Letters to Tiptree (Twelfth Planet Press), edited by Alisa Krasnostein and Alexandra Pierce, collects letters admiring “his” work written to “James Tiptree, Jr.” (Alice Sheldon) by other authors. Crosstalk (Ansible Editions), by David Langford, collects interviews conducted by Langford with various authors, and Conversations with Michael Chabon (University Press of Mississippi), by Brannon Costello, collects interviews with Michael Chabon.
Most of the rest of the year’s genre-oriented nonfiction books were studies of the work of genre authors, sometimes by the authors themselves. They included: The Outlandish Companion (Delacorte), by Diana Gabaldon; The Wheel of Time Companion: The People, Places, and History of the Bestselling Series (Tor), by Robert Jordan, Harriet McDougal, Alan Romanczuk, and Maria Simons; The Culture Series of Iain M. Banks (McFarland), by Simone Caroti; The Fellowship: The Literary Lives of the Inklings: J.R.R. Tolkien, C. S. Lewis, Owen Barfield, Charles Williams (Farrar, Straus and Giroux), by Philip Zaleski and Carol Zaleski; Lost Landscape: A Writer’s Coming of Age (HarperCollins), by Joyce Carol Oates; Lois McMaster Bujold (University of Illinois Press), by Edward James; Frederik Pohl (University of Illinois Press), by Michael R. Page; Ray Bradbury (University of Illinois Press), by David Seed; Coffin Nails (Charnel House), by Harlan Ellison; and The Brothers Vonnegut: Science and Fiction in the House of Magic (Farrar, Straus and Giroux), by Ginger Strand.
The rest of the books in this category fall into the peculiar category of nonfiction written about a fictional world: Darwin’s Watch: The Science of Discworld III (Anchor Books), by Terry Pratchett, Ian Stewart, and Jack Cohen; The Globe: The Science of Discworld II (Anchor Books), by Terry Pratchett, Ian Stewart, and Jack Cohen; and Judgment Day: The Science of Discworld IV (Random House), by Terry Pratchett, Ian Stewart, and Jack Cohen.
It was a decent although unspectacular year for art books. In spite of a change of editors and publisher, your best bet as usual was probably the latest in a long-running “best of the year” series for fantastic art, Spectrum 22: The Best in Contemporary Fantastic Art (Flesk Publications), now edited by John Fleskes, who took over for former editors Cathy Fenner and Arnie Fenner in 2014. This year there’s a companion volume of sorts, also a very good value in this category, the aforementioned Women of Wonder: Celebrating Women Creators of Fantastic Art (Underwood Books), edited by Cathy Fenner. Also good was The Art of Wayne Barlow (Titan), by Wayne Barlowe; The Fantasy Illustration Library, Volume One: Lands and Legends (Michael Publishing), by Malcolm R. Phifer and Michael C. Phifer; White Cloud Worlds, Volume Three: An Anthology of Science Fiction and Fantasy Artwork from Aotearoa New Zealand (Ignite), edited by Paul Tobin; Edward Gorey: His Book Cover Art and Design (Pomegranate), edited by Steven Heller; The Art of David Seeley (Insight Editions), by David Seeley; Portfolio: The Complete Various Drawings (Flesk Publications), by Mark Schultz; Julie Dillon’s Imagined Realms, Book 2: Earth and Sky (self-published), by Julie Dillon; Infected by Art, Volume Three (Hermes Press), edited by Todd Spoor and Bill Cox; Imagery from the Bird’s Home: The Art of Bill Carman (Flesk Publications), by Bill Carman; and The Book of Giants (Flesk Publications), by Petar Meseldžija. There didn’t seem to be anything else out this year, as far as I could tell.
