The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror 22

by Stephen Jones

  Australian children’s and YA writer Patricia Wrightson OBE (Alice Patricia Furlonger) died on March 15, aged 88. Starting in 1955 with the award-winning The Crooked Snake, her twenty-seven novels (many of which drew upon Aboriginal mythology) include The Nargun and the Stars, The Ice Is Coming, The Dark Bright Water, Journey Beyond the Wind, A Little Fear, Moon-Dark and Balyet. She was awarded the Hans Christian Andersen Medal in 1986 for her lifetime achievement in writing for young people.

  Newberry Medal-winning American children’s author Sid Fleischman (Albert Sidney Fleischman), died on March 17, the day after he turned 90. His more than fifty books include The Ghost in the Noonday Sun, The Midnight Horse and The 13th Floor. He also wrote scripts for movies (as “A.S. Fleischman”) and TV.

  42-year-old British graphic artist John (“Johnny”) Hicklenton (aka “John Deadstock”) ended his life at Switzerland’s Dignitas clinic on March 19. He had been suffering from multiple sclerosis for more than a decade. Best known for his work on “Judge Dredd” in 2000 AD, he also illustrated Third World War, Nemesis the Warlock and Zombie World: Tree of Death. For the last six years of his life he was followed by a television crew that chronicled his battle with MS for the award-winning documentary Here’s Johnny.

  British children’s author William [James Carter] Mayne (aka “Martin Cobalt”/“Dynely James”) died on March 23, aged 82. Beginning in 1953, he wrote more than 100 books, including the “Earthfasts” time-slip trilogy (Earthfasts, Cradlefasts and Candlefasts), The Member for the Marsh, the Carnegie Medal-winning A Grass Rope, A Game of Dark, Hob and the Goblins, Skiffy, Kelpie and Low Tide, winner of the Guardian children’s fiction prize. As “Charles Molin” he also edited the 1967 anthology Ghosts, Spooks and Spectres. In 2004, Mayne was convicted of eleven counts of sexual abuse of young girls between 1960 and 1973. He was jailed for two-and-half years, banned from working with children, and put on the sex offenders’ register for life.

  77-year-old American comic book artist and editor Dick Giordano died of complications from pneumonia on March 27, while being treated for leukaemia. He joined Charlton Comics in 1952, eventually rising to Editor-in-Chief of the line by the mid-1960s, where he looked after such characters as “Captain Atom”, “Blue Beetle” and “Thunderbolt”. Giordano moved to DC Comics in 1967, editing such titles as Beware the Creeper, Bomba the Jungle Boy, Deadman, The Spectre, Blackhawk, The Witching Hour and Hawk and Dove. As an artist, he pencilled Neal Adams’ Green Lantern/Green Arrow series and inked Batman, Wonder Woman and many other titles. For Marvel he worked on the “Sons of the Tiger” series for The Deadly Hands of Kung Fu, as well as inking the first DC/Marvel crossover, Superman vs. the Amazing Spider-Man, in 1976, and the special Superman vs. Muhammad Ali two years later. As Vice President and Executive Editor at DC from 1983 to 1993 he oversaw the development of such post-modern re-imaginings as George Perez’s Crisis on Infinite Worlds, John Byrne’s The Man of Steel, Frank Miller’s The Dark Knight Returns and Alan Moore’s Watchmen. Giordano adapted Peter O’Donnell’s Modesty Blaise for DC in 1994, and he continued to contribute to various graphic projects up to the time of his death.

  American horror writer and psychologist Joel S. Ross died following a brief illness on April 2, aged 62. His one novel was Eye For an Eye (2004).

  Female Japanese manga artist and writer [Chiyoko] “Shio” Satō (aka “Sugar Salt”) died of brain cancer on April 4, aged 57. She was best known for The Dreaming Planet (Yumemiru Wakusei) and One Zero, and her short story “The Changeling”.

