Best New Horror: Volume 25 (Mammoth Book of Best New Horror)

by Неизвестный

  American screenwriter and producer Lou (Louis) Morheim died on September 8, aged ninety-one. He was executive producer on The Outer Limits (1964), and his other TV credits include the pilots for The Unknown and The Immortal. He also produced the TV movies Madame Sin, Scream Pretty Peggy and Devil Dog: The Hound of Hell. Morheim scripted The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms and a number of episodes of the 1954–55 TV series Sherlock Holmes starring Ronald Howard as Holmes.

  American scriptwriter and producer Don Nelson (Donald Richard Nelson) died of an aortic aneurysm and complications from Parkinson’s disease on September 10, aged eighty-six. He wrote episodes of the TV shows The Ghost & Mrs. Muir, The ABC Saturday Superstar Movie (“The Mini-Munsters”) and Herbie the Love Bug (he was also supervising producer), along with Disney’s Herbie Goes to Monte Carlo, The Munsters’ Revenge (which he also co-produced) and the animated special The Jetsons Meet the Flinstones.

  Artist Joan Hanke-Woods (Delphyne Joan Woods) was found dead in her Chicago apartment on September 16. She was sixty-seven. Nominated for the Best Fan Artist Hugo Award every year from 1980–86, she won in 1986 and her work appeared in such magazines as Galaxy, Fantastic Films and The Comics Journal. Hanke-Woods was a Guest of Honour at WindyCon in 1984.

  Horror author Gary [Phil] Brandner died of cancer of the oesophagus on September 22, aged eighty. Best known for The Howling werewolf trilogy (which was turned into a diminishing movie series for which Brandner co-scripted Howling II: Stirba – Werewolf Bitch), he wrote more than thirty novels, including the “Big Brain” trilogy, Walkers (aka Death Walkers, filmed for TV as From the Dead of Night), Hellborn, Tribe of the Dead (aka Quintana Roo), The Brain Eaters, Carrion, Doomstalker, Mind Grabber and Rot. Brandner also scripted the 1989 movie adaptation of his novel Cameron’s Closet, and he wrote the novelization of the 1982 film Cat People.

  Italian screenwriter and script doctor Luciano Vincenzoni, best known for his “spaghetti” Westerns such as For a Few Dollars More and The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, died of lung cancer the same day, aged eighty-seven. His other films include Mr. Hercules Against Karate, Orca (which he also produced) and Ruggero Deodato’s Cut and Run (uncredited).

  Tom Clancy (Thomas Leo Clancy), the American author of such bestselling military thrillers as the nearfuture The Hunt for Red October, Patriot Games and Clear and Present Danger, died on October 1, aged sixty-six. A number of his books have been filmed and turned into video games, and his name appears above the title of many technothrillers and military series written by other authors.

  American SF fan and bookseller Elliot K. (Kay) Shorter died of cancer the same day, aged seventy-four. He worked for Locus from 1968–70 and opened specialty genre bookstore Merlin’s Closet in Providence, Rhode Island, in 1979.

  British literary agent, romance author and former publisher’s editor Dorothy “Dot” Lumley (Dorothy Houghton) died of cancer on October 5, aged sixty-four. After leaving Leicester University with an honours degree in psychology and a divorce from her first husband, she worked in various editorial capacities for UK imprints New English Library and Magnum Books (an imprint of Methuen) before founding the Dorian Literary Agency in 1986. A regular attendee at FantasyCon and other conventions, her genre client list included her former second husband Brian Lumley, Stephen Jones, R. Chetwynd-Hayes, Karl Edward Wagner, Dennis Etchison, Peter Atkins and others.

  British-born journalist and author Philip Nutman died in an Atlanta hospital of acute organ failure after being taken off life support on October 7. He was fifty. While working for the BBC in London during the 1980s he freelanced as a media journalist for such magazines as Venue, Shock Xpress, L’Ecran Fantastique, Fangoria, Twilight Zone Magazine, Gorezone, Fear, Skeleton Crew and many others. He made his short fiction debut in the zombie anthology Book of the Dead edited by John Skipp and Craig Spector, and he expanded that story into his only novel, the Bram Stoker Award-nominated Wet Work (1993). Other stories appeared in Borderlands 2, Splatterpunks and The Year’s Best Horror Stories Series XIX and XX. Nutman also wrote a number of comic books for Chaos! and other publishers, along with low-budget movie scripts – including The Girl Next Door (based on the novel by Jack Ketchum), which was filmed in 2007.

  Leland Sapiro (Leland Shapiro), who took over the American fanzine formerly known as Fantasy Advertiser/Science Fiction Advertiser/Inside Science Fiction/Inside and renamed it Riverside Quarterly in 1964, died on October 8, aged eighty-nine. The academic title was published intermittently until 1993 and was nominated for Hugo Awards in 1967 (despite accusations of ballot-stuffing), 1969 and 1970.