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According to the Box Office Mojo site (www.boxofficemojo.com), eight out of ten of 2015’s top-earning movies were genre films of one sort or another (if you’re willing to count animated films and superhero movies as being “genre films”), and a case could be made that even the two nongenre films that pushed into the top ten, Furious 7 in fifth place and Spectre in tenth place, were fantasy films of some sort, since they certainly featured a lot of action sequences that defied the laws of physics and probability as we know them. Much the same was true of the eleventh-place film, Mission: Impossible—Rogue Nation. You have to go all the way down to twelfth place before finding a top-grossing nongenre movie that didn’t feature car chases, gun battles, and huge explosions, Pitch Perfect 2. After that, the genre films tend to take over again, with the superhero film Ant-Man coming in at thirteen, and the animated film Home coming in at fourteen. By my count, although I may have missed a few, fourteen out of the top twenty, and thirty-eight out of the one hundred top-grossing movies were genre films.
Once again, the highest-grossing film of the year, number one at the box office, was a genre film, Star Wars: The Force Awakens, which in spite of being released late in December has already earned a staggering $2,049,394,515. Nor is this anything new; in the past seventeen years, genre films have been number one at the box office fifteen out of seventeen times, with the only exceptions being American Sniper in 2014 and Saving Private Ryan in 1998. All the rest of the number ones have been genre movies, of one sort or another: SF, fantasy, superhero movies, animated films.
Rounding out the top ten box-office champs, in second place was an SF movie, Jurassic World (I say nothing of the likeliness of its science, but it’s SF; whether good SF or not is another matter); in third place, a superhero movie, Avengers: Age of Ultron; in fourth place, an animated film, Inside Out; in sixth place, another animated film, Minions; in seventh place, an SF film, The Hunger Games: Mockingjay—Part 2; in eighth place, another SF film, The Martian; and in ninth place, a live-action retelling of a fairy tale, Cinderella.
It’s worth noting that The Martian, a “serious” SF film rather than the usual sci-fi adventure (and, furthermore, one that made a good-faith attempt to actually get the science right rather than making it up as it went along), got more widespread critical respect than any other genre film of recent years, while still managing to earn a very respectable $623,657,016 worldwide, making it one of the few “serious” SF films of recent years to earn a substantial amount of money, along with 2013’s Gravity and 2014’s Interstellar. Mad Max: Fury Road, which finished in twenty-first place, also got a surprising amount of respect from critics.
According to Box Office Mojo, ten films made more than $200 million at the 2015 box office, and the year’s combined box-office receipts crossed 11 billion dollars for the first time ever. It’s worth noting, however, that these figures are top-heavy. While ten films made more than $200 million, many films made a great deal less; only ninety-five of the year’s films managed to make more than $25 million, which means that 34.5 of 2015’s total box office is attributable to the year’s top ten films. At the same time, the average ticket price climbed from $5.66 in 2001 to $8.61 in 2015. It seems clear that going to see a movie in the theater is a thing you reserve for special occasions, usually big-budget, special effects–heavy widescreen spectaculars that look best when seen on the big screen. The rest of the time, you stay home and wait for it to come out on on demand or Netflix or Hulu, or for the DVD to ship.
Perhaps because the immense, even frenzied, anticipation generated by Star Wars: The Force Awakens has left the fans in a condition of postcoital tristesse, there doesn’t seem to be a lot of buzz being generated by 2016’s upcoming movies, although there are, of course, many genre films in the pipeline. Most anticipation so far seems to have been generated by Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice and the upcoming Marvel Captain America: Civil War movie and Doctor Strange. (There’s no denying that, between movies and TV, this is the golden age of superheroes, with more superhero movies and TV programs being made than ever before—and more of them being considered to be among the year’s top-quality products as well). Few people seem all that excited by the news that there’s another Star Trek film coming up. Somewhere back in the distance are vague murmurings about new Avatar films, but that doesn’t seem to be generating a lot of buzz either.