  Veteran American animator Tom Ray (Thomas Archer Ray) died on April 6, aged 90. He worked at Warner Bros., MGM and UPA, before returning to Warner Bros. in the late 1950s to work with Robert McKimson and Chuck Jones on numerous Bugs Bunny, Road Runner, Speedy Gonzalez, Foghorn Leghorn and Pepe Le Pew cartoon shorts. Ray’s many other credits include such TV specials and series as How the Grinch Stole Christmas! (narrated by Boris Karloff), The Night Before Christmas (1968), Horton Hears a Who! (1970), The Phantom Tollbooth, Heavy Traffic, Coonskin, The All-New Super Friends Hour, Scooby’s All Star Laff-A-Lympics, Bugs Bunny’s Howl-Oween Special, Challenge of the Super Friends, The Godzilla Show, Spider-Woman, Flash Gordon (1979–80), The Grinch Grinches the Cat in the Hat, Flash Gordon: The Greatest Adventure of All, Winnie the Pooh and a Day for Eeyore, Daffy Duck’s Movie: Fantastic Island, The Incredible Hulk (1982–83), Dungeons & Dragons (1983–85), Defenders of Earth, The Transformers, Dino-Riders, Daffy Duck’s Quackbusters, RoboCop (1988), Darkwing Duck, Tiny Toon Adventures, Animaniacs and The Real Adventures of Jonny Quest.

  American SF and wildlife artist John [Carl] Schoenherr, best known for his distinctive cover paintings on Astounding/Analog magazine during the 1950s and ’60s, died on April 8, aged 74. He started his career by contributing interior illustrations to Amazing in 1956, while still a student, quickly graduating to a full-time artist with work in Fantastic, Infinity and The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, along with numerous book covers. He won the Hugo Award in 1965 and the Caldecott Medal in 1988.

  Irish SF fan Peggy White, who was married to author James White from 1955 until his death in 1999, died the same day, aged 82.

  George H. (Harry) Scithers, the founding editor of Asimov’s Science Fiction magazine in 1977, died on April 19, aged 80. He had suffered a massive heart attack two days earlier. He began his career in the field in 1959 when he started editing the Hugo Award-winning sword and sorcery fanzine Amra, and he went on to also edit Amazing Stories from 1982 to 1986 and the revival of Weird Tales (with Darrell Schweitzer and John Betancourt) from 1987 to 2007. He compiled the anthologies The Conan Swordbook and The Conan Grimoire (both with L. Sprague de Camp) and The Conan Reader from material that appeared in Amra, along with eleven volumes of stories from Asimov’s, Tales from the Spaceport Bar and Another Round at the Spaceport Bar (both with Schweitzer), and two volumes of Cat Tales: Fantastic Feline Fiction. Scithers’ non-fiction books include The Con-Committee Chairman’s Guide, On Writing Science Fiction: The Editors Strike Back (with Schweitzer and John M. Ford) and Constructing Scientifiction and Fantasy (with John Ashmead and Schweitzer). He was also a short fiction writer and the founder of Owlswick Press. Scithers won two Hugo Awards for Best Professional Editor and the World Fantasy Life Achievement Award in 2002.

  77-year-old American scriptwriter and producer Myles Wilder, the son of B-movie director W. Lee Wilder and the nephew of Billy Wilder, died of complications from diverticulitis (a digestive disease) on April 20. He contributed the scripts and/or original story to his father’s productions Phantom from Space, Killers from Space, The Snow Creature, Manfish (aka Calypso), Fright and Bluebeard’s Ten Honeymoons, along with episodes of TV’s Mr Terrific, Get Smart, The Flying Nun, The Ghost & Mrs Muir and the cartoon series The Addams Family, Inch High Private Eye, Korg: 70,000 B.C., Partridge Family 2200 AD and Valley of the Dinosaurs. He retired from televison in 1994 and grew avocados in California.

  American paperback book cover and pin-up artist Ernest Chiriaka (Anastassios Kyriakakos) died on April 27, aged 96. His work appeared on everything from Gold Medal books to the Esquire Pin-up Calendars of the 1950s.

