by Неизвестный
American screenwriter, producer and director Mike Gray (Harold Michael Gray) died of heart failure the same day, aged seventy-seven. He began his career filming TV commercials and documentaries in the early 1970s before going on to script The China Syndrome, Wavelength (which he also directed) and an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation (he produced the 1988–89 season). Gray also produced and developed the 1986–87 TV series Starman, based on the movie of the same name.
American comic book artist and illustrator Dan Adkins (Danny L. Adkins) died on May 3, aged seventy-six. Beginning his career in such SF fanzines as Sata, Amra, Vega and Xero, he joined the Wally Wood Studio in 1964 as Wood’s assistant, working on T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents and Warren’s Creepy and Eerie. Along with work for Marvel (notably Doctor Strange), DC Charlton, Dell, Harvey and other comics publishers, Adkins also contributed art to Amazing Stories, Fantastic, Galaxy, Infinity, Science-Fiction Adventures, Worlds of If, Amra, Monster Parade and Famous Monsters of Filmland.
Scottish-born author Deborah J. Miller died of cancer on May 6, aged fifty. Her novels include Swarmthief’s Dance, Swarmthief’s Treason and (as “Miller Lau”) the “Last Clansman” trilogy: Talisker, Dark Thane and Lore Bringer. Miller was also the principal founder of the David Gemmell Awards for Fantasy.
Marion Sturgeon (Marion Teresa McGahan), the third wife of late SF and fantasy author Theodore Sturgeon, died on May 19, aged eighty-three. The couple separated in the mid-1960s after having four children, but they never divorced.
Described by the New York Times Magazine as “one of American literature’s most distinctive and undervalued voices,” SF and fantasy author Jack Vance (John Holbrook Vance) died in his sleep on May 26. He was ninety-six. Vance published his first story, “The World-Thinker” in Thrilling Wonder Stories (1945), and went on to write some of the most influential books in the genre, including The Dying Earth, Big Planet, The Languages of Pao, The Eyes of the Overworld, The Dragon Masters, the “Demon Princes” quintet, The Last Castle, Madouc, the “Lyonesse” and “Cadwal Chronicles” trilogies, and many others. He also had eleven mysteries published under his birth name and three as “Ellery Queen”. Vance won a World Fantasy Award, a Nebula Award, an Edgar Award, and three Hugo Awards (the third for his 2009 autobiography This is Me, Jack Vance!), and he received the World Fantasy Life Achievement Award and the SFWA Grand Master Award. He spent his later years creating jazz music.
Veteran American anthologist and book collector Victor S. Ghidalia died on May 28, aged eighty-seven. During the late 1960s and ’70s he edited such anthologies as The Little Monsters and More Little Monsters (both with Roger Elwood), Beware the Beasts and Beware More Beasts, The Mummy Walks Among Us, Horror Hunters, Satan’s Pets, Young Demons, Eight Strange Tales, Wizards and Warlocks, The Venus Factor, Dracula’s Guest and Other Stories, The Oddballs, Androids, Time Machines and Blue Giraffes, The Devil’s Generation, Gooseflesh!, Nightmare Garden and Feast of Fear. While working at his day job with ABC-TV, Ghidalia was involved in turning Richard Matheson’s story “Mother by Protest” into Lorimar Productions’ 1974 ABC Movie of the Week, The Stranger Within, starring Barbara Eden and George Grizzard.
American author, sociologist and Catholic priest Andrew M. (Moran) Greeley died on May 29, aged eighty-five. In 2008 he suffered a skull fracture and serious brain injury when he was thrown into the street after his coat was caught in the door of a departing taxi. Best known for his mystery and detective novels, he also wrote SF and fantasy, including The Magic Cup, God Game, The Final Planet, Angel Fire and its sequel Angel Light. Greeley also co-edited the anthology Sacred Visions with Michael Cassutt.
Publisher, author and editor Richard Ballantine, the son of SF publishers Ian and Betty Ballantine, died the same day, aged seventy-two.
American playwright and novelist David Rogers died of cardiac arrest on June 5, aged eighty-five. A former actor, his stage adaptations include Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World and musical versions of J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit, William Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and Daniel Keyes’ Flowers for Algernon (as the Tony-nominated Charlie and Algernon).
American author John Boyd (Boyd Bradfield Upchurch) died on June 8, aged ninety-three. His first novel, The Last Starship from Earth, was published in 1968, and he went on to write twelve more books, mostly SF, including The Rakehells of Heaven, Sex and the High Command, The Organ Bank, The Gorgon Festival, The Doomsday Gene and The Girl with the Jade Green Eyes. His one SF story, “The Girl and the Dolphin”, appeared in Galaxy (1973).