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There’s no doubt at all that this is the Golden Age of SF and fantasy shows on television. I counted more than eighty of them available to watch in one form or another in 2015 (and no doubt I missed some), with at least another dozen or so coming along for 2016. There are probably more SF/fantasy shows available now than there were forensic/cop shows a few years back. And not only are ther
e a lot of shows, many of them are getting a surprising amount of critical respect and even mainstream acceptance far beyond the circle of those who usually deign to pay any attention to SF or fantasy—HBO’s Game of Thrones, for instance, not only won an Emmy this year for outstanding drama series, it won twelve in all, taking home more Emmys in a single year than any other show has ever done. SF and fantasy shows (to date, usually superhero shows) are also beginning to spread beyond television itself, being available only on Internet streaming video channels, including a couple of the year’s most popular programs.
With more than eighty shows on television (or not on television, in some cases), I obviously don’t have the space here to cover each of them in detail, so I’ll have to mostly concentrate on which seem to me (yes, arbitrary and subjective selection) among the most prominent.
As mentioned earlier, HBO’s Game of Thrones is probably still the most prestigious and financially successful fantasy show on television, although other cable shows garnered a fair amount of critical praise this year, including the SF miniseries The Man in the High Castle (based on the Hugo-winning novel by Philip K. Dick) and The Expanse (based on the space opera novels by James S. A. Corey), both of which have already been renewed for a second season, and a miniseries version of Childhood’s End (based on the famous novel by Arthur C. Clarke). On the fantasy side of the ledger, there were well-received miniseries versions of Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell (based on a novel by Susanna Clarke), and Outlander (based on a series of novels by Diana Gabaldon). Amazon’s streaming service gave us Daredevil, a gritty reimagining of the comic book that proved very popular, and, toward the end of the year, Jessica Jones, an even darker and more noirish take on a comic book character that proved as popular if not more so; both have already been renewed for second seasons. Coming up in 2016 are more Marvel shows available only on streaming video, such as Luke Cage and The Punisher.
Of the flood of shows that hit the air in 2014 and 2015, Sleepy Hollow, Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D, Agent Carter, Once Upon a Time, Arrow, The Flash, Gotham, Grimm, The Librarians, Person of Interest, The Originals, The 100, Orphan Black, Galavant, 12 Monkeys, Star Wars Rebels, Penny Dreadful, iZombie, Wayward Pines, Bitten, and The Last Man on Earth seem to have survived, while Beauty and the Beast, Constantine, Da Vinci’s Demons, Dominion, Haven, Gravity Falls, Legends, Atlantis, The Awesomes, The Messengers, Falling Skies, Under the Dome, The Whispers, Wicked City, and Extant have not. (No doubt there are many in both categories that I’ve missed or gotten wrong.)
Perennial favorites such as Doctor Who, The Walking Dead, Supernatural, Teen Wolf, The Vampire Diaries, Orphan Black, and The Simpsons continue to roll on as well.
Of the new shows debuting in 2015, the best received, or at least the ones that there was the most buzz about, seem to be Supergirl and The Muppets, and a retread versions of a once successful show, the X-Files. Other new shows include Legends of Tomorrow; Outcast; Limitless; Beowulf; Shadowhunters; Lucifer; Angel from Hell; Colony; Containment; Damien; Braindead; Emerald City; Hunters; Legion; You, Me, and the Apocalypse; Second Chance; and Preacher. How many of these will ultimately make it is anyone’s guess. Another retread of a once wildly popular show, Heroes Reborn, has already been canceled as I write these words in mid-January.
Coming up in 2016 are a miniseries version of The Shannara Chronicles, based on the novels by Terry Brooks; The Magicians, based on the novels of Lev Grossman; a TV version of Westworld; and miniseries versions of Neil Gaiman’s American Gods; Kim Stanley Robinson’s Red Mars; Len Deighton’s SS-GB; John Scalzi’s Old Man’s War; and Robert Holdstock’s Mythago Cycle, among others—although how many of these promised shows actually show up is also anyone’s guess.
