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I'm baffled that Alan Nourse is refered to as "a mysterious writer by the name of Alan E. Nourse"-- mysterious? Nourse?

There's nothing mysterious about Alan Nourse, who is pretty well documented. He was a quite popular writer mostly of juveniles (*) back in the 50s and 60s.

Ah, I'd forgotten that he wrote "A Tiger by the Tail"... Cool story, that.

He also at one time wrote a medical column for one of the glossy magazines. One of the "Womens' Magazines", I think.

(Paging Doctor Google....) Yep. "Good Housekeeping."

I'm baffled that Alan Nourse is refered to as "a mysterious writer by the name of Alan E. Nourse"-- mysterious? Nourse?

There's nothing mysterious about Alan Nourse, who is pretty well documented. He was a quite popular writer mostly of juveniles (*) back in the 50s and 60s.

The only mysterious thing was how his name was pronounced: "nurse." Which was apparently amusing, since he interned with a doctor whose family name was "doctor", leading to paging over the intercom of "Paging Doctor Doctor, Doctor Nurse."

--

  footnote: a classification that no longer exists. "Juveniles" has now become either "young adult" or "middle grade".

Slow glass

On the Beach is considered sf by The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction.

"Shute's two Australian sf novels remain his best known works of genre interest."
...
"Much closer to the bone is the famous On the Beach (1957), adapted for BBC Radio as On the Beach (1957) and filmed as On the Beach (1959), a Near Future tale (see Holocaust, Post-Holocaust) in which nuclear World War Three eliminates all life in the northern hemisphere, as confirmed by an Australian submarine sent north to trace a mysterious radio message, but finding the Pacific Rim, including San Francisco (see California), entirely desolated."

It's a story concerning the future and the end of the world, clearly sf.

See the whole entry at: http://www.sf-encyclopedia.com...

There is also an interesting entry on Speculative Fiction.

Forgot all the specifics, what you need is this:

The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction

I own a copy of the 2nd edition and it is an amazing resource. If you ever run out of things to read then you just need to open a random page and you should find some author you never heard of worth a look...

The 3rd editon is in Beta and viewable for free here

And this is a major difference. The SF Encyclopedia sucks in many, many ways but at least if you look up (say) an author you get a mainstream overview of his writing (I suppose "critical commentary" is the right term). With the WP you get hard facts but still can't tell if this might be an author worth reading.

Hmm, when comparing David Weber's WP entry with the SF enc. entry, I can't share your point of view.

Take a look at WP's article on Robert Heinlein and then at SFE's. Both have useful material. [...] The SFE article is more useful if you're looking for critical commentary, since POV (point of view) is verboten on Wikipedia.

And this is a major difference. The SF Encyclopedia sucks in many, many ways but at least if you look up (say) an author you get a mainstream overview of his writing (I suppose "critical commentary" is the right term). With the WP you get hard facts but still can't tell if this might be an author worth reading.

The SFE article on Theodore Sturgeon was excellent.

"and T'ealc, a member of a genetically engineered warrior race who serve the Goa'uld"

http://sf-encyclopedia.com/entry/stargate_sg-1
But I agree that the characters should get their own articles. I mean they could have at least mentioned WHAT that genetically engineered warrior race was called.

Take a look at WP's article on Robert Heinlein and then at SFE's. Both have useful material. The WP article has photos, which the SFE article lacks. The WP article has many of the problems common to WP articles, including a dopey list at the end ("Inventions presaged" include the hand dryer!). The SFE article is more useful if you're looking for critical commentary, since POV (point of view) is verboten on Wikipedia. A big difference, of course, is that WP is free information, whereas SFE is only free-as-in-speech.

This doesn't really look like 20 years of effort. Lot's of holes.

I only found two.

But on a more serious note, I looked up Stanislaw Lem expecting to find a footnote and was instead fairly impressed with the depth, cross references and quality. Perhaps this caters to old school sci-fi? Mind filling us in on what's missing?

There's even a short but accurate entry for Kilgore Trout.

This doesn't really look like 20 years of effort. Lot's of holes.

I only found two.

But on a more serious note, I looked up Stanislaw Lem expecting to find a footnote and was instead fairly impressed with the depth, cross references and quality. Perhaps this caters to old school sci-fi? Mind filling us in on what's missing?

There's even a short but accurate entry for Kilgore Trout.

This doesn't really look like 20 years of effort. Lot's of holes.

I only found two.

But on a more serious note, I looked up Stanislaw Lem expecting to find a footnote and was instead fairly impressed with the depth, cross references and quality. Perhaps this caters to old school sci-fi? Mind filling us in on what's missing?

There's even a short but accurate entry for Kilgore Trout.

This doesn't really look like 20 years of effort. Lot's of holes.

I only found two.

But on a more serious note, I looked up Stanislaw Lem expecting to find a footnote and was instead fairly impressed with the depth, cross references and quality. Perhaps this caters to old school sci-fi? Mind filling us in on what's missing?

There's even a short but accurate entry for Kilgore Trout.

Who cares about deletionists? They're the last thing we need.

http://sf-encyclopedia.com/entry/notes_on_content

Seems to just be a long list bragging about all the stuff they deleted. Golf clap for them. I'm so glad I won't be able to find stuff I'm trying to find, just what I always wanted in a website.

Bye bye guys don't forget to rm -Rf / on the way out.