is a complex FABULATION, a portrait of a USA populated - or infiltrated - by a vast extended family of characters who, the premise argues, have featured at some point in their lives as protagonists in innumerable films noirs from the period of Hollywood's prime and dark innocence; at the black heart of the tale sits the sinister figure of George Bailey, the character portrayed by James Stewart in Frank Capra's It's a Wonderful Life (1946). In Warren Beatty: A Life and a Story (1987; vt Warren Beatty and Desert Eyes: A Life and a Story 1987 US), chapters which examine the eponymous actor's real life alternate with chapters of a NEAR-FUTURE tale which dramatize the ideal life Beatty may be presumed to have indited upon the dream world of film. [JC] THOR, TERRY [s] Larry T. SHAW. THORNE, GUY Pseudonym of UK journalist and writer Cyril Arthur Edward Ranger-Gull (1874-1923); he also wrote speculative fiction as Ranger Gull. His most successful work was the alarmist and antisemitic When It Was Dark (1903), in which faked "scientific evidence" that Christ's resurrection never took place sends the Christian world into a catastrophic crisis of demoralization. His later fantasies, stridently championing Christianity, include several with borderline-sf elements. In Made in His Image (1906) a bleak futuristic world is redeemed by Christian belief, and in The Angel (1908) and And it Came to Pass (1915) miracle-working emissaries from God help show modern mortals the error of their ways. Other borderline-sf stories signed GT include 2 stories of near-future WAR, The Secret Sea-Plane (1915) and The Secret Monitor (1918), and a story of artificially induced DISASTERS, When the World Reeled (1924). Books signed Ranger Gull include 3 fairly conventional thrillers - The Soul-Stealer (1906), The Enemies of England (1915) and The Air Pirate (1919) - as well as the most ambitious of his sf novels, The City in the Clouds (1921), about an airborne pleasure-palace afloat over London. The detective novel Black Honey (1913), signed C. Ranger-Gull, has some borderline-sf elements. Other novels with fantasy elements include the detective story Doris Moore (1919), the mesmeric fantasy The House of Danger (1920), The Love Hater (1921) and The Dark Dominion (1923). His translations from the French include Charles Baudelaire: His Life (1868 France; trans 1915 UK) by Theophile Gautier (1811-1872), with added material. The latter part of GT's life was spent in a remote seaside cottage later rented by Neil BELL - where, Bell learned, GT's behaviour had scandalized the local population. [BS]Other work: Lucky Mr Loder (1918), a fantasy.See also: HISTORY OF SF; MESSIAHS; RELIGION. THORNE, IAN Julian MAY. THORNTON, HALL [s] Robert SILVERBERG. THORPE, FRED Pseudonym of Albert Stearns (? -1899), US dime novelist and author of 2 popular children's books based on the Arabian Nights, Chris and the Wonderful Lamp (1895) and Sindbad, Smith and Co (1896). He wrote many kinds of dime novel ( DIME-NOVEL SF), but was best known for marvel stories written on an almost ABSURDIST level. His most popular was "The Silent City" (1892 Golden Hours), about adventures in a Fata Morgana city seen over the Bering Sea. The Boy in Black (1894 Golden Hours; 1907) describes a weird, irrational supercivilization inside a Western mountain. "In the World Below" (1897 Golden Hours) anticipates Edgar Rice BURROUGHS's Pellucidar with adventures in a HOLLOW EARTH after an earth-borer goes out of control. [EFB] THORPE, TREBOR R.L. FANTHORPE. THOUSAND EYES OF DR MABUSE, THE Die TAUSEND AUGEN DES DR MABUSE. THREADS Made-for-tv film (1984). BBC-TV. Dir Mick Jackson, starring Karen Meagher, Reece Dinsdale, June Broughton, Henry Moxon, Sylvia Stoker, David Brierly. Screenplay Barry Hines. 115 mins. Colour.This BBC production, at once a UK equivalent of The DAY AFTER (1983) and an attempt to update the harrowing vision of Peter WATKINS's The WAR GAME (1965), is an impressive and persuasive account of a near-future nuclear attack on the UK, focusing on the fate of Sheffield. Ordinary people are seen ignoring the escalating international crisis as they deal with their own problems - the heroine (Meagher) is a pregnant young girl unsure whether or not to marry - and are then shattered completely by the coming of war. The civil-defence forces cannot deal with the extent of the calamity, and traffic wardens are drafted to supervise summary executions of looters. The film mimics The War Game's documentary approach as it trots out disturbing statistics. Finally, it flashes forward a few years to show a medievalized post- HOLOCAUST UK, brutal and tribalized, bringing this resolutely non-sf treatment of an sf theme surprisingly close to the surreal horrors of Le DERNIER COMBAT (1983). [KN] THRILL BOOK US magazine in the larger, saddle-stapled DIME-NOVEL format for 8 issues, then PULP-MAGAZINE size. 16 issues, 2 per month, 1 Mar-15 Oct 1919, published by STREET & SMITH; ed Harold HERSEY (Mar-June 1919) and Ronald Oliphant (July-Oct 1919). The legendarily rare TB is often cited as the first SF MAGAZINE, but its initial 8 issues contained no sf, rather stories intended to provide "thrills" of an occult or weird sort. Only after Oliphant became editor did TB regularly publish sf stories, including 2 by Murray LEINSTER (one involving a mad inventor, the other a biological menace). Others included: an H.G. WELLS-inspired story of INVISIBILITY by Greye La Spina (1880-1969); a Sax ROHMER-inspired Chinese supervillain whose inventions include a device for creating black light in "Mr Shen of Shensi" by H. BEDFORD-JONES; and the satirical "The Man from Thebes", featuring a reanimated mummy, by William Wallace COOK. Additional sf by less notable authors treated routinely such sf/ HORROR motifs as devices to communicate with the dead, drugs that distort the time-sense, men protected by invisible armour, and LOST WORLDS. TB's most famous story was The Heads of Cerberus (Aug-Oct 1919; 1952) by Francis STEVENS, a SCIENCE-FANTASY adventure set predominantly in a Philadelphia located in an alternate time-track. The definitive work on TB is Richard BLEILER's obsessively thorough The Annotated Index to The Thrill Book (chap 1991). [RB] THRILLING SCIENCE FICTION The MOST THRILLING SCIENCE FICTION EVER TOLD . THRILLING SCIENCE FICTION ADVENTURES The MOST THRILLING SCIENCE FICTION EVER TOLD . THRILLING WONDER STORIES US PULP MAGAZINE. 111 issues Aug 1936-winter 1955. Published by Beacon Magazines, Aug 1936-June 1937; by Better Publications Oct 1937-Aug 1943; and by Standard Magazines Fall 1943-Winter 1955. Ed Mort WEISINGER (Aug 1936-June 1941), Oscar J. FRIEND (Aug 1941-Fall 1944), Sam MERWIN Jr (Winter 1945-Oct 1951), Samuel MINES (Dec 1951-Summer 1954) and Alexander SAMALMAN (Fall 1954-Winter 1955). Leo MARGULIES was editorial director during Weisinger's and Friend's editorships. TWS began as a regular bimonthly and changed to monthly Dec 1939-Apr 1941, then back to bimonthly June 1941-Aug 1943. A quarterly schedule followed, Fall 1943-Fall 1946; then bimonthly Dec 1946-Aug 1953. The last 6 issues ran Nov 1953, Winter 1954, Spring 1954, Summer 1954, Fall 1954, Winter 1955.TWS was the continuation, after a brief gap, of Hugo GERNSBACK's WONDER STORIES; the adjective "Thrilling" was added to the title to bring it into conformity with other magazines from its new publisher. The issue numeration continued from Wonder Stories, Aug 1936 being vol 8 #1, so there might be a case for regarding it as the same magazine. However, its personality changed. The new magazine was far more garish than its predecessor. The early covers, by Howard V. BROWN, are said to have been responsible for the coinage of the term "Bug-Eyed Monsters" (or BEMS), such creatures being a regular feature of his painting, along with giant dinosaurs, insects and men. The first 8 issues featured an early sf comic strip (Zarnak by Max Plaisted) which was abruptly suspended in mid-plot after the Oct 1937 number. TWS's contributors were mostly second-string authors: Eando BINDER, Frederick Arnold Kummer (1873-1943), Arthur Leo ZAGAT and others. It ran a number of popular series, notably John W. CAMPBELL Jr's Penton and Blake stories, Arthur K. BARNES's Gerry Carlyle stories and the Hollywood on the Moon series by prolific contributor Henry KUTTNER. An amateur writers' contest sponsored by the magazine was won by Alfred BESTER with his first story, "The Broken Axiom" (Apr 1939). TWS was successful enough to generate 2 companion magazines: STARTLING STORIES, in Jan 1939, and STRANGE STORIES, featuring mostly weird fiction, in Feb 1939. Startling featured longer stories (a complete novel in each issue, when possible) and soon became the better magazine. In mid-1940 TWS also began to proclaim a "complete novel" in most issues, but in actuality the majority of these were no more than long novelettes. During this boom period a third companion, CAPTAIN FUTURE, was initiated, and for a little over a year TWS changed from its habitual bimonthly schedule and appeared monthly. Earle K. BERGEY succeeded Brown as cover artist with the Sep 1940, issue and was responsible for most subsequent covers; his paintings switched the emphasis from the BEM to the scantily clad lady being threatened by it. TWS became more overtly juvenile in the early 1940s with the introduction of Sergeant Saturn ( STARTLING STORIES).When Merwin became editor he did away with the magazine's juvenile trappings and considerably improved it, although it remained evidently secondary to Startling. It published further noteworthy stories, including many from Murray LEINSTER, and some "novels" genuinely of novel length: A.E. VAN VOGT's THE WEAPON SHOPS OF ISHER (Feb 1949; fixup 1951), James BLISH's Jack of Eagles (Dec 1949 as "Let the Finder Beware"; rev 1952; vt ESP-er) and Leigh BRACKETT's Sword of Rhiannon (June 1949 as "Sea-Kings of Mars"; 1953). Ray BRADBURY, whose first solo short story appeared in TWS in 1943, was a regular contributor, as was Jack VANCE, who also made his debut in its pages. Vance's Magnus Ridolph series and Kuttner's Hogben stories were popular features of the Merwin TWS.Although the magazine acquired more companions in the boom of the early 1950s - Fantastic Story Magazine ( FANTASTIC STORY QUARTERLY) and SPACE STORIES - it soon began to suffer in the general decline of the pulp-magazine industry. Changes in editor had little effect, Mines maintaining, approximately, the standard of Merwin's TWS; he published Philip Jose FARMER's celebrated TABOO-breaking "Mother" (Apr 1953). The last issue of TWS appeared in Winter 1955, after which the magazine's title (along with that of Fantastic Story Magazine) was absorbed into Startling for that magazine's last 3 issues.2 issues of a reprint magazine, Wonder Stories, revived the old title and continued the TWS numeration ( WONDER STORIES). 2 UK edns appeared for short periods, both heavily cut from the original: Atlas Publishing produced 10 numbered issues (3 in 1949-50, 7 in 1952-3); Pemberton published a further 4, numbered #101-#104, in 1953-4. A Canadian reprint ran 1945-6 and again 1948-51. [MJE] THRILLS INCORPORATED Australian magazine, PULP-MAGAZINE format #1-#5, BEDSHEET format #6-#12, DIGEST format #13-#23, numbered, undated, mostly monthly Mar 1950-June 1952, published by Associated General Publications, Sydney, company name changed to Transport Publications from #13; mostly ed (uncredited) by Alister Innes. TI was intended for children. Although US reprints as such were not used, plagiarism did occur without the publishers' knowledge. These (with new titles, but originally by Ray BRADBURY, Charles L. HARNESS, Clifford D. SIMAK, William TENN and others) were the only good stories printed, although Alan G. YATES contributed some Australian stories, as did G.C. Bleeck (1907-1971) - some under the name of Belli Luigi - and Norma Hemming. Some stories were reprinted in the UK AMAZING SCIENCE STORIES. [FHP/PN] THRUST US SEMIPROZINE, originally a FANZINE, advertised as quarterly but in the past often irregular; ed D. Douglas Fratz, #1 Jan 1973 as magazine of the Maryland Science Fiction Society; it became independent 1977, at which time Fratz stopped publishing fiction and established the blend of interviews, articles and reviews, emphasizing controversy and argument, which has continued since. Always one of the solider journals of commentary on sf and fantasy, and one of the longest-lasting, T has been 4 times nominated for a HUGO (1980, 1988, 1989, 1990). Beginning with #36, Spring 1990, T changed its name to Quantum: Science Fiction and Fantasy Review without major changes to style or format; and in #42, Summer/Fall 1992, Fratz announced that the magazine would end with #43/44. This last edition, a double-sized 20th anniversary issue, appeared in 1993. Writers associated with T have included Michael BISHOP, George Alec EFFINGER, Darrell SCHWEITZER and Ted WHITE. [PN] THUNDERBIRDS UK animated-puppet tv series (1965-6). An AP Films Production for ATV/ITC. Created Sylvia and Gerry Anderson. Prod Gerry Anderson (season 1), Reg Hill (season 2). Writers included Dennis Spooner, Alan Fennell, Alan Pattillo. Dirs included David Lane, David Elliott, Desmond Saunders, Pattillo. Model effects supervised by Derek Meddings. 2 seasons, 32 50min episodes (re-edited in the USA so that each episode occupied two half-hour timeslots). Colour.This animated puppet series for children was one of the most elaborate (and perhaps the best-loved) of all such Gerry and Sylvia ANDERSON productions, and the first designed for a 1hr timeslot. The 4th of their SuperMarionation shows to be sf, it involved International Rescue: based on a secret Pacific Island, this was a future air-, space- and undersea-rescue service which utilized a variety of spectacular vehicles (a spaceship, a submersible and a heavily armed pink Rolls Royce among them) and was run by the Tracy family with the help of Lady Penelope, their glamorous London assistant, Parker, her Cockney chauffeur, and Brains, a stuttering bespectacled genius. 2 feature-film spin-offs, also with animated puppets, were Thunderbirds Are Go (1966) and Thunderbird Six (1968). [PN/JB] THUNDERBIRDS ARE GO THUNDERBIRDS. THUNDERBIRD SIX THUNDERBIRDS. THURSTON, ROBERT (DONALD) (1936- ) US writer who published his first story, "Stop Me before I Tell More", in Orbit 9 (anth 1971) ed Damon KNIGHT, and who was for some years known only for his short work. This is notable more for its examination of individual humans caught in social or sexual extremis than for any specific extrapolative bent, so that moments of genuine insight or threat tend to be lost in weak plotting. His first novel, Alicia II (1978), exemplifies this problem, introducing an interesting existential problem (the brain of an old man is implanted into the body of a young "retread" and the new amalgam must come to terms with the kind of society which legitimizes this obscene method of attaining longevity for a few) but foundering in the telling, which confusedly leads the protagonist into improbable PULP-MAGAZINE adventures. RT's second independent novel, A Set of Wheels (in Clarion, anth 1971, as "Wheels"; exp1983), shows the same difficulty, but his third, Q Colony (in The Berkley Showcase 4 [anth 1981] ed John W. SILBERSACK and Victoria Schochet as "The Oonaa Woman"; exp 1985), set in a research station on an ALIEN planet whose inhabitants can interbreed with humans, explores his usual material - sex and identity - with greater aplomb.It may be, however, that RT will remain best known for a series of ties, the most significant being his contributions to the Battlestar Galactica sequence, all with Glen A. LARSON: Battlestar Galactica * (1978), #2: The Cylon Death Machine*(1979), #3: The Tombs of Kobol* (1979), #4: The Young Warriors * (1980), #11: The Nightmare Machine * (1985), #12: "Die, Chameleon!" * (1986), #13: Apollo's War * (1987) and #14: Surrender the Galactica! * (1987). His sequence of BattleTech ties begins with Legend of the Jade Phoenix #1: Way of the Clans * (1991), #2: Bloodname * (1991) and #3: Falcon Guard * (1991). Singleton ties include Robot Jox * (1989), based on a screenplay by Joe HALDEMAN ( ROBOT JOX), and Isaac Asimov's Robot City: Robots and Aliens #3: Intruder * (1990). [JC]See also: GAMES AND SPORTS; REINCARNATION. THX 1138 Film (1971). American Zoetrope/Warner Bros. Dir George LUCAS, starring Robert Duvall, Donald Pleasence, Maggie McOmie. Screenplay Lucas, Walter Murch, from a story by Lucas. 88 mins, restored to 95 mins. Colour.A subterranean future society is governed repressively by COMPUTERS and bland human technocrats who keep the population under control with drugs. Everyone wears white clothing, heads are shaven, and sexual intercourse is forbidden (breeding is by artificial insemination) - it is a truly sterile, antiseptic world. One of the few dissenters is THX (Duvall), who experiments with sex; his cellmate becomes pregnant and is liquidated. THX is imprisoned in a White Limbo but escapes and reaches the surface and freedom. It is an old and familiar story to sf readers, but Lucas presents it with panache. He begins with apparently unrelated visual fragments, accompanied by snatches of dialogue, all of which gradually coalesce to form a comprehensive DYSTOPIAN nightmare, visually impressive but not lavish, with a bleak sense of style and a drily witty script.THX 1138, though a small masterpiece, failed commercially - unsurprisingly since it is both difficult and downbeat; it did a little better when released again after the success of Lucas's STAR WARS (1977) with some footage originally excised by a worried Warner Bros. restored. The novelization is THX 1138 * (1971) by Ben BOVA. [JB/PN] TIDAL WAVE NIPPON CHINBOTSU. TIDYMAN, ERNEST (1928-1984) US journalist, novelist and screenwriter, author of the Shaft series of books about a Black detective, and of scripts for the Shaft movies, The French Connection (1971) and the supernatural Western High Plains Drifter (1973), among others. His sf novel, Absolute Zero (1971), is a NEAR-FUTURE thriller whose protagonist becomes involved in CRYONICS in an attempt to preserve his accidentally frozen dwarf parents. [JC] TIE A term used in this encyclopedia to designate a work whose subject matter is tied to a previous work or concept. In some respects, therefore, a tie clearly resembles a sequel. However, ties can be differentiated from sequels in two ways: first, a tie is generally written to occupy a different format or genre than the work which inspires it - novelizations are, for instance, often spun off from films, an example being The Sensitives * (1968), Louis CHARBONNEAU's novelization of a script written by Deane ROMANO - and, second, a tie is almost always written by some person other than the author or creator of the original work or concept. Ties can be spun off, therefore, from almost any kind of source: from stories, novels, series, comics, films, tv series, BRAIDS and other SHARED-WORLD enterprises, GAMES AND TOYS, or concepts put out for hire by packagers like Byron PREISS.The first ties were almost certainly shared-world anthologies like Mugby Junction * (anth 1866 chap), ed Charles DICKENS as a special Christmas Number of his journal All the Year Round; and film novelizations can be found from before WWI, though most books-of-the-film, until at least 1950, were in fact simple reprintings of the original novel, sometimes with movie stills inserted. With the increasing commodification of sf in the 1980s, ties suddenly became very common, and were often found in conjunction with sharecropping activities. Ties can be distinguished from SHARECROPS by the fact that ties are defined by their relationship to the source of their inspiration, while sharecrops - though they usually involve ties-are, strictly speaking, works of any sort written for hire.The most interesting tied enterprises in the 1980s and 1990s are probably shared-world anthologies like George R.R. MARTIN's WILD CARDS sequence from 1987 and the War World books ed from 1988 by Jerry POURNELLE, John F. CARR and Roland J. GREEN; but works of interest can be found through the whole range of the phenomenon.In this encyclopedia ties are signalled by an asterisk placed between the title and the date of the work. [JC] TILLEY, PATRICK (1928- ) UK writer whose first sf novel, Fade-Out (1975), after the fashion of borderline works like Fail-Safe (1962) by Eugene BURDICK and Harvey WHEELER, concentrates long-windedly on the workings of government and military in a TECHNOTHRILLER context, in this instance displaced sf-wards by the fact that the action is occasioned by an ALIEN landing which damps out all electrical impulses ( UFOS). In Mission (1981) Christ returns to contemporary New York, bearing with him the news that His crucifixion was one small event in a long SPACE-OPERA conflict between the Ain-folk and the evil Brax. The Amtrak Wars sequence - The Amtrak Wars #1: Cloud Warrior (1983), #2: First Family (1985), #3: Iron Master (1987), #4: Blood River (1988), #5: Death Bringer (1989) and #6: Earth-Thunder (1990) - more vividly set primitive Mutes against the blindly technocratic Amtrak Federation in a post- HOLOCAUST USA; as the sequence develops, the geopolitical realities governing the land become increasingly complex and the fulfilment of the revelatory Talisman Prophecy-though constantly deferred - gives succeeding books an increasing momentum. Dark Visions: An Illustrated Guide to the Amtrak Wars (1984 chap), with Fernando Fernandez, provides a useful orientation. The sequence, clearly incomplete at the end of #6, was one of the most compelling sf-adventure series of the decade. [JC]Other work: Xan (1986), horror. TILLYARD, AELFRIDA (CATHERINE WETENHALL) (1883-? ) UK writer first known for editing Cambridge Poets 1910-1913 (anth 1913), but perhaps best remembered for her 2 sf novels. Set after a series of HOLOCAUSTS, Concrete: A Story of Two Hundred Years Hence (1930) contrasts an irreligious DYSTOPIA, which holds under its sway most of the civilized world, with a pious island UTOPIA; there is much action. Interestingly, one of the rulers of the dystopia, the head of the Ministry of Reason, goes by the name of Big Brother. The Approaching Storm (1932) more conventionally posits a left-wing dictatorship in the UK. [JC] TILMS, RICHARD A. John T. SLADEK. TIME AFTER TIME Film (1979). Orion/Warner Bros. Dir Nicholas Meyer, starring Malcom McDowell, David Warner, Mary Steenburgen. Screenplay Meyer, from a story by Karl Alexander, Steve Hayes. Novelized as Time After Time * (1979) by Alexander. 112 mins. Colour.Dr Stevenson (Warner), whom we soon learn to be Jack the Ripper, eludes police by stealing the TIME MACHINE from H.G. WELLS (McDowell) in 1893, and travelling to San Francisco in 1979. The machine, however, returns, and Wells uses it to pursue the criminal. There are some good moments in this ingenious movie, with Wells as the alien naif amazed and baffled by the world of the future (which he had expected to be utopian), though the mad, affectless Ripper finds its violence and sleaziness precisely to his taste. But the view, presented rather labouredly by the film, that 1979 is a period of unparalleled cruelty (and that Wells could not cope with it), is conceptually tawdry. Steenburgen is charming as Amy, the not-quite-liberated bank clerk who falls for Wells, though anybody knowing anything of Wells' real private life will be astonished to learn that he took Amy back to his own time and they lived happily ever after as Mr and Mrs Wells! [PN] TIMECOP Film (1994). Largo International N.V. in association with JVC Entertainment present a Signature/Renaissance/Dark Horse EntertainmentProduction. Dir Peter Hyams; exec prod Mike Richardson; prods include Sam Raimi; screenplay by Mark Verheiden from a story by Richardson and Verheiden, based on the comics series created by Richardson and Verheiden; starring Jean- Claude Van Damme, Mia Sara, Ron Silver, Bruce McGill, Gloria Reuben, Scott Bellis and Jason Schombing. 