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The Seventy-third Annual World Science Fiction Convention, Sasquan, was held in Spokane, Washington, at the Spokane Convention Center, from August 19 to August 23, 2015. The 2015 Hugo Awards, presented at Sasquan, were: Best Novel, The Three-Body Problem, by Cixin Liu, translated by Ken Liu; Best Novella, No Award; Best Novelette, “The Day the World Turned Upside Down,” by Thomas Olde Heuvelt, translated by Lian Belt; Best Short Story, No Award; Best Graphic Story, Ms. Marvel, “Volume 1: No Normal,” written by G. Willow Wilson, illustrated by Adrian Alphona and Jake Wyatt; Best Related Work, No Award; Best Professional Editor, Long Form, No Award; Best Professional Editor, Short Form, No Award; Best Professional Artist, Julie Dillon; Best Dramatic Presentation (short form), Orphan Black, “By Means Which Have Never Yet Been Tried,” written by Graham Manson; Best Dramatic Presentation (long form), Guardians of the Galaxy, written by James Gunn and Nicole Perlman; Best Semiprozine, Lightspeed; Best Fanzine, Journey Planet; Best Fancast, Galactic Suburbia Podcast; Best Fan Writer, Laura J. Mixon; Best Fan Artist, Elizabeth Leggett; plus the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer to Wesley Chu.
The 2014 Nebula Awards, presented at a banquet at the Palmer House Hilton in Chicago, Illinois, on June 7, 2015, were: Best Novel, Annihilation, by Jeff VanderMeer; Best Novella, Yesterday’s Kin, by Nancy Kress; Best Novelette, “A Guide to the Fruits of Hawai’i,” by Alaya Dawn Johnson; Best Short Story, “Jackalope Wives,” by Ursula Vernon; the Ray Bradbury Award to Guardians of the Galaxy; the Andre Norton Award to Love Is the Drug, by Alaya Dawn Johnson; the Solstice Award to Joanna Russ and Stanley Schmidt; the Kevin O’ Donnell Jr. Service to SFWA Award to Jefry Dwight; and the Damon Knight Memorial Grand Master Award to Larry Niven.
The 2015 World Fantasy Awards, presented at a banquet on November 8, 2015, in Saratoga Springs, New York, during the Forty-first Annual World Fantasy Convention, were: Best Novel, The Bone Clocks, by David Mitchell; Best Novella, We Are All Completely Fine, by Daryl Gregory; Best Short Fiction, “Do You Like to Look at Monsters?” by Scott Nicolay; Best Collection, Gifts for the One Who Comes After, by Helen Marshall and The Bitterwood Bible and Other Recountines, by Angela Slatter (tie); Best Anthology, Monstrous Affections, edited by Kelly Link and Gavin J. Grant; Best Artist, Samuel Araya; Special Award (Professional) to Sandra Kasturi and Brett Alexander Savory, for ChiZine Publications; Special Award (Nonprofessional) to Ray B. Russell and Rosalie Parker, for Tartarus Press. Plus Lifetime Achievement Awards to Ramsey Campbell and Sheri S. Tepper.
The 2014 Bram Stoker Awards, presented by the Horror Writers of America on May 9, 2015, during the Twenty-fifth Annual World Horror Convention in Atlanta, Georgia, were: Best Novel, Blood Kin, by Steve Rasnic Tem; Best First Novel, Mr. Wicker, by Maria Alexander; Best Young Adult Novel, Phoenix Island, by John Dixon; Best Long Fiction, “Fishing for Dinosaurs,” by Joe R. Lansdale; Best Short Fiction, “The Vaporization Enthalpy of a Peculiar Pakistani Family,” by Usman T. Malik and “Ruminations,” by Rena Mason (tie); Best Collection, Soft Apocalypses, by Lucy Snyder; Best Anthology, Fearful Symmetries, edited by Ellen Datlow; Best Nonfiction, Shooting Yourself in the Head for Fun and Profit: A Writer’s Survival Guide, by Lucy Snyder; Best Poetry Collection, Forgiving Judas, by Tom Piccirilli; Best Graphic Novel, Bad Blood, by Jonathan Maberry and Tyler Crook; Best Screenplay, The Babadook; Specialty Press Award to ChiZine Publications; Richard Laymon (President’s Award) to Tom Calen, Brock Cooper, and Doug Murano; the Mentor Award to Kathy Ptacek; plus Lifetime Achievement Awards to Tanith Lee and Jack Ketchum.