Just two months after publicly announcing his condition was terminal, Scottish author Iain [Menzies] Banks died of cancer on June 9, aged fifty-nine. In tribute, the city of Edinburgh held a season of events over the summer of 2013 in celebration of his work. Banks’ debut novel, The Wasp Factory (1984), was a literary bestseller, and he followed it with Walking on Glass, The Bridge, A Song of Stone and Canal Dreams, all containing elements of fantasy or horror. Other novels include Espedair Street, The Crow Road (filmed for TV), Complicity and The Quarry. He was credited as “Iain M. Banks” on such SF titles as Consider Phlebas, The Player of Games, Use of Weapons, Feersum Endjinn and Inversions, amongst others. Before his death, Banks was announced as a Guest of Honour at the 2014 World Science Fiction Convention in London, and he had an asteroid named after him on June 23, 2013.
New Zealand-born Michael Baigent (Michael Barry Meehan), who co-wrote the speculative history The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail with Richard Leigh and Henry Lincoln, died of a brain haemorrhage in Brighton, England, on June 17. He was sixty-five. When Baigent and Leigh sued author Dan Brown for freely using elements of their book in The Da Vinci Code, they lost the case and were ordered by the High Court to pay £3 million in legal costs.
American author [Harold] Parke Godwin died in a care facility on June 19, aged eighty-four. He made his genre debut in the 1977 anthology Brother Theodore’s Chamber of Horrors, and some of his short stories were collected in the World Fantasy Award-nominated The Fire When it Comes. With Marvin Kaye he collaborated on the novels The Masters of Solitude, Wintermind and A Cold Blue Light, and his other works include A Memory of Lions, A Truce with Time: A Love Story with Occasional Ghosts, The Tower of Beowulf, Lord of Sunset and the “Snake Oil Wars”, “Firelord” and “Robin Hood” sequences. He published two books as “Kate Hawks” and edited Invitations to Camelot: An Arthurian Anthology of Short Stories. Godwin’s story “Influencing the Hell Out of Time and Teresa Golowitz” was adapted into a 1985 episode of TV’s The Twilight Zone, and he was a Guest of Honour at the 2011 World Fantasy Convention.
Danish-born Kim Thompson, co-publisher of comics imprint Fantagraphics Books (with Gary Groth), died of lung cancer the same day, aged fifty-six. He was also involved with The Comics Journal magazine and edited more than 200 issues of the bi-weekly Amazing Heroes. Thompson was instrumental in bringing European comics and graphic novels to America, and he received the Inkpot Award in 2001.
Edgar Vernon McKnight, Jr, the reviews editor for the journal of the Science Fiction Research Association, died of ALS on June 22, aged fifty.
Genre giant Richard [Burton] Matheson died on June 23, aged eighty-seven. His many novels include such classics as I am Legend, The Shrinking Man, A Stir of Echoes, Hell House, Bid Time Return and What Dreams May Come (all filmed). His short fiction is collected in numerous volumes, including Born of Man and Woman: Tales of Science Fiction and Fantasy, Third from the Sun, The Shores of Space, Shock!, Shock II, Shock Waves and the World Fantasy Awardwinning Richard Matheson: Collected Stories, amongst many others. His stories “Duel”, “Steel”, “The Box”, “No Such Thing as a Vampire”, “First Anniversary” and “Dance of the Dead” were all filmed, and he scripted fourteen episodes of the original The Twilight Zone series (including the classic “Nightmare at 20,000 Feet”). Matheson also scripted the movies The Fall of the House of Usher (1960), Master of the World, Pit and the Pendulum (1961), Tales of Terror, Night of the Eagle (with
Charles Beaumont, based on Fritz Leiber’s Conjure Wife), The Raven, The Comedy of Terrors, The Last Man on Earth (as “Logan Swanson”), Hammer’s Fanatic and The Devil Rides Out (aka The Devil’s Bride), De Sade, The Night Stalker, The Night Strangler, Dying Room Only, Scream of the Wolf (based on “The Hunter” by David Case), Dracula (1973), The Stranger Within, Trilogy of Terror and Trilogy of Terror II (both with William F. Nolan), The Strange Possession of Mrs. Oliver, Dead of Night, The Martian Chronicles (based on the stories by Ray Bradbury), Jaws 3-D (with son Richard Christian Matheson), The Dreamer of Oz and Twilight Zone: Rod Serling’s Lost Classics. He also wrote episodes of TV’s Thriller (August Derleth’s “The Return of Andrew Bentley”), The Alfred Hitchcock Hour, Star Trek (“The Enemy Within”), The Girl from U.N.C.L.E., Journey to the Unknown, Night Gallery, Circle of Fear and Amazing Stories. Matheson received Lifetime Achievement Awards from the World Fantasy Convention and Horror Writers Association, and was named World Horror Grand Master and International Horror Guild Living Legend. Despite his death, he remained an honorary Guest of Honour at the 2013 World Fantasy Convention in Brighton, England.