98 mins. Colour.Belgian martial-arts performer Van Damme is here asked to extend his range to therequirements of a romantic lead, a not wholly convincing exercise. He plays Max Walker,whose wife (Sara) was mysteriously murdered in 1994, and who now, in 2004, is a timecop for the TEC (Time Enforcement Commission). Ambitious presidential hopeful Senator McComb (Silver) heads the government committee that finances TEC, which has effectively become an arm of government. Walker is sent back to investigate 1994 and later 1929 because somebody has beensending back operatives into history to make a profit through patents, cheap stocks, etc. The source of the corrupt senator's campaign funds becomes clear.The film ends in a flurry of time paradox, less stringently worked out than those of, say, DISASTER IN TIME (1991). It is all diverting and proficient, with plenty of action, and the emphasis on governmental conspiracy that is a Hyams trademark, but evokes memories of other films that have done it better. The time machine, for instance, recalls BACK TO THE FUTURE (1985).T represents another entry into film production of a comic-book company,Mike Richardson's Dark Horse, which earlier in the same year had a fantasy hit with the jokey SUPERHERO movie The Mask (1994). Director Hyams has a long but not especially exciting connection with filmed sf, having made CAPRICORN ONE (1977), OUTLAND(1981, his best) and 2010 (1984). [PN] TIME MACHINE One of the early key items of sf TERMINOLOGY, first used by H.G. WELLS in the title of THE TIME MACHINE (1895). It is, of course, a machine used for TIME TRAVEL. [PN] TIME MACHINE, THE Film (1960). Galaxy Films/MGM. Prod/dir George PAL, starring Rod Taylor, Alan Young, Yvette Mimieux, Sebastian Cabot. Screenplay David DUNCAN, based on THE TIME MACHINE (1895) by H.G. WELLS. 103 mins. Colour.Unlike Pal's WAR OF THE WORLDS (1953), TTM is set in the Victorian era - at least at the beginning of the film - and it is these sequences, with the inventor demonstrating his creation to his disbelieving friends amid the Victorian bric-a-brac of their cosy world, that work the best. After a visually interesting journey through time (special effects by Wah Chang and Gene Warren), pausing occasionally - for example, to note the nuclear bombardment of London in 1966 - the film reduces Wells's angry parable to a Hollywood sf formula. The parallels between the troglodytic Morlocks and the Victorian working class and between the beautiful but thoughtless Eloi and the Victorian upper class are lost. The Time Traveller becomes a confident, romantic hero, successfully rousing the Eloi to battle against their ape-like devourers. The disturbing evolutionary perspectives of the end of Wells's book are also missing. William Ferrari's charming design for the TIME MACHINE does not compensate for the vulgarization of the story. [JB/PN] TIME PARADOXES The fact that TIME TRAVEL into the past disrupts the pattern of causality, changing or cancelling matters of known fact, has not caused stories of this kind to be banished from the sf field; instead it has led to the growth of a subgenre of stories celebrating the peculiar aesthetics of such paradoxes. The essential paradoxicality of time travel is often dramatized by asking: "What would happen if I went back in time and killed my own grandfather?" - a question to which sf writers have provided many different answers. A time-paradox story usually leads either to a singularly appropriate reductio ad absurdum or to a cunning literary move which appears to resolve the paradox by removing or avoiding the seemingly inevitable contradiction. F. ANSTEY's pioneering fantasy The Time Bargain (1891; vt Tourmalin's Time Cheques) provided a prototype for the first kind of story; Fritz LEIBER's "Try and Change the Past" (1958) is a good example of the latter. Sf writers frequently invoke sweeping metaphysical hypotheses in the cause of accommodating potential paradoxes; Alfred BESTER's "The Men who Murdered Mohammed" (1958) does so by providing every individual with his or her own personal continuum. There are several notable stories and series about "time police" who try to protect the world - or, more often, a whole series of ALTERNATE WORLDS - from temporal upset. Poul ANDERSON's Time Patrol series, Isaac ASIMOV's The End of Eternity (1955) and John BRUNNER's Times without Number (fixup 1962; rev 1974) are among the most notable of these.The closed loop in time, in which an event becomes its own cause, is the simplest narrative form of the time-paradox story, seized upon by several of the contestants invited by the editor of AMAZING STORIES to find a clever ending for Ralph Milne FARLEY's "The Time-Wise Guy" (1940). More notable examples include Ross ROCKLYNNE's "Time Wants a Skeleton" (1941), Bester's "The Push of a Finger" (1942), P. Schuyler MILLER's "As Never Was" (1944), Murray LEINSTER's "The Gadget had a Ghost" (1952) and Mack REYNOLDS's "Compounded Interest" (1956). Greater ingenuity is exercised when these loops become more complicated, forming convoluted sealed knots. Two classic exercises in this vein were written by Robert A. HEINLEIN: "By His Bootstraps" (1941) as by Anson MacDonald and "All You Zombies . . ." (1959), the latter being a story whose central character moves back and forth in time and undergoes a sex-change in order to become his own mother and father.The second fundamental variant of the time-paradox story is that in which the present from which the time-travellers start is replaced by an alternative because of the effect (often trivial and unintended) which they have had upon the past. Nat SCHACHNER's "Ancestral Voices" (1933) is an early story which uses such a device to expose the absurdities of ancestor-worship and racism, but the best known example is Ray BRADBURY's moral fable "A Sound of Thunder" (1952), in which a time-tourist who treads on a prehistoric butterfly alters the POLITICS of the present for the worse. Eando BINDER's "The Time-Cheaters" (1940) suggests that time might have stubbornly ingenious ways of taking care of such threatened contradictions, and William TENN's "Brooklyn Project" (1948) points out that observers who change with the world would not notice such alterations, however drastic they became. In many stories the good intentions of would-be history-changers go sadly and ironically awry. L. Sprague DE CAMP's "Aristotle and the Gun" (1958) is a fine example; others are Poul Anderson's "The Man who Came Early" (1956) and Kirk MITCHELL's Never the Twain (1987). Works in which such ideas are further extrapolated and intensively recomplicated tend to feature wars fought through time by the representatives of alternate worlds ambitious to demolish their competitors. Jack WILLIAMSON's THE LEGION OF TIME (1938 ASF; 1961) opened up such imaginative territory for further exploration in Fritz Leiber's Change War series and Barrington J. BAYLEY's spectacular The Fall of Chronopolis (1974); the long Timewars series by Simon Hawke (Nicholas Yermakov) of exuberantly extravagant stories in this vein, begun with The Ivanhoe Gambit (1984), is still continuing.The potential which time-travellers have to exist twice in the same time is considered so uniquely unreasonable as to be specifically proscribed in stories like Wilson TUCKER's The Lincoln Hunters (1957), where the restriction opens up potential for ingenious plotting, as it does also in John VARLEY's elaborate paradox-avoidance story Millennium (1983). However, other writers - including such non-genre writers as Osbert SITWELL in The Man who Lost Himself (1929) and Eliot Crawshay-Williams (1879-1962) in "The Man who Met Himself" (1947) - have been particularly intrigued by the possible psychological effects of a person's meeting with a later version of his or her own self. Ralph Milne FARLEY's "The Man who Met Himself" (1935) is an early example from the sf PULP MAGAZINES. Later sf writers have casually extended this notion to its absurd limits, displayed by Barry N. MALZBERG in "We're Coming Through the Window" (1967) and David GERROLD in The Man who Folded Himself (1973), the latter being a notable if silly story which conscientiously attempts to compile a narrative portmanteau of all possible time paradoxes.Sf writers who have made particularly prolific and ingenious use of time-paradox plots include Charles L. HARNESS, whose many works in this vein extend from the early "Time Trap" (1948) and "Stalemate in Space" (1949; vt "Stalemate in Time") to Krono (1988) and Lurid Dreams (1990), and Robert SILVERBERG, whose even more numerous contributions range from the early "Hopper" (1956 Infinity; exp as The Time-Hoppers 1967) and Stepsons of Terra (1958) through the convoluted Up the Line (1969) to the neat "Many Mansions" (1973) and the smooth "The Far Side of the Bell-Shaped Curve" (1982).The time-paradox story may have posed an attractive challenge to sf writers but it has also been something of a wasting asset. All the elementary changes have been rung, and it now requires considerable cunning to find a new twist or even to redeploy an old one in more pointed or poignant fashion. Nevertheless, there still remains a good deal of life in the subgenre: Bob SHAW's Who Goes Here? (1977) slickly exploits the comic potential of the theme; Hilbert SCHENCK's A ROSE FOR ARMAGEDDON (1982) is a brilliantly recomplicated timeslip romance; Walter Jon WILLIAMS's Days of Atonement (1991) interrelates time paradox and quantum physics; and John CROWLEY's Great Work of Time (1989 in coll NOVELTY; 1991) cleverly recombines several well worn themes to striking quasi-surreal effect. [MJE/BS] TIMERIDER: THE ADVENTURES OF LYLE SWANN Film (1983). Zoomo Productions/Jensen Farley Pictures. Dir William Dear, starring Fred Ward, Belinda Bauer, Peter Coyote, Ed Lauter, L.Q. Jones. Screenplay Dear, Michael Nesmith. 92 mins. Colour.This TIME-TRAVEL Western prefigures the more successful BACK TO THE FUTURE PART III (1989) in its juxtaposition of 20th-century technology and the generic conventions associated with tales of the 19th century. Motorcycle ace Lyle Swann (Ward) blunders into a time-travel experiment and is zapped back to the Old West, where he tangles with outlaw varmint Peter Coyote, terrifies the superstitious Mexicans and romances Belinda Bauer so that he can turn out to be his own great grandfather. Despite the amiable cast and pleasant scenery, the film, like its hero, does little but ride around in circles in the desert. Nesmith, the co-screenwriter, ex-member of the pop group The Monkees, went on to produce Alex Cox's REPO MAN (1984). [KN] TIMESCAPE DISASTER IN TIME. TIMESCAPE BOOKS US sf publishing imprint, issuing both hardcover and paperback, whose logo first appeared in Mar 1981 and whose last titles were published in 1984. TB was formed by Simon & Schuster and Pocket Books (owned by the former), for both of whom David G. HARTWELL had been director of sf, and he was set in charge of the new imprint. It was named after the resonant title of Gregory BENFORD's successful novel TIMESCAPE (1980), which had been published by Simon & Schuster; Benford was paid a licensing fee, and published 2 books - Against Infinity (1983) and Across the Sea of Suns (1984) - with the imprint. TB was prestigious and influential. However, despite publishing good books which won awards, it did not produce bestsellers, was hit by the economic downturn of the early 1980s, and soon folded. There is an argument over whether Hartwell chose the wrong books or if publicity and packaging were inadequate. TB publications included many books of somewhat literary sf and fantasy, such as Philip K. DICK's The Divine Invasion (1981), John M. FORD's The Dragon Waiting (1983), Lisa GOLDSTEIN's The Red Magician (1982), which won a National Book Award, Nancy KRESS's The Prince of Morning Bells (1981), Frederik POHL's The Years of the City (1984), Hilbert SCHENCK's A Rose for Armageddon (1982) and Gene WOLFE's Book of the New Sun tetralogy (1980-83). TB NEBULA winners were The Claw of the Conciliator (1981) by Wolfe and No Enemy But Time (1982) by Michael BISHOP; as Benford's Timescape had won in 1981, TB effectively scooped the Nebula pool 3 years running. With hindsight, the story of TB can be seen as a moral fable of central importance in the history of US sf publishing, which has certainly been - in the main - a more cynical business since TB's demise. [PN] TIMESLIP (vt The Atomic Man US) Film (1956). Merton Park/Allied Artists. Dir Ken Hughes, starring Gene Nelson, Faith Domergue, Peter Arne, Vic Perry. Screenplay Charles Eric MAINE. 93 mins, cut to 76 mins US. B/w.Undistinguished UK thriller whose sf concept is that an atomic scientist, who temporarily died for 71/2 seconds on the operating table while a bullet was being dug out of his back, now lives mentally exactly 71/2 seconds in the future. The sf implications are mostly left unexplored in what is essentially a hard-bitten-reporter-investigating-crime story. The same notion was later treated more intensively by Brian W. ALDISS in "Man in his Time" (1965) and by Eric BROWN in "The Time-Lapsed Man" (1988). Maine's The Isotope Man * (1957) was based on his script. [PN] TIME SLIP SENGOKU JIETAI. TIME TRACKERS Roger CORMAN. TIME TRAVEL It is a great literary convenience to be able to move a narrative viewpoint backwards or forwards in time, and writers have always been prepared to use whatever narrative devices come to hand for this purpose. Until the end of the last century dreams were the favoured method - perhaps most significantly deployed in Charles DICKENS's A Christmas Carol (1843) and Edgar Allan POE's "A Tale of the Ragged Mountains" (1844) - although entirely arbitrary timeslips were also used, while characters could be brought from the past into our own time via various SUSPENDED-ANIMATION devices, including CRYONIC preservation, extended sleep and drugs, as in Grant ALLEN's "Pausodyne" (1881). H.G. WELLS's THE TIME MACHINE (1895) was a crucial breakthrough in narrative technology, providing sf with one of its most significant facilitating devices, ultimately used in this instance to survey the kind of FAR FUTURE and END OF THE WORLD prophesied (erroneously) by contemporary scientific knowledge. The idea of employing a hypothetical MACHINE as a literary device, using a jargon of apology to add plausibility, was not entirely new, but this particular deployment of it was so striking as to constitute a historical break and a great inspiration. Oddly enough, Wells never again used such a device, leaving its further exploitation to others. The earliest writers to take up the challenge included Alfred JARRY in his classic essay in 'pataphysics, "How to Construct a Time Machine" (1899); the anonymous "A Disciple" (of Wells), who borrowed the machine in order to explore The Coming Era, or Leeds Beatified (1900); and H.S. MACKAYE, whose eponymous time machine in The Panchronicon (1904) is unashamedly ludicrous. Most UK writers of SCIENTIFIC ROMANCE, however, continued to prefer visionary fantasy as a method of time-exploration - E.V. ODLE's The Clockwork Man, (1923) is one honourable exception - and it was left to the US pulp writers to show what really might be done with time machines if one had the imaginative daring to employ them. Even the pulp writers remained relatively modest in their time-jaunting until the 1920s, although William Wallace COOK's A Round Trip to the Year 2000 (1903 Argosy; 1925) deals sarcastically with the accumulation of time-travellers to be expected in the magical millennial year. MAINSTREAM WRITERS who found literary dreams becoming increasingly unfashionable had more and more recourse to arbitrary timeslips, and there is a curious subgenre of "timeslip romances" whose affective power is very often concentrated into love stories, although the real emotional substrate is nostalgia. "Arria Marcella" (1852) by Theophile Gautier (1811-1872), although its timeslip is "rationalized" as a visionary fantasy, provides an archetypal example of the peculiarly heated eroticism with which such stories are sometimes endowed. Henry James (1843-1916) spent the last few years of his life working on The Sense of the Past (1917), but left it incomplete; it inspired the play Berkeley Square (1929) by J.L. Balderston and J.C. Squire (1884-1958) which was memorably filmed in 1933. Other notable timeslip romances include Still She Wished for Company (1924) by Margaret Irwin (1889-1967), The Man in Steel (1939) by J. Storer CLOUSTON, Portrait of Jennie (1940) by Robert NATHAN, Time Marches Sideways (1950) by Ralph L. FINN, Time and Again (1970) by Jack FINNEY, Bid Time Return (1975) by Richard MATHESON, The Dream Years (1986) by Lisa GOLDSTEIN and Serenissima (1987) by Erica JONG. "Psychological timeslips", by means of which protagonists are permitted to relive their lives with the aid of a mature and knowledgeable consciousness, are featured in The Devil in Crystal (1944) by Louis MARLOW, Strange Life of Ivan Osokin (1947) by P.D. Ouspensky (1878-1947), Replay (1986) by Ken Grimwood and Changing the Past (1989) by Thomas BERGER. Significant timeslip "anti-romances" include A Connecticut Yankee at King Arthur's Court (1889) by Mark TWAIN and Friar's Lantern (1906) by G.G. Coulton (1858-1947), the latter being written to dispel the nostalgic illusions about the Medieval Church harboured by G.K. CHESTERTON and Hilaire BELLOC. Within pulp sf, writers were quick to grasp the nettle, using time machines to explore both past and future, often venturing speculations about the nature of time. Even a mediocre pulp writer like Ray CUMMINGS could get entranced by such mysteries, although such romances as The Man who Mastered Time (1924 Argosy; 1929) - which obligingly defines time as "what keeps everything from happening at once" - and The Shadow Girl (1929 Argosy; 1947) cannot take such philosophizing very far. Ralph Milne FARLEY, whose time stories - begun with "The Time Traveler" (1931) - were collected in The Omnibus of Time (1950), did a little better, and John TAINE (a professional mathematician) set new standards of sophistication in The Time Stream (1931 Wonder Stories; 1946). Theories about the nature of time, especially those put forward by J.W. DUNNE, also influenced non-genre writers - the most conspicuous example being J.B. PRIESTLEY, in his various Time plays - but the mainstream fictions inspired by that interest were understandably more modest.Certain periods of the past have always attracted time-travellers because of their melodramatic potential. The Age of the Dinosaurs was inevitably the biggest draw - even to people who could only stand and stare, like the users of the time-viewer in Taine's Before the Dawn (1934); it was later to become a favourite era for hunters, as in Ray BRADBURY's "A Sound of Thunder" (1952) and L. Sprague DE CAMP's "A Gun for Dinosaur" (1956). Meeting famous people has also been a favourite theme, and Manly Wade WELLMAN was the first writer to allow a timeslipping hero to become somebody famous, in Twice in Time (1940 Startling Stories; 1957). Some of the more scrupulous pulp writers thought that time travel into the past really belonged to the realms of fantasy because of the TIME PARADOXES thus generated, and the first classic timeslip romance from a genre writer, De Camp's LEST DARKNESS FALL (1939; 1941; rev 1949), was initially published in Unknown Worlds for this reason. Others had fewer scruples, and many writers gleefully set about exploiting the peculiar aesthetics of time paradoxes. In fact, despite the dubious propriety of its literary device, De Camp's novel - like Wells's THE TIME MACHINE - warrants serious consideration as sf because of the conscientious way in which it employs its displaced viewpoint, the protagonist here being used to explore the crucial but subtle role played in HISTORY by TECHNOLOGY.Inevitably, the main focus of pulp sf interest was in the melodramatic potential of time travel, as first displayed by Cummings and then taken to exotic extremes by such writers as John Russell FEARN, in Liners of Time (1935 AMZ; 1947), and Jack WILLIAMSON, in his pioneering story of WAR between ALTERNATE WORLDS, THE LEGION OF TIME (1938 ASF; 1961). Timeslipping was similarly taken to extremes in Murray LEINSTER's "Sidewise in Time" (1934), in which whole regions of the Earth's surface slip into anachronistic conjunction - an idea later redeployed by Fred HOYLE in October the First is Too Late (1966). Individuals and objects timeslipped from the future cause havoc in the present in a number of famous sf stories, including "The Twonky" (1942) and "Mimsy Were the Borogoves" (1943) by Lewis Padgett (Henry KUTTNER and C.L. MOORE), "Child's Play" (1947) by William TENN and "The Little Black Bag" (1950) by C.M. KORNBLUTH. These stories appeared during the period when the elementary plot-possibilities of time paradoxes were also being comprehensively explored. The cavalier use made of time travel by the early genre writers did beg certain important questions; the language problem which would be faced by time-travellers was overlooked until De Camp pointed it out in "The Isolinguals" (1937) and his essay "Language for Time Travelers" (1938), and was frequently ignored thereafter, although this too became a plot-gimmick in the 1940s, in such stories as "Barrier" (1942) by Anthony BOUCHER. Other sharp idea-twisting stories of the period include C.L. Moore's "Vintage Season" (1946) as by Lawrence O'Donnell, in which future time-tourists are drawn to our NEAR FUTURE for reasons which ultimately become clear, and T.L. SHERRED's "E for Effort" (1947), which sets out with compelling logic the reasons why the invention of a time-viewer would bring about the END OF THE WORLD.The capacity of time travel to generate fresh plot-twists capable of sustaining stories on their own inevitably declined in the 1950s, by when all kinds of time travel had been routinized into part of the standard vocabulary of sf ideas; this was the heyday of the "time police" story, in which vast manifolds of ALTERNATE WORLDS were routinely patrolled by cunning secret agents or historical conservationists. The 1960s, however, brought a new sophistication to treatments of now-classic themes and a new thoughtfulness to metaphysically inclined stories, particularly but by no means exclusively in connection with the UK NEW WAVE. J.G. BALLARD's fascination with time is reflected in many of his early stories, including "The Voices of Time" (1960), "Chronopolis" (1960), "The Garden of Time" (1962) and THE CRYSTAL WORLD (1966). The timeslip story was remarkably refined by Brian W. ALDISS in "Man in his Time" (1965), which features a very slight but distressing slip, and Aldiss also wrote the best of several "reversed time" stories, An Age (1967; vt Cryptozoic! US and later UK edns); others are Philip K. DICK's Counter-Clock World (1967) and Martin AMIS's Time's Arrow (1991). A psychological timeslip story underpinned by split-brain research, then very fashionable, is Colin WILSON's "Timeslip" (1979). The linguistic problems of time-travellers were thrown into sharper focus by David I. MASSON's "A Two-Timer" (1966). The Age of the Dinosaurs gave way to the Crucifixion as a key focus of interest, as in Michael MOORCOCK's BEHOLD THE MAN (1966 NW; exp 1969) and Brian EARNSHAW's Planet in the Eye of Time (1968). Theodore L. THOMAS's "The Doctor" (1967) cynically re-examines the potential available to the time-traveller to operate as an apostle of progress. This kind of narrative sophistication of idea-twists extended into the 1970s in such stories as Robert SILVERBERG's "What We Learned from this Morning's Newspaper" (1972), James TIPTREE Jr's "The Man who Walked Home" (1972), Garry KILWORTH's "Let's Go to Golgotha" (1975) and Ian WATSON's "The Very Slow Time Machine" (1978).The metaphysics of time continues to intrigue writers inside and outside the genre; notable recent works deploying ideas of this kind include Chronolysis (trans 1980) by Michel Jeury (1934- ) and When Time Winds Blow (1982) by Robert P. HOLDSTOCK. The oppressions of determinism are bewailed in Kurt VONNEGUT Jr's Slaughterhouse 5 (1979). Action-adventure stories involving time travel have, inevitably, continued to reach new extremes of narrative extravagance, but at the same time have shown an increasing willingness to become involved with the intimate details of real history, and hence with its presumed dynamics. Such works as David LAKE's The Man who Loved Morlocks (1981), Connie WILLIS's "Fire Watch" (1982) and DOOMSDAY BOOK (1992), Michael BISHOP's NO ENEMY BUT TIME (1982), David DVORKIN's Time for Sherlock Holmes (1983), Tim POWERS's THE ANUBIS GATES (1983), Howard WALDROP's Them Bones (1984), Jack L. CHALKER's Downtiming the Nightside (1985) and Vernor VINGE's Marooned in Realtime (1986) combine playfulness and seriousness in an artful fashion which is squarely in the tradition of THE TIME MACHINE. Even such frank melodramas as DR WHO and Julian MAY's series begun with The Many-Colored Land (1981), and such knockabout comedies as Ron GOULART's The Panchronicon Plot (1977) and Simon Hawke's (Nicholas Yermakov's) Timewars series, begun with The Ivanhoe Gambit (1984), have implications which are not simply left to languish as throwaway ideas.A variant of the time-travel story which requires brief mention is the time-distortion story, pioneered by Wells in "The New Accelerator" (1901), which is about a device that "speeds up" time for its users and makes the world seem almost to freeze; a similar hypothesis is explored in Arthur C. CLARKE's "All the Time in the World" (1952). A device with a contrary effect is deployed in John GLOAG's Slow (1954), and ALIENS for whom time moves exceedingly slowly are featured in Eric Frank RUSSELL's "The Waitabits" (1955). More sophisticated stories of subjective time-distortion include Masson's "Traveller's Rest" (1965) and Eric BROWN's "The Time-Lapsed Man" (1988), and more extravagant distortions are featured in Dick's Ubik (1969) and Gordon R. DICKSON's Time Storm (1977).However paradoxical it may be, time travel will remain a central element in the sf tradition, and the time machine - whether modelled on the bicycle, the cummerbund or the police telephone box - will doubtless retain its status as the ultimate literary-device-made-machine. An interesting book on the subject is Time Travel in Physics, Metaphysics, and Science Fiction(1993 by Paul J. Nahin. [MJE/BS] TIME TRAVELERS Made-for-tv film (1976). Irwin ALLEN. TIME TRAVELERS, THE Film (1964). Dobil/AIP. Dir Ib Melchior, starring Preston Foster, Philip Carey, Merry Anders, John Hoyt. Screenplay Melchior, from a story by Melchior and David Hewitt. 