The 2015 John W. Campbell Memorial Award was won by The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August, by Claire North.
The 2015 Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award for Best Short Story was won by “The Man Who Sold the Moon,” by Cory Doctorow.
The 2015 Philip K. Dick Memorial Award was won by The Book of the Unnamed Midwife, by Meg Elison.
The 2015 Arthur C. Clarke award was won by Station Eleven, by Emily St. John Mandel.
The 2014 James Tiptree, Jr. Memorial Award was won by The Girl in the Road, by Monica Byrne and My Real Children, by Jo Walton (tie).
The 2015 Sidewise Award for Alternate History went to (Long Form): The Enemy Within, by Kristine Kathryn Rusch and “The Long Haul from the ANNALS OF
TRANSPORTATION, The Pacific Monthly, May 2009,” by Ken Liu.
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It was another year with a tragically high death rate in the SF field. Dead in 2014, 2015, or early 2016 were:
SIR TERRY PRATCHETT, 66, unquestionably the finest writer of comic fantasy in modern times and the second most best-selling author in the United Kingdom, behind only J. K. Rowling, author of the famous forty-volume Discworld series, featuring such titles as Night Watch, Guards! Guards!, Wyrd Sisters, and A Hat Full of Sky, as well as many stand-alone novels, more than seventy books in total; TANITH LEE, 67, highly prolific British writer of SF, fantasy, and horror, winner of the World Fantasy Award Lifetime Achievement Award as well as Lifetime Achievement Awards from World Horror and the Stoker Awards, author of novels such as The Silver Metal Lover, Death’s Master, and White as Snow, as well as huge amounts of short fiction collected in many collections such as Red as Blood, Tamastara, and The Gorgon and Other Beastly Tales; Hugo Award and World Fantasy Award-winning editor DAVID GEDDES HARTWELL, 74, one of the most influential and important editors in the history of SF, longtime Tor editor, founder of the Timescape SF line, cofounder of the World Fantasy Convention, editor of many important anthologies, including The World Treasury of Science Fiction, The Dark Descent, and The Science Fiction Century, a close personal friend for almost fifty years; SUZETTE HADEN ELGIN, 78, acclaimed SF writer, linguist, and poet, best known for the Native Tongue trilogy, Native Tongue, The Judas Rose, and Earthsong, as well as the Ozark Trilogy and the Coyote Jones series, also founded the Science Fiction Poetry Association; MELANIE TEM, 65, prolific horror/dark fantasy writer, winner of the World Fantasy Award, the Bram Stoker Award, and the International Horror Guild Award, author of novels such as Prodigal, Blood Moon, and The Wilding, as well as large amounts of short fiction, much of it in collaboration with husband Steve Rasnic Tem, who survives her; ROBERT CONQUEST, 98, Anglo-US author and historian, coeditor (with Kingsley Amis) of the long-running Spectrum series of SF reprint anthologies, as well as the author of an SF novel, A World of Difference (also with Kingsley Amis); PETER MALCOLM DE BRISSAC DICKINSON, 88, who wrote as PETER DICKINSON, author of the Changes trilogy, consisting of The Weathermonger, Heartsease, and The Devil’s Children, as well as much children’s and YA SF; GEORGE CLAYTON JOHNSON, 86, pioneering scriptwriter for many early SF television shows, including Star Trek and The Twilight Zone, cowriter of the movie Logan’s Run; TOM PICCIRILLI, 50, acclaimed horror and crime writer, winner of the Stoker Award, author of The Night Class, The Cold Spot, Dark