  Prolific Italian screenwriter Furio Scarpelli died of heart failure in April 28, aged 90. Nominated for three Oscars, his credits include Hercules (1958), The Witches (1967) and The Good, the Bad and the Ugly.

  American SF author Sharon Webb, who based much of her fiction on her work as a nurse, died of a heart attack on April 30, aged 74. She began her career writing for The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction (as “Rob Webb”), Asimov’s and other magazines, and her novels include the trilogy Earthchild, Earthsong and Ramsong, The Adventures of Terra Tarkington, R.N., Pestis 18 and The Half Life.

  British author Peter O’Donnell (aka “Madeleine Brent”), who created the comic-strip heroine Modesty Blaise for London’s Evening Standard newspaper in 1963, died of complications from Parkinson’s disease on May 3, aged 90. He continued the female adventurer’s exploits
in eleven novels and two short story collections, although two film adaptations (1966 and 2004) and a 1982 TV pilot didn’t do the character justice. The strip ran for 10,104 daily episodes, finally ending in 2001. O’Donnell also worked on the cartoon strips Belinda, For Better or Worse, Tug Transom, Romeo Brown, Eve and Garth, and he scripted the 1968 Hammer film The Vengeance of She.

  American script supervisor Robert Gary (aka “Bob Gary”), whose credits include The Magic Sword, What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?, The Outer Limits, The Strangler, Hush . . . Hush, Sweet Charlotte, Highway to Heaven and all four Star Trek TV series, died the same day, aged 90.

  Novelist and aviation author Robert J. Serling (Jerome Robert Serling), the older brother of Rod Serling, died of cancer on May 6, aged 92. He served as an aviation expert on his brother’s Twilight Zone episode “The Odyssey of Flight 33”, and his novels include Something’s Alive on the Titanic and the bestseller The President’s Plane is Missing, the latter made into a TV movie in 1973.

  Freelance journalist David Everitt died of complications from amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (aka Lou Gehrig’s disease) on May 7, aged 57. Between 1981 and 1985 he co-edited Fangoria magazine with Bob Martin. He also contributed articles and interviews to Starlog, Comics Scene and Entertainment Weekly, and wrote a number of reference books (several with his cousin, Harold Schecter).

  Legendary American artist Frank Frazetta (Frank Frazzetta) died of complications from a stroke on May 10, aged 82. Credited with popularising Robert E. Howard’s character “Conan” with his series of distinctive paperback covers for Lancer Books in the late 1960s and early ’70s, Frazetta began his career in the 1950s working on such comic strips as Flash Gordon, Buck Rogers, Thun’da King of the Congo, The Shining Knight, Ghost Rider, Johnny Comet and EC’s SF titles. For nearly a decade he also “ghosted” Al Capp’s Li’l Abner newspaper strip. In the 1960s Frazetta branched out into book covers (notably the works of Edgar Rice Burroughs), periodicals such as Creepy, Eerie, Playboy and Mad Magazine, calendars, record album sleeves, movie posters and merchandise. He also co-created the 1983 animated film Fire & Ice with Ralph Bashki. His work has been collected in numerous books and he won three Chesley Awards, the Hugo Award, the World Fantasy Award, the Spectrum Grandmaster Award and the World Fantasy Lifetime Achievement Award. Frazetta’s 1971 painting for Conan the Destroyer sold for $1.5 million at the San Diego Comic Convention. Following his death, Frazetta’s four children were embroiled in a very public family feud involving the artist’s body of work, estimated to be worth tens of millions of dollars.

  On May 16, Florida police discovered a blue van and an arm belonging to 55-year-old comic book writer Stephen J. Perry, the original scriptwriter on the 1980s cartoon TV show Thundercats. The writer had been missing from his home for more than two weeks under suspicious circumstances, and police confirmed that he was dead and a victim of homicide. One of his roommates was subsequently charged with first-degree murder. Perry contributed stories to such comics as T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents, Creepy (1985), Bizarre Adventures, Epic Illustrated and Star Comics, and he also worked on such animated TV series as Silverhawks, Spider-Man Unlimited, Godzilla: The Series, Gargoyles, Extreme Ghostbusters, Batman: The Animated Series, Conan and the Young Warriors and Starcom: The U.S. Space Force.