Len Leone (Leonard P. Leone, Sr), the innovative art director at Bantam Books from 1955–84, died on July 1, aged ninety-two. Leone used top illustrators such as Bob Larkin, Fred Pfeiffer, Boris Vallejo, Lou Feck, Robert Maguire, Dean Cornwall, John Berkely, Vincent DiFate, Ron Lesser and many others on Bantam’s paperbacks, and he was responsible for hiring James Bama to illustrate the covers for the Doc Savage reprint series, for which Leone designed the distinctive logo and cover lettering.
Italian screenwriter Vincenzo Cerami died on July 17, aged seventy-two. He wrote Pinocchio (2002) starring Roberto Benigni and was assistant director on the “La Terra vista dalla luna” segment of The Witches (1967). Cerami was married to actress Mimsy Farmer from 1970–86.
British artist David Fairbrother-Roe, who painted the covers for some of Anne McCaffrey’s early “Dragon” books, died of cancer on July 21. He also produced covers for C. J. Cherryh, John Barth and George Macbeth, along with record sleeves for Nazareth and Jon Anderson, amongst others. For the last twenty years of his life, Fairbrother-Roe became a recluse, remaining in his home in the Welsh coastal village of Ferryside.
American Tolkien scholar and specialist in mythology and Finnish folklore, Anne C. Petty died of cancer the same day. Her nonfiction books include One Ring to Bind Them All: Tolkien’s Mythology, Tolkien and the Land of Heroes and Dragons of Fantasy, and her short story “The Veritas Experience” was published in The Best Horror, Fantasy & Science Fiction of 2009. Petty was also the author of the dark fantasy/horror novels The Thin Line Between, Shaman’s Blood and The Cornerstone.
British author, journalist and musician Mick Farren (Michael Anthony Farren) died of a heart attack on July 27, after collapsing on stage while performing with a new lineup of his anarchistic rock band The Deviants in London. He was sixty-nine. Farren began writing SF in 1973 with The Texts of Festival, and his books include The Quest for the DNA Cowboys, The Feelies, The Long Orbit, Armageddon Crazy, Necrom, The Time of Feasting, Kindling and Conflagration, amongst others. Some of his short fiction is collected in Zones of Chaos, and his rock albums include the 1978 release Vampires Stole My Lunch Money.
Egyptian-born graphic designer J. C. (Jean-Claude) Suares died of complications from a bacterial heart infection in New Jersey on July 30, aged seventy-one. As well as working for the New York Times, the New Yorker and Publishers Weekly, Suares redesigned the look of Variety in the 1990s. His books include Rocketship: An Incredible Voyage Through Science Fiction and Science Fact, Alien Creatures and Fantastic Planets.
Welsh-born scriptwriter, author and playwright Jon [Ewbank] Manchip White died in Knoxville, Tennessee, on July 31, aged eighty-nine. After appearing in the 1951 BBC production A Tomb with a View, he switched to co-writing such films as Hammer’s The Camp on Blood Island, The Day of the Triffids (uncredited) and Crack in the World, along with episodes of The Avengers, Suspense and Witch Hunt. White’s play The Obi became the basis of the 1966 voodoo movie Naked Evil, and he also scripted radio versions of Journey to the Centre of the Earth (1949) and The War of the Worlds (1950). His sixteen novels include Nightclimber, The Game of Troy and The Garden Game, while some of his short fiction was collected in Whistling Past the Churchyard: Strange Tales from a Supernatural Welshman.
The death was reported on August 2 of sixty-six-year-old American SF writer Patricia [Marie] Anthony. Her idiosyncratic novels include Cold Allies, Brother Termite, Conscience of the Beagle, Happy Policeman, Cradle of Splendor, God’s Fires and Flanders. Some of Anthony’s short fiction is collected in Eating Memories.
British author Douglas R. (Rankine) Mason, who published numerous SF books under the name “John Rankine”, died on August 8, aged ninety-four. Best known for his “Dag Fletcher” space opera series, which began in New Writings in SF 1 (1964), his many other books include One is One, The Plantos Affair, The Ring of Garamas and several Space: 1999 tie-in novels.
American Egyptologist and author Barbara Mertz (Barbara Louise Gross), who also wrote under the names “Elizabeth Peters” and “Barbara Michaels”, died the same day, aged eighty-five. Best known for her historical mysteries and the “Amelia Peabody” series about a Victorian Egyptologist, her many novels include Sons of the Wolf, The Crying Child, Witch, Wait for What Will Come, The Walker in Shadows, The Wizard’s Daughter, Someone in the House, The Grey Beginning, Stitches in Time, The Last Camel Died at Noon and Devil May Care. Some of her short fiction is collected in Other Worlds.