Father, and many others; CAROL SEVERANCE, 71, SF writer, author of Reefsong and the Island Warrior trilogy; A. R. MORLAN, 58, horror and erotica writer, prolific at short lengths; DAVID RAIN, 54, who wrote SF as TOM ARDEN, author of the five-book Orokon epic fantasy series; CHARLES W. RUNYON, 87, SF writer, author of Pig World and others; GÜNTER GRASS, 87, German novelist, poet, and playwright, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature, whose works with fantastic elements include The Tin Drum and The Rat; E. L DOCTOROW, 84, renowned author of such novels as Ragtime, The March, and Billy Bathgate; JAMES SALTER, 90, novelist, best known for A Sport and a Pastime; RUTH RENDELL, 85, prominent mystery author, best known for the long-running Inspector Wexford series; OLIVER SACKS, 82, best known for his case studies of neurological disorders, such as The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, Awakenings, and Seeing Voices, works that had an impact on a lot of science fictional thinking; T. M. WRIGHT, 68, SF writer; DANIEL GROTTA, 71, photography expert, journalist, writer, author of the first biography of J.R.R. Tolkien, Architect of Middle Earth, a friend, survived by his widow, writer Sally Wiener Grotta; WOLFGANG JESCHKE, 78, German writer, editor, and anthologist; JÖEL CHAMPETIER, 57, French-Canadian SF writer and editor; MICHEL JEURY, 80, noted French author; JANNICK STORM, 76, Danish author, critic, and translator; Danish author INGE ERIKSEN, 80; Danish author, IB MELCHIOR, 97; JOHN TOMERLIN, 84, author of Run from the Hunter (with Charles Beaumont); PERRY A. CHAPDELAINE, 90, veteran SF writer, author of Swampworld West and The Laughing Terran; ROBERT E. MARGROFF, 85, author of several SF novels in collaboration with Piers Anthony; ALBERT J. MANACHINO, 90, writer; WALTER W. LEE, 83, writer and scholar; ELLEN CONFORD, 73, children’s and YA author; MARCIA BROWN, 96, Caldecott Medal–winning children’s author and illustrator; MOYRA CALDECOTT, 88, South African–born UK author of many children’s and YA fantasy books; CHUCK MILLER, 62, publisher, editor, and bookseller; FLORIN MANOLESCU, 72, Romanian literary critic, literary historian, and SF writer; R. A. MONTGOMERY, 78, writer and publisher; CHRIS GILMORE, 66, longtime reviewer for Interzone and freelance copy editor; ADRIENNE MARTINE-BARNES, 73, author, fan, and costumer; JON ARFSTROM, 87, veteran cover artist and illustrator who did much work for Weird Tales and other pulp magazines; GAIL J. BUTLER, 68, SF, fantasy, and wildlife artist; MELISSA MATHISON, 65, screenwriter best known for the screenplay for E. T.; LEONARD NIMOY, 83, TV and movie actor, world-famous for his role as the half-Vulcan Mr. Spock on the original Star Trek TV series, a role he reprised in many subsequent Star Trek TV spinoff series and movies; SIR CHRISTOPHER LEE, 93, movie actor, known for his recurrent roles in The Lord of the Rings, Star Wars, and The Hobbit movie franchises, as well as in The Wicker Man and many Hammer horror movies; DAVID BOWIE, 69, world-famous singer, songwriter, and film actor, perhaps best known to genre audiences for his song “Space Oddity” and for the album The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars, but also for his roles in films such as Labyrinth and The Man Who Fell to Earth; ALAN RICKMAN, 69, renowned British stage and film actor, best known to genre audience for his role as Severus Snape in the Harry Potter movies and for his role in Galaxy Quest, but also widely known for his roles in Die Hard, Dogma, Truly, Madly, Deeply, and