85 mins. Colour.Melchior is best known as a screenwriter - e.g., ROBINSON CRUSOE ON MARS (1964), TERRORE NELLO SPAZIO (1965) and DEATH RACE 2000 (1975). This is one of his few films as director. A group of scientists travel through a time portal 107 years into the future, where they find a world a little like an updated version of that in H.G. WELLS's The Time Machine (1895) - indeed, the film was conceived as a sequel to the film The TIME MACHINE (1960). After the HOLOCAUST a human society living underground battles against MUTANTS on the surface, while using their ANDROID associates to help them build a spaceship for their escape from Earth. This uneven but vigorous film is inventive ( MATTER TRANSMISSION, hydroponics, all sorts of incidental sf tropes), not least in the final trapping of the scientists in a deterministic time loop, unable to influence events. David Hewitt's special effects are sometimes good (nicely displeasing androids), but it is unclear why he went on to direct the unnecessary remake, JOURNEY TO THE CENTER OF TIME (1967), only 3 years later. Irwin ALLEN was clearly influenced by TTT to make the tv series The TIME TUNNEL (1966-7). [PN] TIME-TRAVELLER, THE Forrest J. ACKERMAN; FANTASY MAGAZINE; FANZINES;Julius SCHWARTZ. TIME TRAX US tv series (1993- ). Gary Nardino Productions in association with Lorimar Television. Created by/Co-exec prod Harve Bennett, Jeffrey Hayes, Grant Rosenberg. Exec prod Gary Nardino. Starring Dale Midkiff , Elizabeth Alexander, Mia Sara. Writers include Bennett, Harold Gast, David Loughery. Two-hour pilot Jan 1993, written by Bennett,directed by Lewis Teague. Series proper, beginning in 1993, around 45 one-hour episodes to date.Harve Bennett is an almost legendary figure in sf tv production and writing, and fulfilled both those roles on THE INVISIBLE MAN (tv series 1975-76), THE BIONIC WOMAN (tv series 1976-8), GEMINI MAN (tv series 1976), THE SIX MILLION DOLLAR MAN (tv series 1973-78), amongothers, and also on most of the STAR TREK movies: his metier being the creation of populist,action-packed, comparatively routine sf adventure. TTis more of the same, and runs in syndication to independent tv stations. In the year 2192 police officer Captain Darien Lambert (Midkiff) finds that major criminals are disappearing, and discovers that megalomaniac physicist Dr Mordecai Sahmbi (Peter Donat) is sending criminals back in time to the 20th century, indeed to our present day. He follows them there.Apart from the time travel, and a few super-scientific accessories for Lambert (including Selma, a mainframe computer contained in something that looks like a credit card and can project a female hologram in visual mode, played by Elizabeth Alexander), most of the action is not especially science fictional, and is more concerned with running down criminals hiding out in our time. There is a degree of humour in Lambert's attempts to adjust culturally to 20th-century customs. Lambert has superpowers by our standards (IQ 204, runs the 100 metres in 8.6 secs, can use "time stalling" to slow down visual perception and thus react faster) butthese are not unusual, we are told, for the 22nd century.TT has been popular according to surveys with young men. The series is filmed in Australia, and some post-production is also Australian. [PN/GF] TIME TUNNEL, THE US tv series (1966-7). An Irwin Allen Production for 20th Century-Fox Television/ABC TV. Created Irwin ALLEN, also executive prod. Writers included William Welch, Wanda and Bob Duncan. Dirs included Allen (pilot only), Sobey Martin, J. Juran. 1 season. 30 50min episodes. Colour.Dr Tony Newman (James Darren) and Dr Doug Phillips (Robert Colbert) are trapped in time after testing a defective TIME MACHINE, which takes the form of a spiral vortex and is controlled by military personnel. Their military and civilian colleagues can see what is happening to them but are unable to return them to the present; efforts in this direction conveniently switch the travellers to a new time-period every week, usually 5 mins from the end of an episode, leaving them at a cliffhanger. Tony and Doug spend more time in the past than in the future, in such venues as the Alamo, the Little Big Horn, the Titanic, the walls of Jericho and Pearl Harbor, just as dangerous events are about to take place; thus a good deal of stock footage could be utilized. Rather more fantastic episodes featured Merlin and the vengeful ghost of Emperor Nero. Writing, performances and sets were dire. 2 novelizations are The Time Tunnel * (1967) and Timeslip! * (1967) by Murray LEINSTER. [JB] TIMLETT, PETER VALENTINE (1933- ) UK writer whose sf/fantasy Atlantis trilogy - The Seedbearers (1974), The Power of the Serpent (1976) and Twilight of the Serpent (1977) - deals in occasionally occult terms with ATLANTIS and its fall, moving subsequently to the founding of civilization in Britain, where Atlantean impulses might be preserved. [JC] TIMLIN, WILLIAM M(ITCHESON) (1892-1943) UK-born illustrator and writer, in South Africa from 1912. The Ship that Sailed to Mars (1923), his only fiction, is more fantasy than sf, though it does describe in glowing detail the fitting up of a SPACESHIP and its trip to MARS. But WMT's astonishingly evocative illustrations to the text - for which the original quarto edn of the book is now heavily collected - strongly underline the surreal nature of the tale. [JC] TINCROWDER, LEO QUEEQUEG [s] Philip Jose FARMER. TIPHAIGNE DE LA ROCHE, C(HARLES) F(RANCOIS) (1729-1774)French author of some works of fantasy and a PROTO-SCIENCE-FICTION work, Giphantie (1760; trans anon in 2 vols as Giphantia, or A View of What Has Passed, What is Now Passing, and During the Present Century, What Will Pass in the World 1761 UK). A traveller in Africa witnesses a prelapsarian world, a possibly farcical vision of world history as being governed by the effects of emblematical trees grown from the One Tree in Eden, and a HOLLOW EARTH via which the protagonist returns to Europe. [JC] TIPTREE, JAMES Jr Pseudonym of US writer and psychologist Alice Hastings Bradley Sheldon (1915-1987), who was widely assumed to be a man, despite the deeply felt rapport she displayed for women in stories like "The Women Men Don't See" (1973), until her identity was exposed in 1977; she also wrote several stories as Raccoona Sheldon. She was born in Chicago, spent much of her childhood in Africa and India and worked in the US Government for many years, including a period in the Pentagon; this much was known about JT, but was wrongly assumed to describe a masculine career. Her mother, Mary Hastings Bradley, was a well known geographer and travel author of 35 books; her father was a lawyer and traveller. After a short pre-WWII career as an artist and the later work whose details she shared with her pseudonym, she left the CIA in 1955 and attended college, acquiring a PhD in experimental psychology in 1967. She began writing as JT in 1967 - though she had, in fact, as Alice Bradley, published her first, non-sf, story, "The Lucky Ones" for The New Yorker, as early as 1946.Though she wrote some novels, JT will be best remembered for her many extraordinary sf stories. Her first efforts - she began with "Birth of a Salesman" for ASF in 1968 - were not, perhaps, very remarkable, showing some dis-ease and an intermittent tendency to protest too vehemently that she-the JT telling the tale - was just folks; but within a few years she shot into her prime, and between 1970 and about 1977 produced at great speed and with great concentration her finest work. Almost all of her best stories appeared in 4 collections - Ten Thousand Light-Years from Home (coll 1973; reset with fewer errors 1975 UK), Warm Worlds and Otherwise (coll 1975), Star Songs of an Old Primate (coll 1978) and Out of the Everywhere and Other Extraordinary Visions (coll 1981); a later, very thorough selection, HER SMOKE ROSE UP FOREVER: THE GREAT YEARS OF JAMES TIPTREE, JR. (coll 1990) ed James Turner, also concentrated on the work from this period. Byte Beautiful (coll 1986) assembled an odd mixture of early and late work. Crown of Stars (coll 1988) restricted itself almost exclusively to the stories JT wrote in a final splurge of creative energy in the mid-1980s. The Girl who was Plugged In (in New Dimensions 3 [anth 1973] ed Robert SILVERBERG; 1989 chap dos) - which won JT her first HUGO - and Houston, Houston, Do you Read? (in Aurora [anth 1977] ed Vonda MCINTYRE and Susan J. Anderson; 1989 chap dos) - which won a NEBULA and a Jupiter AWARD and shared a Hugo - were separate appearances of novellas from her prime. The Color of Neanderthal Eyes (1988 FSF; 1990 chap dos) is the only major late item not assembled in Crown of Stars.Several themes interpenetrate JT's best work - SEX, exogamy, identity, FEMINIST depictions of male/female relations, ECOLOGY, death - but the greatest of these is death. It is very rarely that a JT story does not both deal directly with death and end in a death of the spirit, or of all hope, or of the body, or of the race. "And I Awoke and Found Me Here on the Cold Hill's Side" (1971), for instance, seems initially to read as a straightforward rendering of the effects vastly superior ALIENS have upon Homo sapiens; only retroactively is it made clear, through the apt sexual and ANTHROPOLOGICAL analogies worked into the basic story, that these effects are utterly ravaging, that humans exposed to aliens become afflicted with a fatal cargo-cult mentality, bound into a sexual submission very like death. In "The Last Flight of Doctor Ain" (1969; rev 1974), only gradually do we begin to realize-through a reportage-like, impersonal reconstruction of certain events - that the woman whom Doctor Ain seems to be accompanying across a heavily polluted, wounded Earth is actually the Earth herself personified in the Doctor's mind; and that, as he passes around the globe, he is infecting mankind with a redesigned leukaemia virus, hoping - probably in vain - to save her, whom he loves, from the human species, which he does not. In what may be JT's finest and most intense longer story, "A Momentary Taste of Being" (1975), the human race, en route to the stars, discovers that its racial role is to act as gamete in a cosmic coupling, and that the drives that make us human are merely displacements of that central mindless imperative. It is one of the darkest GENRE-SF stories ever printed. In shorter compass, it is matched by others, like "On the Last Afternoon" (1972), "Love is the Plan the Plan is Death" (1973) - which won a Nebula - "The Screwfly Solution" (1977) and "Your Faces, O my Sisters! Your Faces Filled of Light!" (1977), both originally as by Raccoona Sheldon, and "Slow Music" (1980).JT's most famous single story, "The Women Men Don't See", may appear to escape this pattern, as only the male narrator seems bound to a quietus, while the two women he travels with - but fails, symptomatically, to comprehend - seem bound starwards into a new life. But the ironies of the tale are very evident, and characteristic of JT's inconsolable complexities of vision. It may be true that the ageing and surprisingly sympathetic narrator may represent a suicidal blindness on the part of humanity; but the women who choose to leave are, in fact-by electing to become companions of utterly unknown aliens in the depths of space - also expressing the power of thanatos upon our species. JT's surface was often airy and at times hilarious, and her control of genre conventions allowed her to convey the bleakness of her abiding insights in tales that remain seductively readable; but she was, in the end, incapable of dissimulation.There were 2 novels and 2 collections of linked stories. In Up the Walls of the World (1978), apparently written around the time her health began to break, she deliberately broadened her techniques in the fabrication of an extraordinarily full-blown SPACE OPERA whose 3 venues - the interior "spaces" of a vast interstellar being derangedly destroying all suns in its path; an alien planet inhabited by skatelike telepathic flying beings whose sun is being destroyed; and contemporary Earth, where a government-funded experiment in ESP begins terrifyingly to cash out-interpenetrate complexly and with considerable narrative impact. From telepathy to COSMOLOGY, from densely conceived psychological narrative to the broadest of SENSE-OF-WONDER revelations, the novel is something of a tour de force. But stresses - particularly a sense that the whole structure was willed into existence - do show; and BRIGHTNESS FALLS FROM THE AIR (1985) demonstrates how difficult it had become for her to maintain control over the intensities of her vision, which had, if anything, darkened as the 1980s began. In this novel an assortment of characters variously confront, on a distant planet, the fact that death agonies felt by another species generate a literal nectar for our own; but moments of overt sentimentality, as well as excesses of subplotting, tend to intrude. The Starry Rift (coll of linked stories 1986) assembled loose, somewhat sententious tales set in the same universe; and Tales of the Quintana Roo (coll of linked stories 1986) gathered a mild sequence of visions of the eastern coast of southern Mexico.Like the novels, the short fiction of JT's last years, though substantial by the standards of other writers, suffered from an increasing incapacity of narrative voice and structure to contain emotion. The best of them are perhaps "Yanqui Doodle" (1987) and "Backward, Turn Backward" (1988). Alice Sheldon had been married to Huntington Sheldon since 1945. In the early 1980s he contracted Alzheimer's Disease. In 1987, herself in precarious health, she shot him and killed herself.About the author: The Fiction of James Tiptree, Jr. (1977 chap) by Gardner DOZOIS; James Tiptree, Jr., a Lady of Letters: A Working Bibliography (1989 chap) by Gordon BENSON Jr and Phil STEPHENSEN-PAYNE.See also: ASTEROIDS; ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION; BIOLOGY; CYBERPUNK; ENTROPY; GODS AND DEMONS; HOLOCAUST AND AFTER; The MAGAZINE OF FANTASY AND SCIENCE FICTION ; MEDIA LANDSCAPE; MYTHOLOGY; OPTIMISM AND PESSIMISM; PERCEPTION; PSYCHOLOGY; SATIRE; SCIENTIFIC ERRORS; TIME TRAVEL; WOMEN SF WRITERS. TITAN, EARL John Russell FEARN. TODD, RUTHVEN (1914-1978) UK writer and Blake scholar whose Tracks in the Snow: Studies in English Science and Art (1946) effectively argued the imaginative power - when joined - of the two subtitled categories; he was author, as R.T. Campbell, of several detective novels, and as RT of two metaphysical tales: Over the Mountain (1939), whose quest plot is consanguineous with a search for political self-understanding, and the surrealist The Lost Traveller (1943), in which the protagonist, lost in a strange country, finds himself questing for a great bird which, at the final moment, he himself becomes. In his introduction to the 1968 reprinting of the latter, RT recognized influences from Rex WARNER to Wyndham LEWIS. [JC]Other works: The Space Cats series of juvenile sf novels, Space Cat (1952 chap US), Space Cat Visits Venus (1955 chap US), Space Cat Meets Mars (1957 chap US) and Space Cat and the Kittens (1958 chap US).See also: DYSTOPIAS; FANTASTIC VOYAGES. TODOROV, TZVETAN (1939- ) Bulgarian literary critic who pursued his postgraduate studies in Paris under the direction of the semiotic philosopher Roland Barthes (1915-1980). Among TT's several books and essays on structuralist criticism, all written in French, Introduction a la litterature fantastique (1970; trans Richard Howard as The Fantastic: A Structural Approach to Literary Genre 1973; US paperback 1975 with intro by Robert SCHOLES) has relevance to the student of sf, along with Scholes's own Structural Fabulation (1975). (Structuralism has been important in sf criticism, influencing critics as otherwise diverse as Samuel R. DELANY, Mark ROSE and Darko SUVIN.) An interesting controversy about TT's book arose in SCIENCE-FICTION STUDIES, the Fall 1974 and July 1975 issues containing an attack on TT's work by Stanislaw LEM and further debate. Also relevant is "Historical Genres/Theoretical Genres: A Discussion of Todorov on the Fantastic" by Christine BROOKE-ROSE in New Literary History, Autumn 1976. TT's definition of "the fantastic" is much more exclusive than most ( DEFINITIONS OF SF; FANTASY); he devotes only a half-page to sf. [PN]See also: CRITICAL AND HISTORICAL WORKS ABOUT SF. TOFFLER, ALVIN (1928- ) US journalist and author, best known for his speculative nonfiction on SOCIOLOGY and FUTUROLOGY. Future Shock (1970) documents the increasing rate of change in the 20th century, and speculates on the psychological trauma this may be causing Western civilization. It has had a great influence in futurology generally, and quite directly on many sf writers, notably John BRUNNER, whose THE SHOCKWAVE RIDER (1975) pays homage to AT in its title. The Eco-Spasm Report (1975), a much shorter work which produces 3 plausible scenarios for NEAR-FUTURE disaster, at points approaches the narrative strategies of some sf. The Third Wave (1980) is a more utopian (and in some ways LIBERTARIAN) book, whose Third Wave of history (which AT hopes is arriving) will emphasize diversity, decentralization, individualism and new social structures. AT's style is populist, and he has been read by some as simply promoting techno-fixes for the things that are going wrong in the world, but this is to underestimate the complexity of his argument. [PN]Other works: The Futurists (anth 1972), ed; Learning for Tomorrow (anth 1973), ed.See also: DEFINITIONS OF SF; DYSTOPIAS. TOFTE, ARTHUR R. (1902-1980) US writer who enjoyed two widely separated careers as a published author, the first beginning with his first story, "The Meteor Monsters" for AMZ in 1938, when as a member of the Milwaukee Fictioneers - which was focused on the memory and example of Stanley G. WEINBAUM - he was briefly interested in sf. Between 1938 and his retirement in 1969 he was a business executive. In the 1970s, encouraged by Roger ELWOOD, he began publishing stories again. Crash Landing on Iduna (1975 Canada) and Walls Within Walls (1975 Canada), a post- HOLOCAUST tale with MUTANTS in conflict, are unremarkable but mildly spirited. The Day the Earth Stood Still (1976) and Survival Planet (1977) are juveniles. The Ghost Hunters (dated 1978 but 1979) is an occult tale. [JC] TOLKIEN, J(OHN) R(ONALD) R(EUEL) (1892-1973) South-African-born UK writer and philologist who specialized in early forms of English; his academic career was crowned by his appointment as Merton Professor of English at Oxford University in 1945, a post he held until his retirement in 1959. It was at Oxford, before WWII, that he formed a close literary association with Owen BARFIELD, C.S. LEWIS and Charles WILLIAMS, a group which came to be known as The Inklings. It was at their regular meetings that much of their fiction received a first hearing, including draft portions of a long High Fantasy epic by JRRT which put into definitive fictional form his concept of the Secondary World, as embodied in the creation of Middle-Earth, the intensely imagined land- or world-scape in which the central action of all his work takes place. No reasonable definition of sf would encompass the works of JRRT; but this concept and its embodiment in the Lord of the Rings trilogy have had enormous influence on both sf and fantasy.Although Secondary Worlds, "inside which the green sun will be credible", long predate JRRT, it was "On Fairy Tales" - a 1939 lecture he expanded for Essays Presented to Charles Williams (anth 1947) ed anon C.S. Lewis, and further exp for its appearance in Tree and Leaf (coll 1964; rev 1988) - that first gave legitimacy to the internally coherent and autonomous land of Faerie as part of the geography of the human imagination. For the sf and fantasy writers who followed, and who found in the Lord of the Rings trilogy a model for their own subcreations (his coinage for invented fantasy worlds), this affirmation of autonomy was of very great importance. No longer did fantasy writers feel any lingering need to "normalize" their Secondary Worlds by framing them as traveller's tales, dreams or timeslip adventures, or as beast-fables. For sf writers, especially practitioners of the PLANETARY-ROMANCE, the example of JRRT was equally liberating - though it must be emphasized that Middle-Earth is not in fact a world in any sf sense but an autonomous landscape, and pure High Fantasy.JRRT's profound interest in philology permeated his work from its beginnings, which, as the posthumous publication of a vast assemblage of drafts and fragments (see below) has demonstrated, predated WWI. His first published tale of Middle-Earth, The Hobbit, or There and Back Again (1937; rev 1951; rev 1966), a Faerie-story for children, introduced its readers to an already achieved and named Secondary World, with a history and geography that had already long existed in its subcreator's mind; as The Hobbit, it was made into an animated film dir Arthur Rankin Jr in 1977. The tale of the hobbit, Bilbo, and of his quest through a portion of Middle-Earth to help some dwarves (JRRT's preferred spelling of "dwarfs") retrieve a treasure, gave JRRT the opportunity to reveal some of that history and geography. But it was not until the release of the Lord of the Rings - broken for publishing reasons into 3 vols, The Fellowship of the Ring (1954; rev 1966), The Two Towers (1954; rev 1966) and The Return of the King (1955; rev 1966), assembled as The Lord of the Rings (omni 1968) - that the full expanse of his world began to come clear. (The first portion of Lord of the Rings was made into an animated film in 1978; the expected conclusion failed to appear.)Middle-Earth is perhaps the most detailed of all invented fictional worlds, rivalled only by Austin Tappan WRIGHT's Islandia (1942), the published version of which (as in JRRT's case) represents only a portion of what was written; JRRT differed from Wright, however, in having a compelling story to tell. Some of the background material appeared in the form of appendices to the Lord of the Rings and in The Silmarillion (1977) ed Christopher Tolkien (JRRT's son); the latter comprises 5 interconnected texts on which JRRT had been working most of his life, and which supply an historical background for all his other work. Poems and songs belonging to the cycle are assembled as The Adventures of Tom Bombadil and Other Verses from the Red Book (coll 1962 chap) and The Road Goes Ever On: A Song Cycle (coll 1967) with music by Michael Swann. In Unfinished Tales of Numenor and Middle-Earth (coll 1980) Christopher Tolkien continued the long task of publishing his father's literary remains. The main sequence of these works, various volumes containing the History of Middle-Earth, all ed Christopher Tolkien, comprises The History of Middle-Earth #1: The Book of Lost Tales 1 (coll 1983), #2: The Book of Lost Tales 2 (coll 1984), #3: The Lays of Beleriand (coll 1985), #4: The Shaping of Middle-Earth (coll 1986), #5: The Lost Road and Other Writings (coll 1987), #6: The Return of the Shadow: The History of the Lord of the Rings l (coll 1988), #7: The Treason of Isengard: The History of the Lord of the Rings 2 (coll 1989), #8: The War of the Ring: The History of the Lord of the Rings 3 (coll 1990), #9: Sauron Defeated: The History of the Lord of the Rings 4 (coll 1992) and #10: Morgoth's Ring (1993).JRRT's influence on fantasy and sf has been not merely profound but also - with no discredit to JRRT himself - demeaning. Fortunately for readers of sf, the fairies and elves and orcs and cuddly dwarves and loquacious plants and bargain-counter Dark Lords and kings in disguise and singing barmen have been restricted in general to commercial market-driven FANTASY, caveat emptor; the main exception being hybrid productions like the STAR WARS films, which are filled with blurred and decadent copies of JRRT's own creations. It can only be hoped that the genuine JRRT will survive this assault, the JRRT for whom the heart of the enterprise of Faerie lay in "the desire of men to hold communion with other living things". [JC]Other works: Farmer Giles of Ham (1949 chap) and Smith of Wootton Major (1967 chap), assembled as Smith of Wootton Major and Farmer Giles of Ham (omni 1975 US); The Tolkien Reader (coll 1966); Bilbo's Last Song (1974 chap); The Father Christmas Letters (coll 1976 chap); Poems and Stories (coll 1980); Mr Bliss (1982 chap).Nonfiction: A Middle English Vocabulary (1924) is the earliest of a number of works of varying interest, including an edition of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (1925) with E.V. Gordon.About the author: Books about JRRT and his work are numerous. They include J.R.R. Tolkien: A Biography (1977) by Humphrey Carpenter, various atlases and concordances like A Guide to Middle Earth (1971) by Robert Foster and The Tolkien Companion (1976) by J.E.A. Tyler; and, among many other biographical/critical works, Tolkien and the Critics (anth 1968) ed Neil D. Isaacs and Rose A. Zimbardo, Tolkien: A Look Behind the Lord of the Rings (1969) by Lin CARTER, Master of Middle Earth (1972) by Paul H. Kocher, Tolkien's World (1974) by Randel Helms, J.R.R. Tolkien: Architect of Middle-Earth (1976) by Daniel Grotta-Kurska, The Mythology of Middle-Earth (1977) by Ruth S. Noel, The Inklings (1979) by Humphrey Carpenter and J.R.R. Tolkien: This Far Land (anth 1983) ed Robert Giddings. The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien (1981), ed Humphrey Carpenter with the assistance of Christopher Tolkien, is a revealing compilation.See also: CHILDREN'S SF; FANTASTIC VOYAGES; FANZINE; GAMES AND TOYS; HEROIC FANTASY; LINGUISTICS; MUSIC; SWORD AND SORCERY. TOLLIVER, STEVE [r] Ron ELLIK. TOLSTOY, ALEXEI (NIKOLAYEVICH) (1882-1945) Russian writer, sometimes mistakenly thought to have been a distant relative of Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910); he was not in fact a blood relative of the famous Tolstoy, though his mother's second husband was related, and gave AT his surname. Alexei Constantinovich Tolstoy (1817-1875), on the other hand, was part of the wideflung Tolstoy family; his supernatural fiction has been translated as Vampires: Stories of the Supernatural (coll trans Fedor Nikanov 1969 US). AT is best known for 2 books whose first versions appeared in the experimental 1920s and both of which were revised in the decade of terror which followed. Aelita (1922; rev 1937; 2nd text trans Lucy Flaxman 1957 USSR; new trans of 2nd text Antonina W. Bouis 1981 US; 1st text trans Leland Fetzer 1985 US) - the first version of the book being filmed as AELITA (1924) - was set on MARS, where a Red Army officer foments a rebellion of the native Martians (who are in fact long-ago emigrants from ATLANTIS) against a corrupt oligarchy. Giperboloid inzhenera Garina (1926; rev 1937; 1st text trans B.G. Guerney as The Death Box 1936 UK; 2nd text trans George Hanna as The Garin Death Ray 1955 USSR; Hanna trans cut vt Engineer Garin and his Death Ray 1987 USSR) feverishly describes an attempt on the part of the eponymous inventor - who is treated with some affection as a kind of force of Nature - to use his death ray to conquer the world. He manages to rule a decadently capitalist USA for a short period. At least in their original versions, both books showed a narrative gusto typical of their precarious period, in attractive contrast to AT's later, less ebullient work. [JC]See also: RUSSIA; WEAPONS. TOM CORBETT: SPACE CADET US tv series (1950-55). CBS TV, later ABC TV, and then NBC TV for season 5. Prod Mort Abrahams. Writers included Albert Aley, Alfred BESTER, Jack Weinstock. Dirs included George Gould, Ralph Ward. Starring Frankie Thomas, Jan Merlin, Al Markim, Michael Harvey. 5 seasons. 3 15min episodes weekly for first 4 seasons; weekly 30min episodes in season 5. B/w.This was one of the earliest US children's-sf tv serials ( CAPTAIN VIDEO was earlier, but TC:SC got into space first). Very loosely based on Robert A. HEINLEIN's Space Cadet (1948), it concerns teenaged Tom Corbett (Thomas), who is a cadet in the Solar Guards, an interplanetary police force in AD2350 that helps maintain the Solar Alliance of Earth, Mars and Venus. Later in the series the cadets leave the Solar System and go out into the Galaxy. The scientific adviser was Willy LEY. As with other sf serials of the early 1950s, the concept was on a grand scale but the visual effects were severely limited by budget and by the necessity to broadcast live: much had to be described in dialogue or merely suggested. Nevertheless, the show was hugely successful - it introduced the phrase "Blast off!" into popular speech - and was followed by comic strips, comic books, toys, etc., in one of the first examples of the merchandising power of televised sf. 8 Tom Corbett: Space Cadet hardcover books by Carey Rockwell (a pseudonym) were published 1952-6, beginning with Stand By For Mars! * (1952). [PN/JB] TOMORROW The FUTURIAN . TOMORROW I'LL WAKE UP AND SCALD MYSELF WITH TEA ZITRA VSTANU A OPARIM SE CAJEM. TOMORROW PEOPLE, THE UK tv series (1973-9). A Thames TV Production. Series conceived by Roger Price. Prod Ruth Boswell and Price (1973), Boswell alone (1974-5), Price alone (1976), Vic Hughes (1977-9). Technical adviser Dr Christopher Evans. Starring Nicholas Young, Peter Vaughan-Clarke, Sammie Winmill, Stephen Salmon, Elizabeth Adare, Mike Holoway. Written mostly Price. Dirs included Brian Finch, Price, Hughes. 8 seasons (2 in 1978); 68 25min episodes. Colour.TTP, incorporating many childhood wish-fulfilment fantasies, concerns a group of MUTANT children-Homo superior - with PSI POWERS. They band together for self-protection, occasionally conscripting other child mutants. They can teleport themselves, the term they use (taken unacknowledged from Alfred BESTER) being "jaunting". They are free of parental control and live in a secret, underground base protected by a smooth-voiced supercomputer. Most of the stories, each lasting on average 4 episodes, involve either TIME TRAVEL or encounters with evil beings from outer space. As with most UK tv series made for children, the budget was limited, but within that constraint the sets and special effects were adequate. Probably intended as commercial tv's answer to the BBC's DR WHO, TTP was not in that league. Novelizations, all by Roger Price (1941- ), were The Visitor * (1973) with Julian R. Gregory, Three in Three * (1974), Four into Three * (1975), One Law * (1976) and The Lost Gods, with Hitler's Last Secret and The Thargon Menace * (coll 1979).Beginning in Nov 1992 a tv miniseries of five 23-min episodes entitled The New Tomorrow People was broadcast in the UK (ITV), starring Kristian Schmid and Christian Tessier. This was entirely written by Roger Price, who had written and conceived the first series twenty years earlier. More of a remake of the first series than a continuation, it made no reference to the first series' chronology. This time the kids are not just British: there was one from England, two from America and one from Australia. [JB/PN/GF] TOMORROW: SPECULATIVE FICTION US SEMIPROZINE. #1 launched in Sep 1992, but marked on cover as Jan 1993; bimonthly; by Apr 1995 had reached #14; small- BEDSHEET format; began with 68pp, went up to 82 pp; color covers, internal art b/w; published and edited by Algis BUDRYS from Illinois.This magazine was originally to have been published by PULPHOUSE PUBLISHING, but was sold to Budrys, who had resigned in 1991 from the L. RON HUBBARD PRESENTS WRITERS OF THE FUTURE programme, and his position as co-ordinating judge of the WRITERS OF THE FUTURE CONTEST (though he continued to serve as an advisor). The magazine is mostly fiction (at least once by Budrys writing as Paul Janvier), with a column on writing by Budrys the main non-fiction element. The quality of the fiction has been quite good, writers including Harlan ELLISON, Geoffrey A. Landis, Ursula K. LE GUIN, Robert REED, Elisabeth VONARBURG, Gene WOLFE and a number of newer writers like Mike Christie, Eliot Fintushel, Donna McMahon and Brooks Peck. The magazine is classified as a semiprozine because the (low) circulation is only around 3,000, though the fiction is in the main fully professional. Some readers feel the fiction tends to lack distinctive voices in the sense of many of them being low key. Clearly there are distribution problems: the magazine is not especially well designed visually, and is unlikely to stand out on newsstands. [PN] TOM SWIFT Hero of a JUVENILE SERIES of scientific-invention novels produced by the STRATEMEYER Syndicate, constituting a central example of the importance and persistence of the EDISONADE in boys' fiction, and written under the house name Victor APPLETON, most being the work of Howard R. GARIS. TS was the most commercially successful and is still the best remembered of all the boys' sf series of the period. During 1910-38, beginning with Tom Swift and His Motor-Cycle (1910), 38 titles appeared, all but the last 3 by Garis, and featuring such inventions as the "photo telephone" and the "ocean airport", the technical difficulties of utilizing which were emphasized. These stories created a potential readership for Hugo GERNSBACK's magazines. The TS books were written in what was, even for the time, stilted prose. Between 1954 and 1971, beginning with Tom Swift and His Flying Lab (1954) as by Victor Appleton II, a 2nd TS series appeared, this time featuring Tom Swift Jr, its 33 titles being released at a rate of about 2 per year; at first it was enormously successful, possibly giving rise to the 1960s popularity of the Tom Swiftie ("I think we can get there in time, said Tom swiftly"). The authors behind the new house name are not known. In 1981 a 3rd TS series, as by Victor Appleton, began with The City in the Stars (1981), continuing to #11, The Planet of Nightmares (1984), which was by Mike MCQUAY writing as Appleton; 2 of these titles have recently been ascribed to Neal BARRETT Jr. Most recently, in 1991, under the Byron PREISS packaging aegis, a 4th series began with Tom Swift #1: The Black Dragon (1991) by Bill MCCAY writing as Appleton; further titles include novels by G. Gwynplaine MACINTYRE and 2 by the team of Debra DOYLE and James D. MACDONALD. [JE/PN/JC]Further reading:"Tom Swift and the Syndicate" in Strange Horizons: The Spectrum of Science Fiction (1976) by Sam MOSKOWITZ; Science-Fiction: The Early Years (1991) by Everett F. BLEILER. TONG ENZHENG [r] CHINESE SF. TONKS, ANGELA (? - ) UK writer, resident in the USA, whose Mind Out of Time (1958 UK) deals with a telepathic relationship ( ESP). [JC] TOOKER, RICHARD (PRESLEY) (1902-1988) US writer and publisher who wrote also as Dick Presley Tooker; his first sf story, under that name, was "Planet Paradise" for Weird Tales in 1924. He is best remembered for The Day of the Brown Horde (1929), in which cavemen fight one another and the last of the plesiosaurs, and which deals, like most of the prehistoric-sf subgenre, with the onset of human consciousness ( ORIGIN OF MAN). The Dawn Boy (1932), a juvenile, revisits a similar venue. Inland Deep (1936) rather more imaginatively features man-frogs and other odd creatures in an underground LOST WORLD. It is reported that from about 1940 RT was a ghost-writer. [JC] TOOMBS, ALFRED (GERALD) (1912-1986) US writer. In Good as Gold (1955) the transmutation of the metal produces what might be called manure. [JC] TOOMBS, ROBERT [r] DIME-NOVEL SF. TOOMEY, ROBERT E. Jr (1945- ) US writer who began publishing sf stories with "Pejorative" for NW in 1969. His A World of Trouble (1973), sets a galactic agent on an alien planet, where he has many jocosely told adventures. [JC] TOOMORROW Film (1970). Sweet Music/Lowndes Productions/United Artists. Written/dir Val Guest, starring Olivia Newton-John, Benny Thomas, Vic Cooper, Karl Chambers, Roy Dotrice. 95 mins. Colour.This is an unsuccessful attempt by producer Harry Saltzman, best known for the James Bond films, to mix pop MUSIC with sf. An embarrassingly made-to-order pop group is kidnapped by aliens from outer space (who have detected their vibrations) and taken to their planet for the purpose of creating music. The film was an artistic and financial failure. [JB] TOPS IN SCIENCE FICTION US reprint magazine. 2 issues, Spring 1953 ( PULP-MAGAZINE size) and Fall 1953 ( DIGEST size). Published by Love Romances, Connecticut; ed Jack O'Sullivan (#1) and Malcolm Reiss (#2). TISF featured stories which had first appeared in PLANET STORIES. Contributors included such Planet regulars as Leigh BRACKETT and Ray BRADBURY. A UK edn, published by Top Fiction, had 3 digest-sized issues 1954-6. [FHP/MJE] TOR BOOKS US paperback publishing company-later moving into hardcover also - founded by Tom Doherty, then aged 44, in 1980, in conjunction with Richard Gallen; the first titles were published in 1981. Doherty had previously been in control of ACE BOOKS for 5 years. The first editor-in-chief was Harriet McDougal, and first head sf editor was Jim BAEN, who left in 1983 to form his own company in 1984. Beth MEACHAM became sf/fantasy editor in 1984, soon becoming editor-in-chief; David HARTWELLbecame consulting sf editor the same year. This put two of the most expert sf editors in the US in the same company. TB expanded rapidly, publishing only a few sf titles in 1981 but 137 in 1986, which made them one of the most important sf publishers. At the end of 1986 Doherty and his partners sold Tom Doherty Associates, Inc. to St Martin's Press, a move perhaps connected to the bankruptcy of Pinnacle (Tor's paperback distributor on a contract basis), and to Tor's rapid expansion which had left TB temporarily short of cash; but Doherty stayed on to run TB. In 1988, TB introduced Tor Doubles, similar to the old Ace Doubles ( DOS). Beth Meacham left in 1989, but continued (from Arizona) as an executive editor. The senior editor in charge of sf and fantasy then became Patrick Nielsen Hayden.By 1988 TB and St Martins together topped all US sf publishers in terms of number of titles published, 256; but TB found this too much, and dropped from 12 sf/fantasy/horror titles per month to 9. By 1990-91 TB was publishing fewer sf/fantasy books than BANTAM/ DOUBLEDAY/Dell and Putnam/Berkley/Ace, though during those years - and since - it has published more sf/fantasy hardcovers than any other firm in the English-speaking world. In 1991 TB dropped its separate horror list. Robert Gleason became editor-in-chief in 1991.TB have published many important sf authors, including Poul ANDERSON, Greg BEAR, Michael BISHOP, Orson Scott CARD, John KESSEL, Pat MURPHY, Mike RESNICK, Kim Stanley ROBINSON, Sheri S. TEPPER, Jack VANCE, Walter Jon WILLIAMS, Gene WOLFE and Jack WOMACK. Authors whose first novels have been published by TB include Tom MADDOX, Rebecca ORE and Richard Paul RUSSO. [PN] TORGESON, ROY (? -1991) US editor, noted mainly for the competent CHRYSALIS series of ORIGINAL ANTHOLOGIES: Chrysalis (anth 1977), #2 (anth 1978), #3 (anth 1978), #4 (anth 1979), #5 (anth 1979), #6 (anth 1980), #7 (anth 1980), #8 (anth 1980), #9 (anth 1981) and #10 (anth 1983). A second sequence ran for only 2 vols: Other Worlds 1 (anth 1979) and #2 (anth 1980). [JC] TORRO, PEL R.L. FANTHORPE. TOTAL RECALL Film (1990). Carolco. Dir Paul Verhoeven, starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, Rachel Ticotin, Sharon Stone, Michael Ironside, Ronny Cox. Screenplay Ronald Shusett, Dan O'Bannon, Gary Goldman, based on a story by Shusett, O'Bannon, Jon Povill, inspired by "We Can Remember It for You Wholesale" (1966) by Philip K. DICK. 113 mins, cut to 109 mins. Colour.At a purported $60,000,000 budget this was one of the most expensive films ever made (though TERMINATOR 2 [1991] would cost even more). Verhoeven, whose sf film debut was ROBOCOP (1987), is a deft, intelligent director good at tough action sequences, but with a strong liking for gratuitous violence which, for all its over-the-top comic-book harmlessness here, still has about it a faint whiff of sadism. Exported versions were mostly cut to the requirements of the relevant country's censorship code.Some of the strengths of Dick's original story remain in this tale of a man who, in attempting to purchase false memories of a trip to Mars, uncovers some real ones, and is pitchforked into a heady sequence of exotic adventures, leaving Earth and fighting with rebels against a power-crazed Martian establishment. False memories clash with true ones and, since both look the same on the screen, it is as difficult for the viewer as for the muscle-bound protagonist to tell illusion from reality. TR is entertaining, information-dense and packed with intriguing detail, but has most of the usual faults of big-budget sf sagas: too great a reliance on grotesque special effects (the bugging eyes of victims exposed to vacuum are merely absurd); with-one-bound-Jack-was-free plotting; and in this case a finale of protracted idiocy in which Mars's long-disappeared atmosphere is replaced through vents in a mountain in a matter of minutes. Ideas are "borrowed" eclectically from diverse sources: an air-machine from Edgar Rice BURROUGHS's A PRINCESS OF MARS (1917), disfigured MUTANTS from Roger CORMAN's The Haunted Palace (1963), a two-headed mutant from Walter M. MILLER's A CANTICLE FOR LEIBOWITZ (1960), archaic alien machinery from FORBIDDEN PLANET (1956), and so on. It would take a fresh and ignorant viewer to suspend his or her disbelief throughout the film: sf aficionados tend to giggle through the whole of the second half. [PN]See also: SCIENTIFIC ERRORS. TOTER SUCHT SEINER MORDER, EIN VENGEANCE. TOUSEY, FRANK [r] DIME-NOVEL SF; FRANK READE LIBRARY. TOUZALIN, ROBERT [s] Robert REED. TOVOLGYI, TITUSZ [r] HUNGARY. TOWERS, IVAR A Fictioneers Inc. house name (1940-42), used once by C.M. KORNBLUTH and Richard WILSON in Astonishing and once on an unattributed story in Super Science Stories. [PN] TOWLSON, IVAN [r] M.H. ZOOL. TOWNSEND, JOHN ROWE (1922- ) UK writer, principally for older children, beginning with Gumble's Yard (1961; vt Trouble in the Jungle 1969 US), not sf. In Noah's Castle (1975), set in a deeply depressed NEAR-FUTURE UK, a family attempts to find enough to eat but the world's decline is too precipitate, and their haven is destroyed. The Xanadu Manuscript (1977; vt The Visitors 1977 US) is a TIME-TRAVEL tale which makes it clear that visitors from the future can bring only grief. King Creature, Come (1980; vt The Creatures 1980 US), told from the viewpoint of two young representatives of the ALIENS now occupying Earth, carries them into the human Creatures' lives just as a revolt is fomented, which they join. A Foreign Affair (1982) is RURITANIAN, and The Fortunate Isles (1981 US) and The Persuading Stick (1987) are fantasies. A nonfiction study, Written for Children: An Outline of English Children's Literature (1965; rev 1974), is of interest.JRT was not the John Townsend responsible for the interplanetary series for children consisting of The Rocket-Ship Saboteurs (1959) and A Warning to Earth (1960). [JC] TOXIC AVENGER, THE Film (1984). HCH/Troma/Palan. Dir Michael Herz, Samuel Weil, starring Mark Torgl, Mitchell Cohen, Andree Maranda. Screenplay Joe Ritter, based on a story by Lloyd Kaufman. 100 mins, cut to 79 mins. Colour.After a cruel practical joke is played on him, a teenage nerd falls into a barrel of toxic waste in Tromaville, New Jersey, "Toxic Waste Capital of America". He mutates into the Toxic Avenger and is compelled to murder bad people very violently. This farrago, combining teenage tits-and-ass comedy with horror/splatter, typifies the way exploitation films of the 1980s regularly used sf tropes, in this case gaining a mild cult following. TTA's deliberate tastelessness is uninteresting because pointless. The sequel, partly set in Japan, dir Herz alone, is The Toxic Avenger: Part II (1989). [PN] TOXIC AVENGER PART II The TOXIC AVENGER . TOYNBEE, POLLY (1946- ) UK writer and investigative journalist; she is of the fourth generation of Toynbees to be involved in literature. Leftovers (1966) depicts with feeble verve the mixed destinies of a group of youths, survivors of a poisonous gas which has destroyed the rest of humanity. [JC] TRACTOR BEAM FORCE FIELD. TRACY, LOUIS (1863-1928) UK journalist and writer, a colleague of M.P. SHIEL, who (uncredited) assisted him with several detective novels, all published as by Gordon Holmes. LT is best remembered for The Final War (1896), the first of his several future- WAR novels, which is significant for the malign intensity of the SOCIAL DARWINISM it espouses on behalf of "the Saxon race". The Vansittart sequence - An American Emperor: The Story of the Fourth Estate of France (1897) with Shiel and The Lost Provinces (1898) - moves from the RURITANIAN shenanigans of the first vol, in which the American Vansittart romances a princess and becomes the emperor of France, into a future-war scenario in which, on behalf of France, he uses a fleet of armoured vehicles to defeat Germany. The Invaders: A Story of Britain's Peril (1901) less interestingly threatens the UK with a NEAR-FUTURE German invasion. 