American writer and editor Amy [Deborah] Wallace, the daughter of novelists Irving Wallace and Sylvia Wallace (both of whom she collaborated on books with), died of a heart condition on August 10, aged fifty-eight. She wrote the erotic novel Desire and co-compiled The Book of Lists: Horror (with Del Howison and Scott Bradley). Her affair with Carlos Castaneda was detailed in her 2003 memoir, Sorcerer’s Apprentice: My Life with Carlos Castaneda.
Iconic bestselling American author Elmore [John] Leonard [Jr] died on August 20, three weeks after suffering a stroke. Best known for his crime and Western novels, Touch (1987) was about a man with healing powers and A Coyote’s in the House (2004) was a YA animal fantasy. He was named Grand Master by the Mystery Writers of America, and received a National Book Award Medal for Distinguished Contribution in 2012.
Nick Robinson (Nicholas John Winwood Robinson), the founder and publisher of UK imprint Robinson, died of cancer on August 30, aged fifty-eight. He began his career as an assistant editor at the arts magazine Apollo and worked at publishers Chatto & Windus and Breslich and Foss before starting up Robinson Publishing in 1983. Always an innovative publisher and fan of genre fiction, he was soon working with Mike Ashley and Ramsey Campbell, and it goes without saying that Best New Horror would not exist without his continued support over the years and the success of his “Mammoth” line. In 1999 he was given the opportunity to merge the company with Britain’s oldest independent publisher, Constable & Co., creating Constable & Robinson. The new company thrived thanks to its self-help books and early move into electronic publishing, and it won both Independent Publisher of the Year and the IPG Digital Publishing awards in 2012. From 2009 onwards, Robinson gradually stepped back from his day-to-day duties, becoming Chairman of the company. Following his death, Constable & Robinson was sold to Little, Brown.
Acclaimed Irish poet Seamus [Justin] Heaney, who published a new translation of Beowulf in 1999, died the same day, aged seventy-four. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1995.
SF legend Frederik [George] Pohl [Jr] died on September 2, aged ninety-three. As a fan, editor and author, he shaped science fiction for more than seven decades. From 1939–43 he edited the pulp magazines Astonishing Stories and Super Science Stories before becoming a major author in the 1950s. He collaborated with C. M. Kornbluth on The Space Merchants, Search the Sky, Gladiator-at-Law and Wolfbane, and Jack Williamson on a number of titles, inclu
ding the popular “Undersea” and “Starchild” trilogies. Pohl’s many other titles include Slave Ship, Drunkard’s Walk, A Plague of Pythons, Man Plus, the multi-award-winning Gateway, Beyond the Blue Event Horizon, Heechee Rendezvous, The Gateway Trip, JEM and The Coming of the Quantum Cats. His short fiction is collected in more than twenty volumes. During the 1950s he edited Ballantine’s original Star Science Fiction anthologies and the following decade he was editor of the digest magazines Galaxy and If. He was also a SF editor at publishers Ace and Bantam. A winner of the Hugo, Nebula, Campbell Memorial and American Book awards, he was president of the SFWA from 1974–76, and named SFWA Grand Master in 1992. Pohl’s five wives included Judith Merril and Elizabeth Anne Hull, and his memoir The Way the Future Was was published in 1978.
British screenwriter and playwright Brian Comport, whose credits include such early 1970s horror films as Mumsy, Nanny, Sonny & Girly, The Fiend (aka Beware My Brethren) and The Asphyx, died on September 5, aged seventy-five.
American author A. (Ann) C. (Carol) Crispin, best known for her tie-in books, died of cancer on September 6, aged sixty-three. She collaborated with Andre Norton on the “Witch World” novel Gryphon’s Eyrie and created the “StarBridge” space opera series, comprising a solo novel and six additional collaborations with other authors. Storms of Destiny was supposed to be the first in a new urban fantasy series. Her tie-ins included Star Trek and V novels, the popular Stars Wars “Han Solo Trilogy”, and various movie novelizations and spinoffs (including Pirates of the Caribbean). Co-founder (with Victoria Strauss) of the watchdog group Writer Beware, she was named Grand Master by The International Association of Media Tie-In Writers in 2013.
Sixty-six-year-old convention organizer, writer and editor Bob Booth died of lung cancer in a hospice the same day. As “Robert E. Booth” he published some short stories in the 1980s and ’90s, but he will be remembered as one of the founding committee of the World Fantasy Convention in 1975 and co-founder of Necon (the Northeastern Writers’ Convention) with his wife Mary in 1980. Booth edited The Big Book of Necon in 2009.