many others; PATRICK MacNEE, 93, British actor best known for his role as the suave secret agent Steed on TV’s The Avengers; OMAR SHARIF, 83, movie actor best known for his roles in Doctor Zhivago and The 13th Warrior; MAUREEN O’HARA, 95, movie actress, whose most famous role may have been in The Quiet Man, but who might have been best known to genre audiences for roles in Miracle on 34th Street and Sinbad the Sailor; THEODORE BIKEL, 91, movie, stage, and television actor, best known on the stage for the lead role in Fiddler on the Roof, also appeared in movies such as The African Queen, The Enemy Below, and The Russians Are Coming, the Russians Are Coming, and also guest-starred on dozens of TV shows, including Star Trek: The Next Generation and Babylon 5; LOUIS JOURDAN, 93, movie actor best known to genre audiences for a role as Dracula in a TV production and in Year of the Comet; NIGEL TERRY, 69, movie actor, best known for roles as Arthur in Excalibur and young Prince John in The Lion in Winter; JACK LARSON, 87, television actor best known for playing Jimmy Olsen in television’s original The Adventures of Superman; ROGER REES, 71, television, stage, and movie actor, best known for continuing roles in TV’s Cheers and Warehouse 13 and for playing the Sheriff of Rottingham in Robin Hood: Men in Tights, known outside the field for stage show The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby; ROBERT LOGGIA, 85, movie and television actor perhaps best known for his role in Big, also appeared in Independence Day, Scarface, and TV’s The Sopranos; RON MOODY, 91, movie actor, best known for his role as Fagin in Oliver!, also appeared in The Mouse on the Moon and A Kid in King Arthur’s Court; DICK VAN PATTEN, 87, television and film actor best known for roles in Robin Hood: Men in Tights, High Anxiety, Westworld, and Spaceballs; DEAN JONES, 84, movie actor best known for The Love Bug and The Shaggy D.A.; GRACE LEE WHITNEY, 85, best known for her role as Yeoman Rand in the original Star Trek TV series; YVONNE CRAIG, 78, TV actor best known for her role as Batgirl in the sixties TV show Batman, also was in Star Trek and other shows; WES CRAVEN, 76, director and screenwriter, best known for A Nightmare on Elm Street and its many sequels; STAN FREBERG, 88, legendary creator of satirical radio and television commercials; PHIL AUSTIN, 74, one of the founding members of surreal and satirical comedy troop Firesign Theater, also a longtime fan; PEGGY RAE SAPIENZA, 70, longtime fan and prominent convention organizer, a friend; FR
ED DUARTE, Jr., 58, longtime fan and convention organizer; ART WIDNER, 98, longtime fan and fanzine editor; NED BROOKS, 77, longtime fan and fanzine editor; HAZEL HOLT, 87, mother of fantasy writer Tom Holt, and herself a published novelist; THOMAS E. GOONAN, 93, father of SF writer Kathleen Ann Goonan; JOHN C. SPRUILL, 100, father of SF writer Steven Spruill; JOHN RICHARD HORTON, 84, father of SF editor and critic Richard Horton; TONI EDELMAN, 79, mother of SF writer and editor Scott Edelman; SUZANNE GROSS REED, 82, mother of SF writer Marguerite Reed; MURRAY WAYNE PERSON, JR., 72, father of SF writer Lawrence Person; MILDRED (MILLIE) RAMBO, 92, mother of SF writer Cat Rambo; VIRGINIA SAWYER, 90, mother of SF writer Robert J. Sawyer; ALICE JANET BARTLETT EASTON, 95, mother of SF writer and critic Tom Easton; SARAH KROUPA, 33, daughter of writer Susan J. Kroupa; ANN MCKNIGHT, 92, widow of fan Jack McKnight, who handcrafted the first Hugo Awards.
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