2 later novels endow their protagonists with PSI POWERS: in Karl Greier: The Strange Story of a Man with a Sixth Sense (1906; vt The Man with a Sixth Sense 1910) the power is that of reading minds and controlling others from a distance; in The Turning Point (1923 US) the hero embodies centuries-old family memories. [JC]Other works: The Wings of the Morning (1903 US), associational ROBINSONADE; The King of Diamonds (1904), featuring a diamond-filled meteorite; The House 'round the Corner (1914), a ghost story.See also: ESP; POLITICS. TRAIN, ARTHUR (CHENEY) (1875-1945) US writer and lawyer, best known for work outside the sf field, particularly his legal series about the lawyer Ephraim Tutt. Some of the stories assembled in Mortmain (coll 1907) verge on sf. In his first sf novel, The Man who Rocked the Earth (1915) with R.W. WOOD, the NEAR-FUTURE course of WWI is interrupted by messages from a mysterious PAX threatening superscientific punishments if war is not stopped. After some demonstrations, featuring rays, a flying ship and atomic energy, the nations obey. In the sequel, The Moon Maker (1916-17 Cosmopolitan; 1958 chap), also with Wood, the character who discovered the dead PAX in the previous book must now defend Earth against an approaching asteroid. He travels with a proto- FEMINIST mathematician; they marry. AT's quick skill as a popular novelist allowed him to fill out the speculations generated by his collaborator, a competent scientist; both novels thus avoid most of the absurdities that dogged the sf of the time. [JC] TRAIN, OSWALD (1915-1988) UK-born US fan ( FANDOM) from 1935, when he became involved in the nascent Philadelphia Science Fiction Society, also attending the 1st (highly informal) CONVENTION in 1936. A significant SMALL-PRESS publisher, he was the main figure behind PRIME PRESS. In 1968 he founded Oswald Train: Publisher, which specialized in detective fiction, although it also released work by Lloyd Arthur ESHBACH, A. MERRITT, P. Schuyler MILLER and Olaf STAPLEDON. [JC] TRALINS, S(ANDOR) ROBERT (1926- ) US writer, prolific in several genres under more than one name and author of various borderline-sf tales, often involving sex. They include: Dragon's Teeth (1973) as Keith Miles; the Valentine Flynn series - What a Way to Go! (1966), Operation Boudoir (1967), Win with Sin (1967), The Nymph Island Affair (1967) and Invasion of the Nymphomaniacs (1967) - all as Sean O'Shea; Pleasure Planet (1979) as Starr Trainor (a tentative identification); and, as SRT, the Miss from S.I.S. sequence - The Miss from S.I.S. (1966), The Chic Chick Spy (1966) and The Ring-A-Ding UFOs (1967) - Ghoul Lover (1972) and #3 in a Frankenstein sequence (other vols by various hands). Also as SRT he wrote 3 unremarkable genre novels, The Cosmozoids (1966), Android Armageddon (1974) and Signal Intruder (1991). [JC] TRANCERS (vt Future Cop) Film (1984). Lexyn/Empire. Prod/dir Charles BAND, starring Tim Thomerson, Helen Hunt, Michael Stefani. Screenplay Danny Bilson, Paul DeMeo. 76 mins. Colour.Band apparently learned from his early, mostly bad movies, for this small film is confident, stylish sf. Future cop Jack Deth (Thomerson) travels back from AD2247 to present-day Los Angeles in search of dangerous mystic Whistler (Stefani), who has fled back in time and now occupies the body of an ancestor. Protected by a number of zombie-like "trancers", Whistler plans to murder the ancestors of his future opposition. Although primarily an action movie, T is packed with sf ideas, and it has an interesting punk look about it. There are astonishing plot resemblances to The TERMINATOR , released in the same year.The sequel, Trancers 2: The Return of Jack Deth (1991, vt Future Cop 2), prod and dir Band, written by Band with Jackson Barr, again stars Thomerson and Hunt. Convolutions of TIME TRAVEL make Jack Deth, 6 years on, a bigamist, his original (dead) wife, played cutely by Megan Ward, being sent back (alive) to the present. Soap-opera elements are played out against further battles with trancers, who use a trendy ecological movement as a front. This returns us to the awfulness of Band's early films. Maybe T was a happy accident. Trancers 3: Deth Lives (1993, vt Future Cop 3), dir C. Courtney Joyner, carries Deth to an even further future than the one from which he originally came, and is a partial return to form. Trancers 4: Jack of Swords (1994), dir David Nutter, takes place in a medieval alternate world called Orpheus and was shot back to back in Romania with Trancers 5: Sudden Death (1995), dir David Nutter, which finishes the SWORD-AND-SORCERY story begun in the fourth film. These last two represent a sad falling off and are not really sf. All these sequels went straight to video. [PN] TRANSATLANTIC FAN FUND AWARDS. TRANS-ATLANTIC TUNNEL The TUNNEL . TRANSFORMERS - THE MOVIE, THE Film (1986). Sunbow/Marvel. Dir Nelson Shin. Voices by Orson Welles, Eric Idle et al. Screenplay Ron Friedman. Animation by Toei Animation. 86 mins. Colour.This US-produced, Japanese-animated film is a spin-off from the comic-book and tv series of the same name, and all are part of a gigantic marketing operation to sell Transformers: model robots (invented 1984) which, when twisted around a bit, change their shape from humanoid to (usually) cars or spaceships. Most such films are pure exercises in commercial cynicism ( MASTERS OF THE UNIVERSE [1987]) but TT - TM has a surreal vigour. In AD2005 Earth and other planets are largely populated by good transforming ROBOTS, the Autobots, who are perpetually at odds with bad transforming robots who look much the same, the Decepticons. Since names, voices and shapes are constantly changing, it is almost impossible to follow the story further. The aggressive animation - which unusually for a film is in the style of state-of-the-art COMIC-book illustration (in this case MARVEL-COMICS-derived) - keeps the whole thing swirling along. Welles's last starring role is, appropriately, as a megalomaniac planet. [PN] TRANSPORTATION Sf stories based on serious speculations about future means of transportation are greatly outnumbered by stories in which those means function as facilitating devices - i.e., as convenient ways of shifting characters into an alien environment. Inevitably, the same kinds of machines crop up in both categories of story because stories of the second kind borrow heavily from those of the first. SPACESHIPS have been employed by sf writers almost exclusively as a literary device; few stories deal speculatively with the real possibilities of interplanetary and interstellar transportation. Much fruitless argument has been wasted comparing the plausibility of machines designed for quite different literary functions. One such argument, of long standing, concerns the relative merits of the space-gun in Jules VERNE's From the Earth to the Moon (1865-70: trans 1873) and the ANTIGRAVITY device in H.G. WELLS's THE FIRST MEN IN THE MOON (1901), which tends to ignore the fact that only the former device aspires (unsuccessfully) to practicability.In FANTASTIC VOYAGES written before the mid-19th century virtually all modes of transport were facilitating devices. Today, the short-sightedness of the anonymous The Reign of George VI, 1900-1925 (1763), which is optimistic about the bright future of the canal barge, seems slightly absurd; but the author of the book lived in a world in which there had been no significant advance in motive power for 2000 years. John WILKINS, fascinated by ideas of novel means of transportation, had discussed submarines, flying machines and land-yachts at some length in Mathematicall Magick (1648), but even he touched only tentatively on the possibility of adapting new POWER SOURCES to the business of transport. This situation underwent a revolutionary change in the 19th century.The first practical steamboat, The Charlotte Dundas, was built in 1801, but it was not until the development of the screw propeller in 1840 for the Great Eastern, built by Isambard Kingdom Brunel (1806-1859), that the revolution in marine transport really began. Richard Trevithick (1771-1833) built the first practical steam locomotive in 1804, but only in 1825, with the opening of the Stockton-Darlington railway, did there begin the railroad revolution which very rapidly extended itself across Europe and the emergent USA. It is understandable that the speculative writers of the later 19th century should find the future of transportation one of their most inspiring themes. The revolution was continued with the development of the internal combustion engine, and entered a new phase in 1909, when Henry Ford (1863-1947) set his Model-T production line rolling. By then the first heavier-than-air flying machines were in operation, as were the first practicable submarines. Everything that has happened since in the world of transportation was within the imaginative sights of the writers of 1909: private motor cars for all; fast aeroplanes to carry passengers and freight; even spaceships (Konstantin TSIOLKOVSKY published "The Probing of Space by Means of Jet Devices" in 1903). The man whose literary work stands as the principal imaginative product of this era of revolution is Verne, whose first novel was Five Weeks in a Balloon (1863; trans "William Lackland" 1869 US). This was the period that made tourism possible, and Verne remains the archetypal tourist of the literary imagination. He was fascinated by the machines that made far travelling practical, and wrote a memoir of a real voyage on the Great Eastern:"A Floating City" (in coll 1871; trans 1874 UK). The submarine Nautilus is the real protagonist of Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea (1870; trans Lewis Mercier 1872 UK), just as the "aeronef" is of The Clipper of the Clouds (1886; trans 1887; vt Robur the Conqueror 1887 US). Around the World in 80 Days (1873: trans Geo. M. Towle 1874 US) inspired many imitators, literary and actual, but few of the literary ones had Verne's fascination with means: most of them invented marvellous devices simply to enable the characters to participate in exotic adventure stories whose plots were thoroughly routine - a kind of inventiveness ironically celebrated by such latter-day SCIENTIFIC ROMANCES as Michael MOORCOCK's The Warlord of the Air (1971) and its sequels, and Christopher PRIEST's The Space Machine (1976).Submarines and airships were most often invoked in futuristic fiction as carriers of WEAPONS and other materials of WAR. It quickly became obvious to military observers of the US Civil War in 1861-5 that observation balloons, ironclad ships and railroads would transform the tactics and logistics of warfare. Writers like George GRIFFITH took a particular delight in imagining the kind of battles which might be fought with airships and submarines, greatly assisted by the illustrator and occasional sf writer Fred T. JANE. Other illustrators, most notably Albert ROBIDA, likewise became entranced by flying machines. Wells's speculations about the future of transportation technology are mainly concerned with warfare-most spectacularly, the aerial battles in When the Sleeper Wakes (1899; rev vt The Sleeper Awakes 1910) and The War in the Air (1908). In The Shape of Things to Come (1933) he imagined the rebirth of a world devastated by wars under the aegis of a benevolent "Air Dictatorship", a notion anticipated by Rudyard KIPLING's stories of the Aerial Board of Control, With the Night Mail (1905; 1909 chap US) and "As Easy as ABC" (1912). Kipling's ideas were echoed in Michael ARLEN's Man's Mortality (1933), and the technological charisma of the aeroplane is evident also in Zodiak (trans Eric Sutton 1931 US) by Walther Eidlitz (1892-? ). This mystique carried over into the early sf PULP MAGAZINES: Hugo GERNSBACK founded AIR WONDER STORIES to deal exclusively with the future of flight. Pulp-sf writers interested in facilitating devices were soon ready to take extreme liberties. The FASTER-THAN-LIGHT starship had arrived before the end of the 1920s, as had the ultimate in personal transport, the antigravity-belt featured in the BUCK ROGERS stories by Philip Francis NOWLAN. MATTER TRANSMISSION soon became commonplace; and some interplanetary romances of the kind pioneered by Edgar Rice BURROUGHS simply ignored the whole issue, tacitly employing the most blatant facilitating device of all: TELEPORTATION. Such methods began to receive more detailed speculative evaluation in Jack WILLIAMSON's "The Cosmic Express" (1930), but not until Alfred BESTER's Tiger! Tiger! (1956 UK; rev vt The Stars My Destination US) was there a serious attempt to imagine a society which uses teleportation as a routine means of travel.Attempts to imagine the eventual social effects of the transportation revolution soon appeared in the pulps. In David H. KELLER's "The Revolt of the Pedestrians" (1928) a ruling elite of automobilists is overthrown by the underprivileged pedestrians. The social role of the motor car remained a significant theme in sf, with explorations ranging from satirical comedies like Clark Ashton SMITH's "The Great God Awto" (1940), Isaac ASIMOV's "Sally" (1953) and Robert F. YOUNG's "Romance in a 21st Century Used Car Lot" (1960) through blacker comedies like Fritz LEIBER's "X Marks the Pedwalk" (1963) and dourer analyses like Ray BRADBURY's The Pedestrian (1952 FSF; 1964 chap), H. Chandler ELLIOTT's "A Day on Death Highway" (1963) and John JAKES's surreal On Wheels (1973) to such extreme quasi-apocalyptic works as Ben ELTON's Gridlock (1991) and the poem Autogeddon (1991) by Heathcote Williams (1941- ). The car also features as a death-machine in macabre stories of future GAMES AND SPORTS, in such stories as Harlan ELLISON's "Dogfight on 101" (1969; vt "Along the Scenic Route") and the film DEATH RACE 2000 (1975). A classic early exercise in sf realism is Robert A. HEINLEIN's "The Roads Must Roll" (1940), which deals with the commuter chaos resulting from a strike by the engineers who maintain moving roadways. Other notable sf stories attempting to get to grips with the idea of social revolution brought about through transport deploy some kind of matter transmission in a quasi-symbolic fashion; notable stories in this vein include "Ticket to Anywhere" (1952) by Damon KNIGHT and "Granny Won't Knit" (1954) by Theodore STURGEON. Robert SILVERBERG's anthology Three Trips in Time and Space (anth 1973) contains novellas on the theme: Larry NIVEN's "Flash Crowd", Jack VANCE's "Rumfuddle" and John BRUNNER's "You'll Take the High Road". Niven later continued the theme in 4 further stories, and Brunner developed it in a novel, Web of Everywhere (1974).Early sf about transportation infrastructure is mostly concerned with tunnels. The Channel Tunnel often features in UK INVASION stories, while a transatlantic tunnel is the subject of Bernhard KELLERMANN's The Tunnel (1913; trans 1915) and the films based on it, Der TUNNEL (1933) and The TUNNEL (1935). The idea reappears in modern sf in Ray NELSON's "Turn Off the Sky" (1963) and is the theme of Harry HARRISON's ALTERNATE-WORLD satire Tunnel through the Deeps (1972 US; vt A Transatlantic Tunnel, Hurrah! 1972 UK). Early stories about artificial ISLANDS in the Atlantic to facilitate the refuelling of aeroplanes, such as Curt SIODMAK's F.P.1 Does Not Reply (trans 1933), filmed as F.P.1 ANTWORTET NICHT (1932), were soon out of date. The problems of laying railroad tracks on an alien world are featured in "The Railways up on Cannis" (1959) by Colin KAPP.There are numerous sf stories which involve improvised means of transport adapted to exotic situations. Jack VANCE is particularly ingenious in devising such inventions, although they rarely play a major part in his plots. Ice-yachts take centre stage in Moorcock's The Ice Schooner (1969) and Alan Dean FOSTER's Icerigger (1974), and ships which travel on unwatery media are also featured in David LAKE's Walkers on the Sky (1976), Bruce STERLING's Involution Ocean (1977) and Brian P. HERBERT's Sudanna, Sudanna (1985). The strangest vehicles ever devised are perhaps those in Robert Wilfred Franson's The Shadow of the Ship (1983), in which trails through airless "subspace" link primitive planets, and can be used only by starships that are effectively sleds drawn by vast animals; among the largest are the spacefaring CITIES of James BLISH's CITIES IN FLIGHT series (omni 1970) and the much more laborious moving city in Priest's The Inverted World (1974). An abundance of technical detail supports Hilbert SCHENCK's memorable account of the circumnavigation of the globe by a steam-powered aeroplane in Steam Bird (1984; title story of coll 1988). In spite of such bold adventures, it cannot really be said that sf has been particularly adept in the invention of new means of transportation that have subsequently proved practicable, aside from a number of devices concerned with space technology - including, of course, space ROCKETS. Arthur C. CLARKE has proved particularly expert in this regard, and there remain several imaginative devices used in his stories which may one day be actualized, including the lunar transport in A Fall of Moondust (1961) and the spacefaring SOLAR-WIND-powered yachts of "Sunjammer" (1965), the latter developing a notion first put forward in 1921 by Konstantin TSIOLKOVSKY. Clarke's THE FOUNTAINS OF PARADISE (1979) and Charles SHEFFIELD's The Web Between the Worlds (1979) both deploy "space elevators" connecting the Earth's surface to orbital stations - a wonderful idea whose practical limitations are, alas, mercilessly exposed in Sheffield's own article "How to Build a Beanstalk" (1979). [BS]See also: COMMUNICATIONS; UNDER THE SEA. TRAPROCK, WALTER E. Pseudonym of US writer George Shepard Chappell (1877-1946) for a series of sf tales spoofing the geographical romances popular just after WWI. In The Cruise of the Kawa: Wanderings in the South Seas (1921) a new Polynesia is discovered featuring birds which lay dice. Through the Alimentary Canal with Gun and Camera: A Fascinating Trip to the Interior (1930) takes Dr Traprock through a human digestive system. [JC]Other works: Sarah of the Sahara: A Romance of Nomads Land (1923); My Northern Exposure: The Kawa at the North Pole (1925); Dr Traprock's Memory Book, or Aged in Wood (1930). TREASURY OF GREAT SCIENCE FICTION STORIES US annual reprint magazine, PULP-MAGAZINE size. 8 issues 1964-71, published by Popular Library; ed Jim Hendryx Jr for #1-#3, then Helen Tono for the next 4, then Anne Keffer for the last. A follow-up of Hendryx's WONDER STORIES of 1957 and 1963, this was retitled as Great Science Fiction Stories (#3), SF Yearbook: A Treasury of Science Fiction (#4) and then Science Fiction Yearbook. The stories were from STARTLING STORIES and THRILLING WONDER STORIES. It is possible to consider the last 5 issues as a separate magazine, as the "Yearbook" title now stressed annual publication, the editor changed, and the numeration began again from #1. Although all 8 issues were in magazine format, there were no editorial departments, and they could equally be regarded as annual anthologies. [FHP] TREBOR, ROBERT (? - ) US writer, almost certainly pseudonymous (his surname is Robert spelled backwards), whose sf novel is the unremarkable An XT Called Stanley (1983). [JC] TRECHERA, RAFAEL MARIN [r] SPAIN. TREIBICH, S(TEVEN) J(OHN) (1936-1972) US writer, co-author with Laurence M. JANIFER of the Angelo di Stefano series: Target: Terra (1968), The High Hex (1969) and The Wagered World (1969). [BS] TREMAINE, F(REDERICK) ORLIN (1899-1956) US editor and writer; his first story was "The Throwback" for Weird Tales in 1926 as by Orlin Frederick. Already experienced in PULP-MAGAZINE publishing-he had ed various magazines from 1921 onward, including Bernarr MACFADDEN's Brain Power 1921-4 and True Story in 1924 - FOT assumed the editorship of Astounding Stories ( ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION) in Oct 1933, after it had been taken over by STREET & SMITH; curiously, although he had been working for ASF's previous publishers, Clayton Magazines, FOT seems to have had no connection with the magazine prior to becoming its editor. He produced 50 issues of ASF, initially with the assistance of Desmond W. HALL, and under his editorship it became unquestionably the pre-eminent sf magazine of its day, featuring all the leading writers of the period and publishing the first stories of such writers as L. Sprague DE CAMP and Eric Frank RUSSELL. He soon instituted a policy of featuring in each issue at least 1 story described as a "thought variant" - i.e., a tale which presented a new concept, or a new gloss on a familiar idea. As an attention-attracting device this was an undoubted success, inspiring an imitation "new-story" policy in WONDER STORIES. When FOT became editorial director of a number of the Street & Smith magazines, he gave up the editorship of ASF, being followed in December 1937 by his personal choice for the job, John W. CAMPBELL Jr, whose stories as by Don A. Stuart FOT had been publishing for several years; the GOLDEN AGE OF SF was just around the corner. FOT's "thought-variant" notion can be seen as marking an important step in shifting magazine sf from its concentration on pulp adventure to the idea-led sf instituted by his successor.The next year FOT left the company to found his own publishing firm, Orlin Tremaine Co., producing and editing COMET STORIES, which lasted only 5 issues 1940-41. He wrote a number of stories under his own name, and at least 1 as Warner VAN LORNE. He worked in non-sf publishing enterprises in later years, before being forced into early retirement through ill health. [MJE]See also: ROBOTS; SF MAGAZINES. TREMAINE, NELSON [r] Warner VAN LORNE. TREMORS Film (1989). No Frills/Wilson-Maddock/Universal. Executive prod Gale Anne HURD. Dir Ron Underwood, starring Kevin Bacon, Fred Ward, Finn Carter. Screenplay S.S. Wilson, Brent Maddock from a story by Wilson, Maddock, Underwood. 