  64-year-old American author and technical writer George M. (McDonald) Ewing died of a massive heart attack in the parking lot of his workplace on May 18. His first story, “Black Fly”, appeared in Analog in 1974, and he contributed fiction to a number of other magazines, including Asimov’s.

  American comic book artist/writer and TV animation director Howard “Howie” Post died of complications from Alzheimer’s disease on May 21, aged 83. He began his career in comics in the mid-1940s with strips in such titles as Wonderland Comics, More Fun Comics and Comic Cavalcade. He then moved on to Atlas Comics, where he worked on such horror titles as Journey Into Mystery, Uncanny Tales and Mystery Tales. By the early 1960s Post had joined Harvey Comics, where he was drawing such characters as “Hot Stuff the Little Devil”, “Spooky the Tuff Little Ghost”, “Wendy the Good Little Witch” and the “Ghostly Trio”. During the mid-1960s he wrote and directed a number of cartoon shorts for Famous Studios, including Poor Little Witch Girl (1965), From Nags to Witches (1966) and Trick or Cheat (1966), all featuring the voice of Shari Lewis as “Honey Halfwitch”. Post then created the prehistoric teen comic Anthro for DC, which ran for six issues from 1968 to 1969, and drew the syndicated newspaper strip The Dropouts from 1968-81.

  Mathematician, puzzle-maker and author Martin Gardner died on May 22, aged 95. From 1977 to 1986 he wrote a column for Asimov’s magazine that featured puzzles in the form of short SF stories. Some of these were collected in Science Fiction Puzzle Tales and Puzzles from Other Worlds. An expert on the works of Lewis Carroll, Gardner also published The Annotated Alice (1960), while his short fiction was collected in The No-Sided Professor and Other Tales of Fantasy, Humor, Mystery and Philosophy. His 1999 novel Visitors from Oz: The Wild Adventures of Dorothy, the Scarecrow and the Tin Woodman was a sequel to L. Frank Baum’s classic series.

  American novelist Arthur Herzog III, whose first book was the 1974 killer bee novel The Swarm (filmed four years later), died of complications from a stroke on May 26, aged 83. Herzog’s other books include the novels Earthbound, Heat, IQ 83, Make Us Happy and Glad to Be Here, along with the short story collection Beyond Sci-Fi. He was married six times.

  Australian-born author Randolph Snow, whose novels include the post-apocalypse Tourmaline and the fantasy The Girl Green as Elderflower died on May 30, aged 74.

  62-year-old American dancer and choreographer Jeanne Robinson (Jeanne Marie Rubbicco), who collaborated with her husband, author Spider Robinson, on the Hugo and Nebula Award-winning Analog story “Stardance” (1977), died in Vancouver, Canada, the same day, of biliary tract cancer. The couple expanded their story into the 1979 novel Stardance and two sequels, Starseed and Starmind.

  American artist and author Ray Capella (Raul Garcia Capella) died of complications from Alzheimer’s disease on June 6, aged 77. His artwork was featured on numerous book and magazine covers, while his short fiction was included in the anthologies Warlocks and Warriors, The Year’s Best Fantasy Stories 3 and Swords Against Darkness 1, and collected in The Leopard of Poitain (1985).

  Pioneering American SF writer Frank K. (King) Kelly died on June 11, the day before his 96th birthday. His first story appeared in the pulp magazine Wonder Stories in 1931, and he published nine more stories until he stopped writing fiction four years later. Some of his work was collected in the 1979 collection Starship Invincible. Kelly also worked as a journalist and speechwriter for US President Harry S. Truman, and he co-founded the Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions and the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation. In 1996 he was inducted into the First Fandom Hall of Fame.