96 mins. Colour.A thinly populated valley in the Nevada desert is ravaged by 4 monstrous subterranean worm creatures, apparently possessed of some intelligence, which are finally destroyed by the courage and wit of the handful of local residents, along with a woman seismologist, who survive the initial attacks. This unambitious, textbook MONSTER MOVIE is notable for good dialogue and ensemble acting and for its very convincing MONSTERS, usually seen in broad daylight: a triumph of the special-effects teams. However, the monsters are hardly convincing as sf: arbitrary and unexplained - and probably "pre-dating the fossil record" - they have no apparent food-source undergound to enable them to grow so big. They are very like the sandworms in Frank HERBERT's DUNE (1965) in appearance and in their sensitivity to vibration. [PN] TRENT, OLAF R.L. FANTHORPE. TREVARTHEN, HAL P. J.K. HEYDON. TREVENA, JOHN Ernest G. HENHAM. TREVOR, ELLESTON Initially the most famous pseudonym and latterly the legal name of the UK writer born Trevor Dudley-Smith (1920- ), who eventually became best known for his Quiller espionage tales as by Adam Hall, after an early career writing children's fantasies (see listing below), some under his original name. His first novel of genre interest, The Immortal Error (1946), a fantasy, tells of an accident survivor who wakes up with the wrong soul in residence. The Domesday Story (1952 as by Warwick Scott; vt Doomsday 1953 US as ET and 1972 US as Adam Hall) tells of fears that an H-bomb test in Australia will bring about the end of the world. Forbidden Kingdom (1955) is a children's LOST-WORLD story about a high-tech enclave in the Kalahari desert. The Pillars of Midnight (1957) depicts the effects of a devastating disease. The Mind of Max Duvine (1960) is about telepathy. The Shoot (1966) returns to weapons-testing, this time depicting the launching of a missile whose fuel is dangerously unstable. The Sibling (1979 US as Adam Hall; 1989 US as ET) is horror. Deathwatch (1984) is about the NEAR-FUTURE accidental creation of a fatal virus by GENETIC ENGINEERING and its subsequent use by rogue Soviet hardliners to cause a decimating plague in the West.Some of the Quiller tales, such as The Berlin Memorandum (1965; vt The Quiller Memorandum 1967) and The Theta Syndrome (1977), have TECHNOTHRILLER elements. A writer of almost excessive fluency, ET has made use of sf devices in passing, but never - it must be said - with much air of conviction. [JC]Other works: Children's fantasies, many with shared characters: Into the Happy Glade (1943) andBy a Silver Stream (1944), both as Trevor Dudley-Smith, followed by Green Glade (1959) as ET; the Wumpus sequence, comprising Wumpus (1945), More About Wumpus (1947) and Where's Wumpus? (1948); the Deep Wood sequence, comprising Deep Wood (1945), Heather Hill (1946), The Secret Travellers (1947), Badger's Beech (1948), which was also serialized on BBC radio, Ants' Castle (1949), 2 closely-linked tales - The Wizard of the Wood (1948) and Badger's Moon (1949) - themselves comprising a short sf subseries featuring space travel, Mole's Castle (1951), Sweethallow Valley (1951), Badger's Wood (1958) and Squirrel's Island (1963); Ants' Castle (1949); Secret Arena (1951); The Racing Wraith (1953) as Trevor Burgess; The Crystal City (1959), set a thousand fathoms beneath the surface of the ocean. TREVOR, (LUCY) MERIOL (1919- ) UK writer whose ALTERNATE-WORLD tales in the World Dionysius sequence - The Forest and the Kingdom * (1949), Hunt the King, Hide the Fox * (1950) and The Fires and the Stars * (1951) - convey a bright childlike nostalgia for a planet which in some regards resembles Earth but whose history is more satisfactory than ours. This angle of view may be accounted for by the fact that, with Margaret PRIESTLEY (whom see for her own contributions), MT had decades earlier created the World Dionysius as a childhood fantasy. The Other Side of the Moon (1956), an sf juvenile, and Merlin's Ring (1957), an Arthurian fantasy, are unconnected to the sequence. [JC] TRIAL OF THE INCREDIBLE HULK The INCREDIBLE HULK . TRIMBLE, JACQUELYN [r] Louis TRIMBLE. TRIMBLE, LOUIS (PRESTON) (1917-1988) US writer and academic, prolific in several genres including mysteries and Westerns - he wrote 66 novels by 1977 - but relatively little sf; his only sf short story was "Probability" for If in 1954. His sf novels came later, in a spurt, beginning with the Anthropol Bureau tales - Anthropol (1968 dos) and The Noblest Experiment in the Galaxy (1970 dos) - and climaxing with The City Machine (1972), set on a colony planet, where the device that constructs CITIES has been lost, forcing everyone into one overcrowded construct. LT clearly found sf venues of interest for the telling of tales - some of them surprisingly placid and landscape-oriented - and showed little concern for the exploration of the extrapolative implications that inspired the original invention of those venues. But he was extremely competent, and his entertainments mused profitably within the worlds of sf. [JC]Other works: Guardians of the Gate (1972) with his first wife, Jacquelyn Trimble (1927- ); The Wandering Variables (1972); The Bodelan Way (1974). TRINGHAM, NEAL [r] M.H. ZOOL. TRIP TO THE MOON, A Le VOYAGE DANS LA LUNE . TROG Film (1970). Herman Cohen Productions/Warner Bros. Dir Feddie Francis, starring Joan Crawford, Michael Gough, Bernard Kay, Joe Cornelius. Screenplay Aben Kandel, based on a story by John Gilling, Peter Bryan. 93 mins, cut to 91 mins. Colour.A troglodyte or caveman survival (Cornelius) is discovered in a cavern, and investigated by an anthropologist (Crawford, in her last performance). All the innocent-in-the-modern-world cliches ( Hyperlink to: APES AND CAVEMEN) feature as the bewildered creature runs amuck, but loyal Crawford stands by him. One scene shows electrodes taped to his head so that we can "see" his remarkably anachronistic prehistoric memories, actually old dinosaur clips from Irwin ALLEN's The Animal World (1956). This routine UK movie was parodied (as if parody were needed) in John Landis's first feature, SCHLOCK (1973), whose caveman, unlike Trog (who is disturbed by it) loves rock'n'roll. [PN] TROLLENBERG TERROR, THE 1. UK tv serial (1956-7) ITV. Prod/dir Quentin Lawrence, written Peter Key, starring Sarah Lawson, Rosemary Miller, Laurence Payne. 6 25min episodes. B/w. This is set mainly in an Alpine Hotel where intimations of doom received by a woman with ESP are followed by the revelation that ALIENS are on the mountain.2. Film (1959; vt The Crawling Eye; vt The Creature from Another World). Tempean Production/DCA. Dir Quentin Lawrence, starring Forrest Tucker, Laurence Payne, Janet Munro, Jennifer Jayne, Warren Mitchell. Screenplay Jimmy Sangster, based on 1. 85 mins. B/w.The film version is more full-bloodedly unpleasant than 1, especially in scenes where the aliens animate their dead human victims telepathically and turn them homicidal in a not very sensible scheme for conquest. The aliens themselves cannot come off the mountain, because they can survive only where it is very cold. Special-effects man Les Bowie worked hard on a shoestring budget, but the octopoid alien, with its one big eye, is ludicrous and the cloud beneath which the aliens lurk on the mountain was a piece of cotton wool pinned to a photograph. Loose ends of plot dangle everywhere, perhaps as a result of a 3hr story being reduced to half that length, but the film is not as bad as legend has it. [JB/PN] TROLLOPE, ANTHONY (1815-1882) UK writer whose most famous novels make up the Barchester Chronicles. His 61st book, and sole venture into sf, The Fixed Period (1882), written a few years before his death, understandably (though evasively: no one actually dies in the book) concentrated upon that topic. It is 1980 on an ISLAND near New Zealand where sheep farmers are establishing an ambiguous UTOPIA in which no one will be allowed to live past the age of 67 - the age at which AT would in fact die. The Navy arrives in time to avert implementation of the scheme. Though not one of AT's stronger novels, it remains a speculation of interest, and demonstrates the vigour of its author's rather gloomy Indian summer. [JC]See also: MACHINES. TRON Film (1982) Lisberger/Kushner/Walt Disney. Dir Steven Lisberger, starring Jeff Bridges, Bruce Boxleitner, David Warner, Cindy Morgan. Screenplay Lisberger, from a story by Lisberger, Bonnie MacBird. 96 mins. Colour.In this pleasing but lightweight film, a young man (Bridges) seeks evidence about dirty work in the computer company from which he has just resigned. Smuggled into the firm's building by friends, he is deconstructed by the Master Control Program (or MCP) software, which rules the VIRTUAL REALITY within which he comes to consciousness as a subprogram (along - just as in Oz - with analogues of two friends programmed by them to help him out). There follows, disappointingly, a standard Good-against-Evil struggle - involving Bridges and MCP's hench-progam Sark (Warner), itself an analogue of a real-life evil-doer - on a somewhat austere computer-generated landscape resembling that of a rather good video game ( GAMES AND TOYS). The film has moments of wit, and a stunning last shot where the now reconstituted hero looks down on the streets of Los Angeles at night, for all the world like the computer grid from which he has escaped. This suggests that perhaps the whole film is a light-hearted text about determinism, but most of it aspires to being little more than a wide-screen arcade-game scenario. [PN] TROSKA, J.M. [r] CZECH AND SLOVAK SF. TROUT, KILGORE An sf-writer character in Kurt VONNEGUT Jr's God Bless You, Mr Rosewater (1965) and Breakfast of Champions (1973), first used as a pseudonym by L. W. CURREY and David G. HARTWELL for a short bibliography, SF-I: A Selective Bibliography (1971 chap), and later (there was a row about this) by Philip Jose FARMER on the novel Venus on the Half-Shell (1975). [PN] TROWBRIDGE, DAVE Sherwood SMITH. TRUDNO BYT' BOGOM (vt Hard To Be a God) Film (1989). Dovzhenko Studio/Halleluya Film GMBH/VO Sovexportfilm. Dir Peter Fleischmann, starring Edward Dzentara, Ann Gautier, Christina Kaufmann, Alexander Filippenko, Andrei Boltnev, Mikhail Gluzsky, Werner Herzog. Screenplay Fleischmann, Jean-Claude Carriere, Dal Orlov, based on Trudno byt' bogom (1964; trans as Hard to be a God 1973 US) by Arkady and Boris STRUGATSKI. 120 mins. Colour.The most ambitious Soviet sf film to date, this Soviet/West German coproduction was 4 years in the making, and even so seems unfinished. Gorgeous sets, a good story (combining medieval swordfighting and futuristic starships) and a distinguished international cast did, however, ensure its success in European cinemas. The Strugatskis' multilevelled moral drama has been simplified to the level of pure action. The focus is court intrigue on an underdeveloped planet where a group of secret agents/investigators from a highly developed Earth witness the rise of a kind of medieval fascism, led by the local Hitler, Reba. The protagonist, Rumata, camouflaged as an indigenous nobleman, is not allowed to involve himself in the planet's politics; he is the historical observer who must not interfere with the experiment. However, he and his friends do attempt to save local intellectuals from pogroms and, when Reba's men kill the native girl with whom Rumata is in love, the Earthman humanist takes to the sword. A failure for Strugatski fans and for those who enjoy serious sf, but a feast for lovers of sword-and-bluster combat and a sentimental love story. [VG]See also: RUSSIA. TRUEMAN, CHRYSOSTOM The unidentified pseudonym of the UK author who lists himself as "Editor" of The History of a Voyage to the Moon, with an Account of the Adventurers' Subsequent Discoveries (1864), a PROTO-SCIENCE-FICTION tale described by Darko SUVIN in Victorian Science Fiction in the UK (1983) as being of considerable importance; Suvin also speculates that CT may possibly have been James Hinton (1822-1875), father of C.H. HINTON. The Voyage depicts its protagonists' discovery of an ANTIGRAVITY device which they use to fly to the Moon, where they find a UTOPIA inhabited by "amnesiac reincarnations of select Earthmen". [JC] TRUSCOTT, GERRY [r] Candas Jane DORSEY. TSIOLKOVSKY, KONSTANTIN (EDUARDOVICH) (1857-1935) Russian scientist and writer. He began investigating the possibility of SPACE FLIGHT in 1878. In his monograph Free Space (1883 chap) he suggested that SPACESHIPS would have to operate by jet propulsion. His consideration of some of the practical difficulties led to a paper entitled "How to Protect Fragile and Delicate Objects from Jolts and Shocks" (1891). In 1903 he published the classic paper "The Probing of Space by Means of Jet Devices", proposing that space travel could be achieved using multistage liquid-fuelled ROCKETS. He wrote a good deal of didactic sf, mostly for young readers, in order to popularize his ideas. All of this is collected, along with several essays by or about Tsiolkovsky, in a vol ed V. Dutt, Put' k zbezdam (coll 1960 USSR; trans by various hands as The Call of the Cosmos 1963 USSR; unauthorized edn, with cuts, vt The Science Fiction of Konstantin Tsiolkovsky 1979 US), the US version substituting an intro by one "Adam Starchild", also falsely credited as ed. The sf stories include the novelette On the Moon (written 1887; 1893), Dreams of Earth and Sky (coll 1895), and a full-length novel, Vne zemli (1916 Priroda i Lyudi; exp 1920; trans in this coll as "Outside the Earth"; also appeared trans, with intro, Kenneth Syers as Beyond the Planet Earth 1960 US), which is an account of the building and launching of a spaceship by an international group of scientists which ends with the initiation of a project to colonize the Solar System.KT was the first great pioneer of space research and the first real prophet of the myth of the conquest of space which has played such a vital role in modern sf. The inscription on the obelisk marking his grave reads: "Man will not always stay on Earth; the pursuit of light and space will lead him to penetrate the bounds of the atmosphere, timidly at first but in the end to conquer the whole of solar space." [BS]See also: COLONIZATION OF OTHER WORLDS; FANTASTIC VOYAGES; GENERATION STARSHIPS; HISTORY OF SF; HOLLOW EARTH; PREDICTION; RUSSIA; SPACE HABITATS; TRANSPORTATION. TSR INC. AMAZING STORIES; GAMES AND TOYS; GAME-WORLDS. TSUBURAYA, EIJI [r] JAPAN. TSUTSUI, YASUTAKA [r] JAPAN. TUBB, E(DWIN) C(HARLES) (1919- ) UK writer and editor who began publishing sf with "No Short Cuts" for NW in 1951, and for the next half decade or so produced a great amount of fiction, in UK magazines and in book form, under his own name and under many pseudonyms, some still undisclosed. After the late 1950s, his production moderated somewhat, but he remained a prolific author of consistently readable SPACE OPERAS. Of his many pseudonyms, those known to have been used for book titles of sf interest include Charles Grey, Gregory Kern, Carl Maddox, Edward Thompson and the house names Volsted GRIDBAN, Gill HUNT, King LANG, Arthur Maclean, Brian SHAW and Roy SHELDON. At least 50 further names were used for magazine stories only. His first sf novels were pseudonymous: Saturn Patrol (1951) as by King Lang, Planetfall (1951) as by Gill Hunt, "Argentis" (1952) as by Brian Shaw and Alien Universe (1952 chap) as by Volsted Gridban. He soon began publishing under his own name, with Alien Impact (1952) and Atom War on Mars (1952), though his best work in these years was probably that as by Charles Grey, beginning with The Wall (1953). Of his enormous output of magazine fiction, the Dusty Dribble stories in Authentic 1955-6 stand out; ECT also edited Authentic from Feb 1956 to its demise in Oct 1957.With Enterprise 2115 (1954 as by Grey; vt The Mechanical Monarch 1958 dos US as by ECT) he began to produce more sustained adventure novels. Alien Dust (1952-3 NW; 1954 Nebula; fixup 1955; expurgated 1957 US) effectively depicts the rigours of interplanetary exploration. The Space-Born (1956 dos US) is a crisp GENERATION-STARSHIP tale. These novels all display a convincing expertise in the use of the language and themes of PULP-MAGAZINE sf, though they tend to avoid examining their material very thoroughly. Enterprise 2115, for instance, deals swiftly and with ECT's typical largesse with REINCARNATION, the SUPERMAN theme and CYBERNETICS, along with a matriarchal DYSTOPIA; but the sustaining narrative - the pilot of the first spaceship returns from frozen sleep to reinvigorate a world gone wrong through its misuse of a predicting machine - hardly allows much justice to be done to any one concept.The next decade saw few ECT titles until the start of the long series for which he remains best known, the Dumarest books: The Winds of Gath (1967 dos US; rev vt Gath 1968 UK), Derai (1968 dos US), Toyman (1969 dos US), Kalin (1969 dos US), The Jester at Scar (1970 dos US), Lallia (1971 dos US), Technos (1972 dos US), Veruchia (1973 US), Mayenne (1973 US) and Jondelle (1973 US) - both assembled as Mayenne and Jondelle (omni 1981 US) - Zenya (1974 US), Eloise (1975 US), Eye of the Zodiac (1975 US), Jack of Swords (1976 US), Spectrum of a Forgotten Sun (1976 US), Haven of Darkness (1977 US), Prison of Night (1977 US), Incident on Ath (1978 US), The Quillian Sector (1978 US), Web of Sand (1979 US), Iduna's Universe (1979 US), The Terra Data (1980 US), World of Promise (1980 US), Nectar of Heaven (1981 US), The Terridae (1981 US), The Coming Event (1982 US), Earth is Heaven (1982 US), Melome (1983 US) and Angado (1984 US) - both assembled as Melome and Angado (omni 1988) - and Symbol of Terra (1984 US) and The Temple of Truth (1985 US) - both assembled as Symbol of Terra and the Temple of Truth (omni 1989). It is understood that a final volume (#32) has been published in France, in about 1992, under the title Le Retour; there is no English-language edition. Earl Dumarest, who features in each volume, maintains with soldier-of-fortune fortitude a long search for Earth - the planet on which he was born, and from which he was wrested at an early age - but must battle against the universal belief that Earth is a myth. Inhabited planets are virtually innumerable; the period is some time after the collapse of a GALACTIC EMPIRE, and everyone speaks the same language; and, as Dumarest moves gradually outwards from Galactic Centre along a spiral arm of stars, it is clear that he is gradually nearing his goal. The opposition he faces from the Cyclan - a vast organization of passionless humans linked cybernetically to a central organic computer whose location is unknown - long led readers to assume that the Cyclan HQ was located on Earth, but the sequence stopped - perhaps at the behest of its publishers - at a somewhat inconclusive point. Though some of the later-middle titles seemed aimless, ECT showed consistent skill at prolonging Dumarest's intense suspense about the outcome of his long quest.Concurrently, writing as Gregory Kern, ECT produced a more routine space-opera sequence featuring galactic secret agent Cap Kennedy. The Kern titles are Galaxy of the Lost (1973 US), Slave Ship from Sergan (1973 US), Monster of Metelaze (1973 US), Enemy within the Skull (1974 US), Jewel of Jarhen (1974 US), Seetee Alert! (1974 US), The Gholan Gate (1974 US), The Eater of Worlds (1974 US), Earth Enslaved (1974 US), Planet of Dread (1974 US), Spawn of Laban (1974 US), The Genetic Buccaneer (1974 US), A World Aflame (1974 US), The Ghosts of Epidoris (1975 US), Mimics of Dephene (1975 US), Beyond the Galactic Lens (1975 US) and The Galactiad (first published as Das Kosmiche Duelle ["The Cosmic Duel"], 1976 Germany; first English version 1983 US). Though these and some of the Dumarest books descend too readily to CLICHE, ECT established and successfully maintained a reputation for providing reliably competent adventure sf, full of action, sex and occasional melancholy. Late singletons like The Luck Machine (1980) and Stardeath (1983 US) continued the parade of efficient titles. [JC]Other works: The Mutants Rebel (1953); Venusian Adventure (1953); Alien Life (1954); World at Bay (1954); Journey to Mars (1954); City of No Return (1954); The Stellar Legion (1954); The Hell Planet (1954); The Resurrected Man (1954); Supernatural Stories 9 (coll 1957), ostensibly a magazine but all stories by ECT under various names; Moon Base (1964); Ten from Tomorrow (coll 1966); "The Life Buyer" (1965 NW; the entire novel appears in SF REPRISE #5 1967); Death is a Dream (1967); C.O.D. Mars (1968 chap dos US); S.T.A.R. Flight (1969 US); Escape into Space (1969); Century of the Manikin (1972 US); A Scatter of Stardust (coll 1972 dos US); Sword in the Snow (1973 chap); novelizations of episodes from the tv series SPACE 1999, being Breakaway * (1975), Collision Course * (1975), Alien Seed * (1976 US), Rogue Planet * (1976 US) and the comparatively ambitious Earthfall * (1977); The Primitive (1977); Death Wears a White Face (1957 Authentic as "Dead Weight"; exp 1979); Stellar Assignment (1979); Pawn of the Omphalos (1980 US).As Charles Grey: Dynasty of Doom (1953); The Tormented City (1953); Space Hunger (1953); I Fight for Mars (1953); The Hand of Havoc (1954); The Extra Man (1954).As Volsted Gridban: Reverse Universe (1952); Planetoid Disposals Ltd (1953); De Bracy's Drug (1953); Fugitive of Time (1953).As Arthur Maclean: Touch of Evil * (1959 chap), #438 in the Sexton Blake Library.As Carl Maddox: The Living World (1954 chap); Menace from the Past (1954 chap).As Roy Sheldon: The Metal Eater (1954).As Edward Thompson: The Imperial Rome series, comprising Atilus the Slave (1975), Atilus the Gladiator (1975) and Gladiator (1978).About the author: "The Perils of Bibliography: A Look at the Writings of E.C.Tubb" (1979 The Science-Fiction Collector #7) by Mike ASHLEY.See also: BOYS' PAPERS; CRYONICS; CYBORGS; DAW BOOKS; END OF THE WORLD; GAMES AND SPORTS; MARS; NEW WORLDS; PARANOIA. TUCK, DONALD H(ENRY) (1922- ) Australian bibliographer and industrial manager, retired. His bibliographical labours in sf since the late 1940s were among the most extensive in the field since the pioneering work of Everett F. BLEILER; they have since been partially superseded, but comprise one of the foundation stones upon which later workers have built. His early work was A Handbook of Science Fiction and Fantasy (1954; rev in 2 vols 1959), in duplicated format, self-published. Far more thorough is the 3-vol The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction and Fantasy through 1968, consisting of Vol 1: Who's Who, A-L (1974), Vol 2: Who's Who, M-Z (1978) and Vol 3: Miscellaneous (dated 1982 but 1983), all from ADVENT: PUBLISHERS; their usefulness to researchers was a little limited by the slowness of production, Vol 3 arriving 15 years after the book's cut-off date. Synopses are given for many books, and publishing data for all. Coverage of GENRE SF is thorough; coverage of non-genre sf and of older sf is patchy but sometimes illuminating. Generally (there are exceptions) DHT does not cover work which has not been reprinted 1945-68. Listings of stories in collections and anthologies are given, and the coverage is almost as thorough for fantasy and weird fiction as for sf. [PN]See also: AUSTRALIA; BIBLIOGRAPHIES; HUGO; SMALL PRESSES AND LIMITED EDITIONS. TUCKER, BOB [s] Wilson TUCKER. TUCKER, GEORGE Joseph ATTERLEY. TUCKER, JAMES B. [r] ROBERT HALE LIMITED. TUCKER, (ARTHUR) WILSON (1914- ) US writer, orphaned, brought up in Bloomington and Normal, Illinois, where he set some of his fiction, some early stories being signed Bob Tucker. For several decades he worked as a film projectionist, retiring in 1972, and he always spoke of his writing - more than 20 books, half of them sf, half of them mysteries - as an avocation. WT began his involvement with sf about 1932, and during the 1930s was exceedingly active as a fan and FANZINE publisher, starting with The Planetoid in 1932, though his most notable fanzine was Le Zombie, which lasted more than 60 issues 1938-75, the first half-decade of that period being its heyday; his Neo-Fan's Guide to Science-Fiction Fandom (1966 chap) demonstrates the quality of this work. As an example of the violent humour and intense emotions aroused in early FANDOM, it is notable that WT was twice subjected to hoax obituaries in the sf magazines of the time. His fanzine The Bloomington News Letter (later Science Fiction News Letter) dealt mainly with the professional field.While active as a fan WT was also writing fiction, though not until 1941 did he publish his first story, "Interstellar Way Station" as Bob Tucker, in Super Science Novels. He never became prolific in shorter forms - The Best of Wilson Tucker (coll 1982) is definitive - soon turning to novels. His first, The Chinese Doll (1946), was a mystery, but made RECURSIVE use of the world of sf fandom. (WT pleased the knowledgeable fans, while annoying some critics, by his lifelong habit of using the names of fans and writers for the characters of his books; these names became known as Tuckerisms.) His first sf novel, The City in the Sea (1951), deals somewhat crudely with material similar to that treated far more effectively in the much later Ice and Iron (1974; exp 1975); in both, a matriarchal culture begins to re-invade a USA reverted to savagery, but in the latter the far-future matriarchy is linked through TIME TRAVEL to a USA, only generations hence, in the grip of a new ice age. This latter tale is not very coherently told, but the panoramas are lucid. Time travel is central to much of WT's work, featuring in tales like The Lincoln Hunters (1958), one of his best novels. Time travellers from an imperial USA several hundred years hence are sent to acquire a recording of a lost speech of Abraham Lincoln; the two cultures are effectively contrasted. The ending, in which the protagonist is trapped in an 1856 far less unattractive than the future from which he came, is both poignant and welcome. In The Time Masters (1953; rev 1971), whose protagonist appears also in the sequel Time Bomb (1955; vt Tomorrow Plus X 1957), a long-lived extraterrestrial's presence throughout human history generates some of the same perspectives as time travel itself.WT had a knack of choosing unusually resonant and appropriate titles for his novels. Examples are The Long Loud Silence (1952; rev 1970; early US edns delete implications of cannibalism, UK edns do not) and The Year of the Quiet Sun (1970). The former is a powerful post- HOLOCAUST novel, sombre and tough in feeling, though at points awkwardly told; the hero, unusually for a genre-sf novel, is in many ways cruel and insensitive. The latter, which won a JOHN W. CAMPBELL MEMORIAL AWARD retrospectively in 1976, sends its Black protagonist forwards in time to around AD2020, where he finds the USA in dire shape, his Blackness terrifying to the racially divided remnants of the civil war which has ended civilization. The prophecy that he had discovered in a non-Biblical ancient manuscript is fulfilled: there is to be a Year of the Quiet Sun. He prepares to watch the final rites of history.WT was a very uneven writer, but expanded the boundaries of genre sf with his downbeat and realistic variations on old material, and demonstrated how effective a generic cliche like time travel could become when treated with due attention. By tying his use of time travel to virtual archaeologies of the worlds thus exposed, he transformed that cliche into an instrument of vision. He became inactive in the field after about 1980. [JC/PN]Other works: Prison Planet (1947 chap); Wild Talent (1954; exp 1955 UK; The Man from Tomorrow 1955); Science Fiction Sub-Treasury (coll 1954; cut vt Time: X 1955); To the Tombaugh Station (1960 dos); Resurrection Days (1981).About the author: A Checkist of Wilson Tucker (1991 chap) by Christopher P. STEPHENS.See also: END OF THE WORLD; ESP; HUGO; IMMORTALITY; OUTER PLANETS; SPACE OPERA; SUPERMAN; TIME PARADOXES. TUCKERISMS RECURSIVE SF; Wilson TUCKER. TUMANNOST' ANDROMEDY (vt The Andromeda Nebula; vt Andromeda the Mysterious; vt The Cloud of Andromeda) Film (1968). Dovzhenko Studio. Dir Eugene Sherstobytov, starring Viya Artmane, Sergei Stoliarov, Nikolai Kriukov. Screenplay Sherstobytov, Vladimir Dmitrievski, based on Tumannost' Andromedy (1958) by Ivan YEFREMOV. 