  American comics artist Al Williamson, who was taught art by Tarzan illustrator Burne Hogarth in the 1940s and became friends with Wally Wood and Roy Krenkel, died on June 13, aged 79. Best known for his contributions to the EC comics titles Weird Science and Weird Fantasy during the 1950s, he also worked on such strips as Flash Gordon, Secret Agent X-9/Secret Agent Corrigan and Star Wars. He was a contributor to Creepy and Eerie, and illustrated a number of Edgar Rice Burroughs books during the 1960s. In later years he worked primarily as an inker, first at DC Comics and then at Marvel.

  American editor, bibliographer, translator and critic Everett F. (Franklin) Bleiler, whose pioneering The Checklist of Fantastic Literature: A Bibliography of Fantasy, Weird and Science Fiction Books Published in the English Language was published in 1948, died the same day, aged 90. With T.E. Ditky he also co-edited the first annual “Year’s Best” anthology series, The Best Science Fiction Stories, which ran from 1949 to 1954. Bleiler began working at Dover Publications in 1955, where he edited numerous collections and anthologies of genre fiction, eventually becoming executive president in 1977. In 1986 he joined Charl
es Scribner’s Sons. His other reference works include Science Fiction Writers: Critical Studies of the Major Authors from the Early Nineteenth Century to the Present Day, Supernatural Fiction Writers: Fantasy and Horror, The Guide to Supernatural Fiction and, in collaboration with his son Richard Bleiler, the Hugo Award-nominated Science-Fiction: The Early Years and Science-Fiction: The Gernsback Years. Although written decades earlier, his novels Firefang: A Mythic Fantasy and The Invisible Murder were both finally published in 2006. Bleiler won the World Fantasy Special Award – Professional in 1978, the World Fantasy Life Achievent Award a decade later, and the 1984 SFRA Pilgrim Award. He was also presented with a First Fandom Award in 1994, and named a Living Legend by the International Horror Guild in 2004.

  Irish writer and businessman Stephen Gilbert, best known for his 1968 novel Ratman’s Notebooks, which was the basis for the films Willard (twice) and Ben, died on June 23. He was 97, and his other SF and fantasy novels include Landslide, Monkeyface and The Burnaby Experiments: An Account of the Life and Work of John Burnaby and Marcus Brownlow.

  Eccentric and reclusive author and artist F. (Fergus) Gwynplaine “Froggy” MacIntyre (aka “Timothy C. Allen”, “Paul G. Jeffrey” and “Oleg V. Bredikhine”) apparently committed suicide on the morning of June 25 by setting fire to four different areas of the one-bedroom Brooklyn apartment where he had lived for the past twenty-five years. The intense fire vapourised the writer’s belongings and his body was burned beyond recognition. He was thought to be aged around 59 or 60. MacIntyre was remarkably secretive about his past and his identity, claiming he was born a twin with minor deformities in Perthshire, Scotland, and subsequently sent to live in Australia by his parents. In an obituary published in the June Locus, he revealed that George Scithers (who died in April) had been his editor, agent and mentor. MacIntyre’s books include the 1994 steampunk novel The Woman Between the Worlds, the Tom Swift YA adventure The DNA Disaster (under the house name “Victor Appleton”) and a collection of verse, MacIntyre’s Improbable Bestiary: Perverse Verse & Odious Odes. His short fiction was published in such magazines as Asimov’s Science Fiction, Amazing Stories and Weird Tales, and he was a regular contributor to the “Curiosities” column in the back of The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction. MacIntyre admitted to inventing details of his own biography, but also claimed that, while living in the UK during the 1960s, he published SF and horror for Badger Books under various names and worked as a crew member on such TV series as The Prisoner and The Champions. He also reportedly wrote part of Jerzy Kosinski’s 1984 novel Pinball. His story “The Clockwork Horror” appeared in The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror Volume Eighteen. In 2000 MacIntyre was found guilty of a third-degree misdemeanour assault on a female neighbour. Depressed about losing his job as a night printer, he seemed to leave an enigmatic farewell message in e-mails to friends, on his website (where he claimed to be moving back to Australia), and in an online review of the restored version of Metropolis, in which he said “All good things come to a happy ending”. His body was eventually positively identified using DNA testing.