85 mins, cut to 77 mins. Colour.A disappointingly polemical Russian adaptation of Yefremov's much better novel, TA tells of an attempt, 2000 years hence, to establish contact with an intelligent alien race living somewhere in the Andromeda Nebula. Most of the action takes place on a spaceship. The film's optimism about the future - manifest in the woodenly cheerful, healthy and uniformly handsome cast and the lack of dramatic tension of any kind (a problem not uncommon in UTOPIAN fictions) - is light years from the bleakness of later Russian sf films such as SOLARIS (1972). The sets and special effects are good. [PN]See also: RUSSIA. TUNG, LEE LEE TUNG. TUNING, WILLIAM (1935-1982) US writer whose Tornado Alley (1978) dramatizes NEAR-FUTURE attempts to deal with very bad storms. Fuzzy Bones * (1981) is a continuation of H. Beam PIPER's Fuzzy series, quite successfully extracting from Piper's own texts material requiring development, and exploring the origins of the Fuzzy race. [JC] TUNNEL, DER Film (1933). Vandor Film/Bavaria Film. Dir Kurt Bernhardt, starring Paul Hartmann, Olly von Flint, Attila Hoorbiger, Gustaf Grundgens, Elga Brink. Screenplay Bernhardt, Reinhart Steinbicker, based on Der Tunnel (1913; trans 1915) by Bernhard KELLERMANN. 80 mins (French version 73 mins). B/w. This ambitious German film tells of a NEAR-FUTURE attempt by German engineers, imbued with nationalist fervour, to drill a tunnel under the Atlantic. A speculator attempts to sabotage the project. Technically, the film has a high standard, with convincing sets and special effects; the various disasters that occur - cave-ins, floods and volcanic eruptions - are realistically staged (too realistically, perhaps, as the film's associate producer was killed during the shooting of one such sequence). A French-language version was made simultaneously, starring Jean Gabin and Madeleine Renaud. The slightly inferior UK remake was The TUNNEL (1935; vt Trans-Atlantic Tunnel US). [JB/PN] TUNNEL, THE (vt Trans-Atlantic Tunnel US) Film (1935). Gaumont. Dir Maurice Elvey, starring Richard Dix, Leslie Banks, Madge Evans, Helen Vinson, C. Aubrey Smith, George Arliss, Walter Huston. Screenplay Clemence DANE, L. du Garde Peach, based on Der Tunnel (1913; trans 1915) by Bernhard KELLERMANN. 94 mins. B/w.A UK remake of the successful German film Der TUNNEL (1933). The plot is basically the same: a tunnel is built under the Atlantic linking the USA with Europe (though here the European end of the tunnel is situated in England). The film is not as technically impressive as the German version; it concentrates less on the national grandeur of the project and more on the domestic dramas of the tunnel's creators. [JB/PN] TUNSTALL, (WILLIAM CUTHBERT) BRIAN (1900-1970) UK writer whose Eagles Restrained (1936) showed some prescience in predicting a German-Polish conflict (though dating the event to 1954), but was less fortunate in its assumption that the League of Nations would intervene to quell the dispute. [JC] TUREK, IAN and IONE Eando BINDER. TUREK, LUDWIG [r] GERMANY. TURK, H(AROLD) C. (1958- ) US writer who began publishing sf with the comic adventure Ether Or (1987), an ALTERNATE WORLD tale in which a female"Hitler"is a force for peace, and which has been transformed by the eponymous fuel, which makes space travel cheap. The exceedingly ambitious Black Body (1989) presents, in terms readable as both sf and fantasy, the autobiography of an 18th-century witch, during which she makes it clear that witches are in fact a kind of ALIEN species. The style in which the tale is told is both estranged (because she is not human) and strained (because HCT seems himself uneasy with some aspects of 18th-century diction); but the end result is, at points, very impressive. [JC] TURNER, EDGAR (? -? ) UK writer whose LOST-WORLD adventure, The Armada Gold (1908) with Reginald Hodder, is moderately exciting, but who remains of greater interest for The Submarine Girl (1909), in which a super-submarine meets up with the Flying Dutchman, awakens her crew, and arranges for their resettlement in South Africa. [JC] TURNER, FREDERICK (1943- ) UK-born writer, in the USA from 1967, best known for his POETRY, though his first book of sf interest, A Double Shadow (1978), is a novel. Set on a FAR-FUTURE terraformed MARS, it depicts in dying-Earth flavours the conflicts of two characters who represent deeply contrasting classes of evolved humans; their strife leads them to transcend their volatile human condition. THE NEW WORLD: AN EPIC POEM (1985) more daringly takes the form of a book-length narrative poem. In a 24th-century balkanized USA 3 men vie to marry the heroine, herself stubbornly attached to an earlier lover. After much adventuring and a series of disquisitions on the UTOPIAN lifestyle achieved by the heroine's rural culture, the long tale ends in the mass-suicide of the villainous fundamentalists who have been threatening this society and with the resumption of her sanctioned relationship. Cumbersome at certain points, the book works in the end as an advocacy of and paean to the good life. Genesis: An Epic Poem (1988) is perhaps less successful but, in its successful presentation of a believable MARS, demonstrates its author's very considerable gifts. [JC] TURNER, GEORGE (REGINALD) (1916- ) Australian writer and sf critic. His connection with sf came quite late in life, long after the publication 1959-67 of his first 5 (mainstream) novels. (There has since been a 6th, Transit of Cassidy [1978].) He became well known for somewhat stern sf criticism in the 1970s, published in SF COMMENTARY, FOUNDATION and elsewhere, and ed The View from the Edge (anth 1977), stories from a major Australian sf workshop; GT then began writing sf himself. His first sf novel was Beloved Son (1978 UK), in which an interstellar expedition returns to Earth in AD2032 to find a diminished post- HOLOCAUST population with very few old people, and a radically changed and somewhat merciless culture; the scenario is complicated by developments in GENETIC ENGINEERING. The book is perhaps ponderous, but was well received for its careful exploration of some plausible moral problems of the NEAR FUTURE. The other novels in this Ethical Culture series - different protagonists but a common background - are Vaneglory (1981 UK) and Yesterday's Men (1983 UK). They are serious and interesting, but the characteristic solemnity of their presentation has alienated some. The first piece in the series was the story "In a Petri Dish Upstairs" (1978), one of 8 stories collected in Pursuit of Miracles (coll 1990).Astonishingly, for he was now in his 70s, GT then changed gear. His next 2 novels are more fluid and spirited than his earlier work, though sharing with them a (this time different) 21st-century setting. The Sea and Summer (1987 UK; vt Drowning Towers 1988 US), closely related to the earlier story "The Fittest" (1985), marked his breakthrough into the US market, with a genuinely distinguished and deeply imagined story of life in an overpopulated city in a future where Australia and the world's littorals are being drowned by the slowly rising ocean, a result of greenhouse-effect global warming; it won the ARTHUR C. CLARKE AWARD in 1988. Brain Child (1985 in Strange Attractors, anth ed Damien BRODERICK, as "On the Nursery Floor"; much exp1991 US) is a thriller whose narrator slowly uncovers the story of a scientific experiment in genetic manipulation designed to enhance INTELLIGENCE (of which he is in part a product) and learns of the superhumans that may have resulted. This study in the ethics of superiority ( SUPERMAN) incorporates the story "On the Nursery Floor" (1985). In the autobiographical In the Heart or In the Head (1984), GT describes his relationship with sf, and displays a certain waspishness. He may be his country's most distinguished sf writer. [PN]Other Works: Genetic Soldier (1994).See also: AUSTRALIA; CHILDREN IN SF; ECOLOGY; ECONOMICS; FASTER THAN LIGHT. TURNER TOMORROW AWARD AWARDS. TURTLEDOVE, HARRY (NORMAN) (1949- ) US writer and academic who has made use of his field of scholarship (his PhD was in Byzantine history) to create all his best-known work. The fantasy Videssos Cycle - The Misplaced Legion (1987), An Emperor for the Legion (1987), The Legion of Videssos (1987) and Swords of the Legion (1987), with the Krispos sequence, Krispos Rising (1991), Krispos of Videssos (1991) and Krispos the Emperor (1994), serving as a prequel - follows the exploits of a Roman legion translated to the empire of Videssos, situated in a world where MAGIC works and Byzantine history is recapitulated. The Basil Argyros stories (1985-7), set in an ALTERNATE WORLD in which Mahomet became a Christian saint - assembled as Agent of Byzantium (coll of linked stories 1987) - follows the exploits of a medieval secret agent who tends to cause scientific innovations against both his brief and his intentions. Though these books focus on their various charismatic and canny protagonists, HT's thorough understanding of his source material gracefully infiltrates the fun and fantastication.HT began writing work of genre interest with two SWORD-AND-SORCERY tales as by Eric Iverson, Wereblood (1979) and its sequel Werenight (1979), and was soon publishing sf and fantasy with some frequency, sometimes as by Eric G. Iverson, some of his better non-series work being assembled as Kaleidoscope (coll 1990). Noninterference (fixup 1988) - in which a galactic survey team runs across ALIENS - and Earthgrip (fixup 1991) - in which a reader of sf uses the expertise so gained to save alien races - are, unusually for HT, straight sf books not set in alternate worlds; but A Different Flesh (fixup 1988) places hominid survivors ( APES AND CAVEMEN) in an alternate USA, and A World of Difference (1989) confronts Soviet and US missions on an alternate Mars - here called Minerva - populated by warring Minervans. HT has never failed to be exuberant when he sees the chance; and although it may be argued that he has not yet written any single book that has unduly stretched his very considerable intelligence, the WorldWar sequence - comprising WorldWar: In the Balance (1994) and WorldWar: Tilting the Balance (1995), with further volumes projected - deftly, and at great length, unfolds an ALTERNATE WORLD WW2 scenario, in which the opposing forces are uneasily allied in opposition to an invading force of comfortingly obtuse aliens, very clearly described in strict accordance (so far) with the traditional sf view that invading alien armies were almost certainly to be run by hidebound, reptile-thick bureaucrats. HT won a 1994 Best Novella HUGO Award for"Down in the Bottomlands" (1992). [JC]Other works: The Pugnacious Peacemaker (1990 chap dos), a sequel to L. Sprague DE CAMP's The Wheels of If (1940 Unknown; 1990 chap dos), which precedes it in this sequentially printed DOS volume. See also: ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION. TURTON, GODFREY (EDMUND) (1901- ) UK writer of fantasies like There Was Once a City (1927), The Devil's Churchyard (1970 US) and The Festival of Flora: A Story of Ancient and Modern Times (1972 US). He remains of some sf interest for The Moon Dies (1972), a book-length blank-verse narrative of the destruction of Earth's first moon (broken apart by gravity), the death of human civilization, and the survival of Noah. [JC] TUTTLE, LISA (1952- ) US-born writer, in the UK from late 1980, married to Christopher PRIEST 1981-7. An early member of the CLARION SCIENCE FICTION WRITERS' WORKSHOP, she very rapidly established her name as a writer in short forms, beginning with her first story, "Stranger in the House", for Robin Scott WILSON's Clarion II (anth 1972), and winning the 1974 JOHN W. CAMPBELL AWARD for Best New Writer. Her stories very frequently make quietly devastating use of genre devices - often those associated with HORROR - to convey FEMINIST lessons about the relationships between men and women ( WOMEN AS PORTRAYED IN SCIENCE FICTION), though she tends to allow the political implications of these lessons to reside, tacitly, within her texts. Some of her better stories have been assembled in A Nest of Nightmares (coll 1986), A Spaceship Built of Stone and Other Stories (coll 1987) and Memories of the Body: Tales of Desire and Transformation (coll 1992). Her first novel, Windhaven (1975 ASF; exp 1981 US) with George R.R. MARTIN, depicts life on a lost colony planet whose feudal culture is focused on the use of artificial (but functional) wings. Most of her subsequent books - like Familiar Spirit (1983 US), Gabriel (1987) and Lost Futures (1992), whose heroine is thrust into several ALTERNATE WORLDS - are fantasies with strong elements of horror, idiomatically and cleanly told, in a level and foreboding voice, and tending to depict worlds which, in visual terms, seem both sinister and washed. More and more, though commercial sagacity seems sometimes to have guided her tongue, she has given a sense of having revelations in store. She refused a 1981 NEBULA for "The Bone Flute". [JC]Other works: Catwitch (1983), a juvenile fantasy; Angela's Rainbow (1983), associational; Skin of the Soul: New Horror Stories by Women (anth 1990).Nonfiction: Children's Literary Houses (1984) with Rosalind Ashe; Encyclopedia of Feminism (1986).See also: BRITISH SCIENCE FICTION AWARD; ESCHATOLOGY; GOTHIC SF. TWAIN, MARK Pseudonym of Samuel Langhorne Clemens (1835-1910), US writer and humorist. It is often not appreciated, although Philip Jose FARMER makes him the central character of his RECURSIVE The Fabulous Riverboat (1971), that a significant portion of MT's output - including what is at least his second-best novel, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court (1889; vt A Yankee at the Court of King Arthur 1889 UK) - may be classified as sf. Some of Edgar Allan POE's sf was humorous but MT, drawing on the traditions of the literary hoax and the tall tale, was the first US writer fully to exploit the possibilities for HUMOUR of sf, inaugurating a rich but narrow vein that finds its current apotheosis in the work of Kurt VONNEGUT Jr.One of MT's notebooks indicates that, like Poe, he was interested in the possibilities of ballooning, and in 1868 began a story about a Frenchman's BALLOON journey from Paris to a prairie in Illinois, leaving it unfinished because of the US publication of Jules VERNE's Cinq semaines en ballon (1863; trans "William Lackland" as Five Weeks in a Balloon 1869 US). However, he returned to the topic in an unpublished manuscript entitled "A Murder, a Mystery, and a Marriage" (1876) and in Tom Sawyer Abroad (1894), in which the hero crosses the Atlantic by balloon and ends up in Cairo.Also essentially humorous is a skewed UTOPIA, "The Curious Republic of Gondour" (1875), in which certain classes of people, including the more intelligent, have more votes than others (cf Vonnegut's antithetical "Harrison Bergeron" [1961]). An equally skewed view of another ideal state is offered in Captain Stormfield's Visit to Heaven (written 1870s or later; 1909). This materialist heaven is located in interstellar space, through which Stormfield sails with an increasing number of companions rather in the manner of the narrator in Olaf STAPLEDON's STAR MAKER (1937). To begin with, Stormfield races a comet, a not unlikely invention for a writer whose arrival and departure from Earth coincided with the timetable of Halley's Comet (a fragment from the 1880s is entitled "A Letter from the Comet"). MT's interest in astronomical distances, evident elsewhere, is particularly apparent here.A parallel interest in vast temporal perspectives and geological ages is conspicuous in the many pieces that constitute MT's down-home version of the Genesis story, including his practical speculation concerning the daily lives of ADAM AND EVE in "Papers from the Adam Family" (written 1870s or later; 1962) and "Letters from the Earth" (written 1909; 1962). A considerably darkened sense of time and cyclical history informs "The Secret History of Eddypus, the World-Empire" (written 1901-2; 1972), MT's horrific but uncompleted vision of a future, 1000 years hence, in which Mary Baker Eddy's Christian Science rules the world, and MT himself, the potential saviour, is confused with Adam; MT's acerbic views on Eddy (1821-1910) are fully presented in his Christian Science (1907).Given his fascination with time and history, it is not surprising that MT's best and most influential work of sf, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, should be concerned with TIME TRAVEL. The tale which seems to have inspired A Connecticut Yankee, Max ADELER's "Professor Baffin's Adventures" (1880), is an implicit time-travel story, but Twain's novel may be the first genuine time-travel story (the destructive ending takes care of the anachronism issue) and certainly established the pattern for that kind of sf (predominantly US) in which the hero, more or less single-handedly, affects the destiny of an entire world or Universe (cf L. Sprague DE CAMP's LEST DARKNESS FALL [1941]). While writing A Connecticut Yankee, MT, who like his Promethean hero was gripped by the march of invention - his own inventions included a history game and a notebook with ears, and he anticipated radio and tv - became disastrously involved financially with the Paige typesetter. That was one reason why A Connecticut Yankee is the transitional work between the light and the dark in MT's corpus. Many of the gloomy, quasi-Darwinist, philosophical ideas explored in such non-sf works as What is Man? (first version written 1898; 1906) - the answer being a machine - and Mark Twain's Mysterious Stranger Manuscripts (written 1897-1903; fraudulent composite text 1916; 1969), which claim that everything is determined and that reality is all a dream anyway, figure prominently in A Connecticut Yankee.The same ideas pervade MT's explorations in microcosmic worlds ( GREAT AND SMALL) in 2 extended but unfinished works: "The Great Dark" (A.B. PAINE's title; written 1898; 1962) is about an apocalyptic voyage in a drop of water (cf Fitz-James O'BRIEN's "The Diamond Lens" [1858]), while the narrator of "Three Thousand Years among the Microbes" (written 1905; 1967), reduced to microscopic size by a wizard, explores the world-body of a diseased tramp, Blitzowski (one of the inhabitants is called Lemuel Gulliver, and the influence of Jonathan SWIFT is otherwise apparent); it is implied that the Universe we inhabit is actually God's diseased body. (This kind of macrocosm/microcosm relationship is hinted at in MT's 1883 notebook outline for what, in anticipation of the GENERATION-STARSHIP theme, might best be called a generation-iceberg story.) In The American Claimant (1892): Colonel Mulberry Sellers claims, among other inventions, to have perfected the "Materializer", which can reconstruct the dead from whatever original atoms remain, and to be able to affect the climate by shifting sunspots.If travel or communication can be managed instantaneously (and in A Connecticut Yankee and the microscopic-world stories the transference is indeed instantaneous), it seems logical that some loss of faith in the physicality of existence might occur, augmenting MT's notion that reality is insubstantial, a vagrant thought, a dream. In this connection, and as evidence of MT's concern with psychic possibilities (including the whirligig of schizophrenia), we should note the essays "Mental Telegraphy" (1891) and "Mental Telegraphy Again" (1895), which argue for the reality of ESP. Reference is made to the English Society for Psychical Research, and it is suggested that something called a "phrenophone" might communicate thoughts instantaneously just as the telephone communicates words. In "From the 'London Times' of 1904" (1898) - a newspaper hoax like "The Petrified Man" - another futuristic invention, called the "telelectroscope", a visual telephone, is used seemingly to disprove a murder. But it is precisely the divorce between image and reality afforded by this kind of instantaneous communication which causes ontological anxiety, and so the suspected murderer is executed anyway. [DK]About the author: The Science Fiction of Mark Twain (coll 1984) ed David KETTERER; New Worlds for Old: The Apocalyptic Imagination, Science Fiction, and American Literature (1974) by David Ketterer; "An Innocent in Time: Mark Twain in King Arthur's Court" by Philip Klass (William TENN), Extrapolation #16, 1974; "Hank Morgan in the Garden of Forking Paths: A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court as Alternative History" by William J. Collins, Modern Fiction Studies #32 (1986); "'Professor Baffin's Adventures' by Max Adeler: The Inspiration for A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court?" by Ketterer, Mark Twain Journal (1986); Mark Twain and Science: Adventures of a Mind (1988) by Sherwood Cummings; The Connecticut Yankee in the Twentieth Century: Travel to the Past in Science Fiction (1990) by Bud Foote; the Mark Twain entries in Science-Fiction: The Early Years (dated 1990 but 1991) by Everett F. BLEILER.See also: DISCOVERY AND INVENTION; EDISONADE; HISTORY OF SF; MUSIC; POCKET UNIVERSE; SHARED WORLDS. TWEED, THOMAS F(REDERICK) (1890-1940) UK publisher and writer in whose first sf novel, Rinehard: A Melodrama of the Nineteen-Thirties (1933; vt Gabriel Over the White House: A Novel of the Presidency 1933 US), filmed as Gabriel Over the White House (1933), a NEAR-FUTURE US President, after a car crash, begins to transform society, providentially destroys a Japanese war fleet through the use of air power, and - after recovering his old personality - dies before he can dismantle the new world order. Blind Mouths (1934; vt Destiny's Man 1935 US) less interestingly posits the collapse of society. Both books are written with smooth gravity. [JC] 20 MILLION MILES TO EARTH Film (1957). Columbia. Prod Charles H. Schneer. Dir Nathan Juran, starring William Hopper, Joan Taylor, Frank Puglia, John Zaremba. Screenplay Bob Williams, Christopher Knopf, based on a story by Charlott Knight, Ray HARRYHAUSEN. 84 mins. B/w.In this typical MONSTER MOVIE a spaceship returns to Earth from Venus carrying a strange egg which hatches a humanoid/reptilian creature, an Ymir. The Ymir grows and grows until, bigger than an elephant, it escapes into Rome and is trapped and killed on top of the Colosseum. The model animation is pretty good, but the trouble with the Schneer/Harryhausen collaborations - designed solely to showcase Harryhausen's skills - is invariably a poor script, so that the special effects exist within an intellectual vacuum. No reason for this sulphur-eating alien's arbitrary destructiveness is given. A novelization by Henry SLESAR filled the only issue of AMAZING STORIES SCIENCE FICTION NOVELS (1957). [JB/PN] 27TH DAY, THE Film (1957). Romson Productions/Columbia. Dir William Asher, starring Gene Barry, Valerie French, George Voskovec, Arnold Moss, Stefan Schnabel. Screenplay John MANTLEY, based on his The Twenty-Seventh Day (1956). 75 mins. B/w.This sf morality tale - there were several such in the 1950s - is more optimistic about mankind's inherent goodness than most. An alien gives each of 5 people, in 5 different countries, a box of capsules (which will lose their power after 27 days) capable of destroying all human - but no other - life on any one continent. The boxes will open only for the recipients, on whom, especially the Russian, great pressure is put to use the capsules to wipe out enemy states. The recipients all act nobly (one suicides) and finally learn that the capsules have a second power: they will selectively destroy "every enemy of peace and freedom". They are used thus, several thousand bad people die, and only good people (the vast majority, in this breathtakingly simplistic scenario) are left. This was the second sf movie, the first being The DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL (1951), to advocate mass murder as a way of eliminating warmongers. [JB/PN] 20,000 LEAGUES UNDER THE SEA Film (1954). Walt Disney. Dir Richard Fleischer, starring James Mason, Kirk Douglas, Paul Lukas, Peter Lorre. Screenplay Earl Felton, based on Vingt mille lieues sous les mers (1870; trans as Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Seas 1872 UK) by Jules VERNE. 127 mins. Colour.This early Walt Disney live-action film was one of his best and most lavish. Fleischer has since returned to sf themes with FANTASTIC VOYAGE (1966) and SOYLENT GREEN (1973), but not so successfully. Nemo is an anarchist scientist who hates war; he uses his submarine, the Nautilus (here nuclear powered), to sink warships. The script is rather lame, though James Mason gives a stirring performance as the obsessed Nemo, who fights a lone battle against the world before being betrayed by 3 shipwreck survivors (including a displeasing harpoonist played hammily by Kirk Douglas) whom he has taken on board. He expires in style, at the centre of a self-made holocaust that envelops both his private island and the Nautilus before, significantly, forming a mushroom-shaped cloud. The special effects are good (and won an Oscar), especially notable being Bob Mattey's mechanically operated giant squid; the Nautilus itself with its ornate Victoriana is beautifully designed by Harper Goff.There had been 3 previous film versions of Verne's novel: a mysterious 1905 Biograph production (18 mins) that does not appear in Biograph records, a French one made by George MELIES in 1907 (18 mins) and a US one, with fine underwater photography, written/dir Stuart Paton in 1916 (113 mins). [JB] TWILIGHT'S LAST GLEAMING (vt Nuclear Countdown) Film (1977) Geria Productions/Hemdale. Dir Robert Aldrich, starring Burt Lancaster, Richard Widmark, Paul Winfield, Charles Durning, Melvyn Douglas. Screenplay Ronald M. Cohen, Edward Huebsch, based on Viper 3 by Walter Wager (1924- ). 146 mins (cut to 122 mins). Colour.In this borderline-sf movie, set in 1981, a renegade US general takes over a missile base and threatens to initiate WWIII unless the President reveals to the nation the contents of a secret Pentagon file concerning the Vietnam War. The uncut version reveals how the Pentagon deliberately became involved in Vietnam to prove to the world that the USA was willing to sacrifice thousands of men, thus giving extra credibility to its willingness to fight a conventional war. These sequences disappeared when 24 minutes were cut by the distributor, ostensibly to "speed it up". What is left is a tautly directed thriller, though some of Aldrich's characteristic cynicism - reminiscent of his KISS ME DEADLY (1955) - remains (the Pentagon is victorious, destroying even the President to protect its secrets). The skilful use of a split-screen technique to create tension and moments of chaos and confusion justifies it as a legitimate cinematic tool. [JB/PN] TWILIGHT ZONE, THE 1. US tv series (1959-64). A Coyuga Production/MGM. Created Rod SERLING, also executive prod. Prods were Buck Houghton, Herbert Hirschman, Bert Granet, William Froug. Writers included Serling (91 episodes), Charles BEAUMONT, Ray BRADBURY, Earl Hamner Jr, George Clayton JOHNSON, Richard MATHESON. Dirs included Jack Smight, Stuart Rosenberg, John Brahm, Ralph Nelson, Buzz Kulik, Boris Sagal, Lamont Johnson, Elliot Silverstein, Don Siegel, William Friedkin, Richard Donner, Joseph Newman, Ted Post. 5 seasons, 156 episodes (138 each 25 mins, plus 18 in season 4 each 50 mins). B/w.TTZ, hosted by Serling with a rasping voice and a thin black tie, was an anthology series - perhaps the most famous ever on tv. Most of the playlets were pure fantasy, but a number were sf. The very first episode, "Where is Everybody?" by Serling, has a young man waking in a small town to find it deserted, with signs that the inhabitants had left only moments before. The denouement reveals that the situation has been implanted in his mind as part of a study conducted by space scientists into human reactions to loneliness. Sting-in-the-tail plotting was standard on TTZ.Overall the series was thoughtful and fairly original, though it certainly had its fair share of CLICHES. Episodes varied in quality, many of the better sf ones being written by Matheson: 3 of these were "Steel" (1963), in which Lee Marvin is the manager of a robot boxer who is forced to take his machine's place in the ring after it breaks down, "Little Girl Lost" (1962), about a child who falls into a dimensional warp under her bed, so that her parents can hear her crying but cannot reach her, and "Nightmare at 20,000 Feet" (1963), with William SHATNER as a man on an airliner who keeps seeing a mysterious creature - invisible to others - playing on the wing; as in most of Matheson's work, PARANOIA is eventually vindicated and the creature is proved to exist. Another sf episode was Bradbury's "I Sing the Body Electric!" (1962), about a robot grandmother.Short-story versions of some of his TTZ scripts appeared in 3 books by (or ostensibly by) Serling: Stories from The Twilight Zone * (coll 1960), More Stories from The Twilight Zone * (coll 1961) and New Stories from The Twilight Zone * (coll 1962) - the latter two possibly being by Walter B. GIBSON - with selections appearing in From The Twilight Zone * (coll 1962) and all 3 being reprinted in 1 vol as Stories from The Twilight Zone * (omni 1986). Two collections ghosted by Walter B. Gibson are Rod Serling's The Twilight Zone * (coll 1963) and Rod Serling's Twilight Zone Revisited * (coll 1964), both assembled in Rod Serling's Twilight Zone * (omni 1984). A book about the series is Twilight Zone Companion (1982; rev as The Twilight Zone Companion: Second Edition 1989) by Marc Scott Zicree. TTZ received 3 HUGOS (1960-62) as Best Dramatic Presentation.TTZ was fondly remembered - indeed, it could hardly have been forgotten, the episodes being repeated endlessly in syndication for the next 20 years. This resulted in an anthology feature film prod and partly dir Steven SPIELBERG, Twilight Zone: The Movie (1983), mostly updatings of some of the old scripts. Then came a new TTZ tv series (2). The title was used also for a horror/fantasy magazine, Rod Serling's The Twilight Zone Magazine (1981-9), whose editors included T.E.D. Klein (1947- ) and Tappan King (1950- ), and which published some weird fiction of high quality.2. US tv series (1985-7). CBS TV. Based on 1. Executive prod Philip DeGuere. Supervising prod James Crocker. Prod Harvey Frand. Creative consultant Harlan ELLISON. Story editor Rockne S. O'Bannon. Writers included Ray BRADBURY, Alan BRENNERT, Crocker, DeGuere, Ellison, David GERROLD, George R.R. MARTIN, O'Bannon, Michael REAVES, Carter SCHOLZ. Dirs included Wes Craven, Tommy Lee Wallace, Theodore Flicker, Joe DANTE, Gerd Oswald, Martha Coolidge, Allan Arkush, Peter Medak, Jim McBride, Paul Lynch, Noel Black. 2 seasons. Season 1: 24 50min episodes, each containing 2-4 stories. Season 2: 12 episodes, some 50min and some 25min. There were 80 stories in the 36 episodes. Colour.In the mid-1980s US tv turned back, for a while, to the anthology format, especially for series of fantastic stories - AMAZING STORIES was another. Few had any prolonged success. This new series of TTZ dramatized several well known sf stories, including "The Star" (1955) by Arthur C. CLARKE and stories by Robert SILVERBERG and Theodore STURGEON, but the majority of playlets were based on original scripts, some also by sf writers, though as with the original series the emphasis was on fantasy rather than sf. Good directors were used and the quality was quite high, but the series was axed after 2 seasons. TTZ was quickly re-edited into half-hour segments for syndication, when a further 30 stories were dramatized (executive prods Mark Shelmerdine and Michael MacMillan), with substantially lower budgets, and shown along with the 80 stories from the 1985-7 series. [PN/JB] TWILIGHT ZONE: THE MOVIE Joe DANTE; George MILLER; Steven SPIELBERG; The TWILIGHT ZONE . TWO COMPLETE SCIENCE-ADVENTURE BOOKS US PULP MAGAZINE.Thrice yearly, 11 issues Winter 1950-Spring 1954, published by Wings Publishing Co.; ed Jerome BIXBY (Winter 1950-Summer 1951), Malcolm Reiss (Winter 1951-Summer 1953) and Katharine Daffron (Winter 1953-Spring 1954). Issues numbered #1-#11.A companion magazine to PLANET STORIES, TCSAB was originally intended to reprint in cheap magazine format recently published sf novels; #1 contained Isaac ASIMOV's Pebble in the Sky (1950) and L. Ron HUBBARD's novella "The Kingslayer" (title story of The Kingslayer, coll 1949). This policy proved impossible to sustain; although there were a few more reprints, the majority of subsequent stories were original. These included: Arthur C. CLARKE's "The Seeker of the Sphinx" (Spring 1951; vt "The Road to the Sea"); James BLISH's The Warriors of Day (Summer 1951 as "Sword of Xota"; 1953) and "Sargasso of Lost Cities" (Spring 1953), one of his Okie series; L. Sprague DE CAMP's "The Tritonian Ring" (Winter 1951; title story of The Tritonian Ring coll 1953); and John BRUNNER's first (acknowledged) story, The Space-Time Juggler (Summer 1953 as "The Wanton of Argus" by Kilian Houston Brunner; 1963 chap dos as JB). TCSAB did not contain any editorial matter and was unusual among pulp sf magazines in seldom printing readers' letters. [MJE] TWONKY, THE Film (1953). Arch Oboler Productions/United Artists. Dir Arch Oboler, starring Hans Conreid, Billy Lynn, Gloria Blondell, Janet Warren and Ed Max. Screenplay Oboler, based on "The Twonky" (1942) by Lewis Padgett (Henry KUTTNER). 72 mins. B/w.After his sanctimonious FIVE (1951), about survivors of nuclear war, Oboler chose another sf subject for his next film. A creature from the future invades a tv set, bringing it alive. The set is soon running its owner's life, scuttling about doing household jobs by means of an electronic beam, but later becoming censorious and dictatorial, hypnotizing those who attempt to stop it. Kuttner's witty story collapses under the weight of Oboler's laborious script and the inadequate special effects. Tv was a much-hated medium in Hollywood at that time, and it was only appropriate that Oboler, an old-time radio producer, should have launched this symbolic attack. The film was unreleased for 17 months, then flopped. [JB/PN] 2,000 AD UK weekly sf COMIC-strip magazine, 32-36pp, published by IPC from 26 Feb, 1977, and then from 1987 by Fleetway. Eds have included Kelvin Gosnell, Steve McManus, Richard Burton. Throughout, the editor has been presented as an ALIEN called Tharg, and some very entertaining and original sf short stories have appeared under the title Tharg's Future Shocks. Early issues (referred to as "progs") were printed on cheap pulp paper with colour for the front and back and for a centre-spread. Continued success eventually justified a "new look", with better-quality paper and printing, including 50-60 per cent in colour. Many of 2,000 AD's contributing artists and writers have achieved transatlantic success. They include Simon Bisley, Brian BOLLAND, Dave GIBBONS, JUDGE DREDD writers Alan Grant and John Wagner, Cam Kennedy, Alan MOORE, Grant Morrison, Kevin O'Niell and Bryan Talbot. The magazine has featured a number of high-quality sf strips, including DAN DARE (from #1, 26 Feb 1977), Judge Dredd (from #2, 5 Mar 1977), Robo-Hunter (from #76, 5 Aug 1978), Strontium Dog (from #86, 14 Oct 1978), ABC Warriors (from #119, 30 June 1979), The VCs (from #140, 24 Nov 1979), Stainless Steel Rat (also from #140), Slaine (from #330, 20 Aug 1983), Ballad of Halo Jones (from #376, 7 July 1984), Anderson Psi Division (from #416, 4 May 1985) and Bad Company (from #500, 13 Dec 1986). Many 2,000 AD strips have been reprinted in the UK as GRAPHIC NOVELS and also in the USA in comic-book format (with artwork stretched lengthways to suit the taller page shape) under the Eagle Comics imprint (subsequently continued by Quality Comics and later by Fleetway). There have been several related hardback publications in the form of Annuals and Yearbooks, containing occasional reprints from the weekly but mostly new material of lower quality. A monthly black-and-white title with a glossy cover, Best of 2,000 AD, has been published since Oct 1985. [RT] 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY Film (1968). Prod/dir Stanley KUBRICK, starring Keir Dullea, Gary Lockwood. Screenplay Kubrick, Arthur C. CLARKE, based loosely on Clarke's "The Sentinel" (1951). 160 mins, cut to 141 mins. Colour. Originally in Cinerama.This was the most ambitious sf film of the 1960s and perhaps ever. Kubrick's unique production, which received a 1969 HUGO, takes several traditional sf themes - including the idea, derived from Charles FORT, that "we are property" - and spins from them a web of pessimistic METAPHYSICS. In prehistoric times the mysterious arrival of an alien artefact, a black monolith, triggers primitive ape people into becoming tool-users; the first tool is a weapon. The transition to the AD2001 sequence - marked by the resonant image of a bone weapon thrown (in slow motion) into the air and becoming a spaceship - suggests that, for all the awesome complexity of our tools, humanity itself is still in a primitive stage. The idea of human deficiency in the 21st century is reinforced by the deliberate banality of the dialogue and the sterility of the settings; ironically the most "human" character is a neurotic computer, itself subject to Original Sin, HAL 9000. A second monolith discovered on the Moon beams a signal at one of the moons of Jupiter and a spaceship, the Discovery, is sent to investigate, but, through HAL having a nervous breakdown, only one of the astronauts (Dullea) survives to reach the area. There he embarks (through a "Star Gate") on a prolonged, disorienting trip through what appears to be inner time and INNER SPACE, pausing to meet his dying self in an 18th-century bedroom, and becoming the foetus of a Superbeing, an optimistic apotheosis - with its suggestion of a transcendent EVOLUTION, directed by never-seen ALIENS, or perhaps God - in an otherwise dark film.Aside from its intellectual audacity, 2001 is remarkable for a visual splendour that depends in part on astonishingly painstaking special effects. Conceived by Kubrick - notoriously a perfectionist - and achieved by many technicians (pointing forward to the huge teams that would work on the special-effects blockbusters of a decade later), these mostly employ traditional techniques. Instead of such modern automatic matteing processes as the blue-screen system, hand-drawn mattes were produced for each effects frame at the cost of two years' time and much money, which is why this method is now rarely used. Innovative in another way is the setting of romantic MUSIC by Richard Strauss, Johann Strauss and Gyorgy Ligeti against much of the technological action, giving the paradoxical feeling of a cool romanticism and reinforcing the film's ambiguities. The present 141min version, cut from the 160min preview length, should be viewed in the full wide-screen 70mm format (2001 was one of the early films designed for Cinerama).The tension between Kubrick's love of oblique allusion and Clarke's open rationalism is resolved in the latter's book of the film, 2001: A Space Odyssey * (1968), whichwritten after the film's completion - provides clear explanations in Clarke's usual manner. He described his connection with the film in The Lost Worlds of 2001 (coll 1972), which also prints alternative script versions of key scenes. The film sequel, based on another Clarke novel, was 2010 (1984). [PN/JB]See also: COMICS; CONCEPTUAL BREAKTHROUGH; GODS AND DEMONS; HISTORY OF SF; INTELLIGENCE; LINGUISTICS; ORIGIN OF MAN; SPACE FLIGHT; SPACE HABITATS. 2010 Film (1984). MGM/UA. Prod/dir/photographed/written Peter Hyams, starring Roy Scheider, John Lithgow, Helen Mirren, Bob Balaban, Keir Dullea. Screenplay based on 2010: Odyssey Two (1982) by Arthur C. CLARKE. 116 mins. Colour.Nine years after the events of 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY (1968), a joint Soviet-US space mission in a Russian spacecraft is sent to recover information from the Discovery, which in the previous film had been left in orbit around Jupiter with its computer, HAL 9000, disabled. In a remarkably thin storyline the crew reach the Discovery and are contacted by the ALIEN monolith, their intercourse being mediated through the "ghost" of Dave Bowman (Dullea), who was last seen transfigured to a Star Child in 2001: "Something wonderful is going to happen." They then go home again, helped by the resuscitated HAL. Countless monoliths invest Jupiter and turn it into a second sun. Homo sapiens is given the Solar System to populate, except for Europa (one of Jupiter's moons), which is off limits, and on which a new monolith awaits . . .Devoid of both narrative thrust and any interaction of characters that transcends cliche, the film - despite some rather good space scenes - could never have succeeded. The old pulp-sf notion of Peace on Earth (where WWIII may be about to break out) being restored by the intervention of a godlike figure Out There is, to some viewers, insulting mysticism. The approach of Clarke and Hyams to the metaphysical is a lot less magical and delicate (and ambiguous) than was that of Clarke and Stanley KUBRICK. This time the alien superbeings pretty well hit us over the head with a truncheon. The film was awarded a 1985 HUGO. [PN] TYERS, KATHY Working name of US writer Kathleen Moore Tyers (1952- ). She began writing with her Firebird sequence,Firebird (1987) and Fusion Fire (1988), set in an interplanetary-romance venue replete with colourful planetary cultures, an overarching Federation, space invasions, palace politics and the discovery of budding PSI POWERS in the eponymous protagonist, a princess on an evil planet. Her route to psionic maturity and marital happiness with a telepathic intelligence officer from a neighbouring world is depicted with cluttered vigour. In Crystal Witness (1989) a female criminal, exiled to another world, must come triumphantly to terms with her new circumstances. In Shivering World (1991) yet another arrival into an alien world must deal with the TERRAFORMING problems of some settlers. KT is an active writer, and may settle into significant work, though Star Wars: The Truce at Bakura* (1994) does not, perhaps, mark the way forward. [JC] TYLER, THEODORE Pseudonym of US writer Edward William Ziegler (1930-1993), whose The Man whose Name Wouldn't Fit, or The Case of Cartwright-Chickering (1968) deals humorously with the computerized regimentation of a NEAR-FUTURE society. [JC] TYMN, MARSHALL B(ENTON) (1937- ) US editor, academic, sf/fantasy bibliographer and editor, whose work concentrates on the pedagogical implications of both sf and fantasy ( SF IN THE CLASSROOM). After a first, short, self-published bibliographical guide - A Directory of Science Fiction and Fantasy Publishing Houses and Book Dealers (1974 chap) - MBT issued a stream of helpful material, including A Research Guide to Science Fiction Studies: An Annotated Checklist of Primary and Secondary Sources (1977) with L.W. CURREY and Roger C. SCHLOBIN, Recent Critical Studies on Fantasy Literature: An Annotated Checklist (1978 chap), A Basic Reference Shelf for Science Fiction Teachers (1978 chap), The Science Fiction Reference Book (anth 1981) and its abridged successor, Science Fiction: A Teacher's Guide & Resource Book (anth 1988), and A Teacher's Guide to Science Fiction (1981 chap; exp 1982 chap). Of somewhat wider interest is the Year's Scholarship sequence of annotated checklists, appearing first in the journal EXTRAPOLATION, these instalments being incorporated in the book-form publication of the series, which comprised The Year's Scholarship in Science Fiction and Fantasy: 1972-1975 (1979) with Roger C. Schlobin, The Year's Scholarship in Science Fiction and Fantasy: 1976-1979 (1983) with Schlobin, The Year's Scholarship in Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror Literature: 1980 (1983), The Year's Scholarship in Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror Literature: 1981 (1984) and The Year's Scholarship in Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror Literature: 1982 (1985). After this last volume the series was again published in Extrapolation through coverage year 1987 (in 1988). A successor series, Year's Scholarship in Fantastic Literature and the Arts, began in 1990 in JOURNAL OF THE FANTASTIC IN THE ARTS, with coverage year 1988, but further work was hampered by the aftereffects of a serious auto accident in late 1989.Of even broader potential interest were several BIBLIOGRAPHIES of the genre itself, including: American Fantasy & Science Fiction: Toward a Bibliography of Works Published in the United States, 1948-1973 (1979); Index to Stories in Thematic Anthologies of SF (1979) with L.W. Currey, Martin H. GREENBERG and Joseph D. OLANDER; Fantasy Literature: A Core Collection and Reference Guide (1979) with Robert H. Boyer (1937- ) and Kenneth J. Zahorski (1939- ); Horror Literature: A Core Collection and Reference Guide (1981); Survey of Science Fiction Literature: Bibliographical Supplement (1982); and - perhaps most interesting of all his work - Science Fiction, Fantasy & Weird Fiction Magazines (1985) with Mike ASHLEY, a comprehensive history of magazines in the field, arranged as an encyclopedia. Though MBT's coverage of sf and fantasy has sometimes been partial, with some of his checklists eventually being supplanted by fuller works from Hal W. HALL, Robert REGINALD and others, MBT was for two decades an essential figure, and did much to focus the field for the academic world, not least through his editorial work with GREENWOOD PRESS. In 1990 he was given the PILGRIM AWARD for sf scholarship, his wife accepting on his behalf. [JC]See also: CRITICAL AND HISTORICAL WORKS ABOUT SF; FANTASY; SF MAGAZINES. TYSON, J(OHN) AUBREY (1870-1930) US writer whose The Scarlet Tanager (1922), set in 1930, rousingly puts a submarine pirate in opposition to a tough US intelligence agent. A UK agent, the actress of the title, also becomes involved. Sf devices include sonar and an invisible ray. [JC]Other work: The Barge of Haunted Lives (coll of linked stories 1923). |