  Stanley Kauffmann, who bought Ray Bradbury’s novel Fahrenheit 451 while working as an acquisitions editor at Ballantine Books in 1953, died of pneumonia on October 9, aged ninety-seven. He was also an author and film critic for the New Republic and New York Times.

  Film and TV writer Mann Rubin died on October 12, aged eighty-five. He began his career in the early 1950s writing for DC Comics’ Strange Adventures and Mystery in Space. He also published short stories in Alfred Hitchcock Magazine and mystery anthologies. Rubin scripted a number of episodes of Tales of Tomorrow, along with episodes of Alfred Hitchcock Presents, Land of the Giants, Circle of Fear, The Six Million Dollar Man, Matt Helm, The Bionic Woman, Future Cop, Lucan, Project U.F.O., and the movies Brainstorm (1965) and The Amazing Captain Nemo.

  Japanese writer, poet, illustrator and lyricist Takashi Yanase, creator of the popular manga and anime superhero “Anpanman”, died on October 13, aged ninety-four.

  American publisher and anthologist Martin Greenberg died on October 20, aged ninety-five. Not to be confused with anthology editor Martin H. Greenberg (who died in 2011), he co-founded independent imprint Gnome Press with David A. Kyle and fellow members of The Hydra Club in 1948. For Gnome, Greenberg edited the anthologies Men Against the Stars, Travelers of Space (illustrated by Edd Cartier), Journey to Infinity, Five Science Fiction Novels (aka The Crucible of Power), The Robot and the Man, All About the Future and a collection of nonfiction articles about SF, Coming Attractions. Following disputes about payments (Isaac Asimov called Greenberg a “crook”), the press went out of business in 1962. Greenberg later ran an art supply store in Long Island, and he received the First Fandom Hall of Fame Award in 2000.

  Frank Dietz (Franklin M. Dietz, Jr), who co-founded (with his first wife Belle and David A. Kyle) the New York Science Fiction Society (aka the Lunarians) in late 1956, died in October. He also helped start the annual Lunacon convention, which he chaired for fourteen years, starting in 1957. Dietz was the convention’s Fan Guest of Honour in 2007. He was involved in the publication of a number of fanzines, including Science Fantasy and Science Fiction, Ground Zero and Luna Monthly, and he helped run Luna Publications, which published a collection of interviews, Speaking of Science Fiction, in 1978. Dietz was one of the organizers of the Guild of Science Fiction Recordists, who taped events at many conventions, and he had an original tattoo of a mouse on his upper arm, done especially for him by artist Hannes Bok.

  Screenwriter Elinor Karpf died on October 21, aged seventy-three. With her first husband, Stephen Karpf, she wrote the 1970s TV movies Sandcastles, Gargoyles and Devil Dog: The Hound of Hell.

  American author and English professor William [Neal] Harrison, who adapted his 1973 story “Roller Ball Murder” into the screenplay for the movie Rollerball (1975), died on October 22, aged seventy-nine. The film was remade in 2002.

  American editor and fan Andrea M. Dubnick, who helped run the “Twilight Tales” readings in Chicago’s Red Lion Pub for many years, died on October 31, aged sixty-three. Dubnick and Tina Jens were nominated for a Bram Stoker Award for the reading series in 2001, and she co-edited the 2007 anthology Tales from the Red Lion.

  American comics artist Nick Cardy (Nicholas Viscardi, aka “Nick Cardi”) died on November 3, aged ninety-three. He began his career in the 1940s working for the Eisner and Iger Studio packaging comics, and in 1950 he started drawing the daily Tarzan newspaper stri
p for Burne Hogarth. However, Cardy is best known for his later work with DC Comics on such titles as Tomahawk, Aquaman, Teen Titans, House of Mystery, House of Secrets and Tales of the Unexpected. During the early 1970s, he became DC’s primary cover artist, before leaving comics to work as a commercial illustrator. Along with magazine and advertising art, Cardy also produced movie posters (including Apocalypse Now). He returned to some limited comics work in the late 1990s.

  Persian-born author Doris Lessing (Doris May Tayler) died in London on November 11, aged ninety-four. After moving to Britain from South Africa, she published her first book in 1950. She wrote more than fifty novels, many shortstory collections, plays, nonfiction and a book of poetry. A Guest of Honour at the 1987 World Science Fiction Convention in Brighton, a number of her titles are SF, including Briefing for a Descent Into Hell, The Summer Before the Dark, Memoirs of a Survivor (filmed in 1981), Re: Colonised Planet 5 Shikasta, The Fifth Child, Ben in the World, Mara and Dann: An Adventure and The Cleft. Lessing received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2007.

  Canadian scriptwriter and producer David Tynan died of pancreatic cancer the same day, aged sixty-two. He scripted episodes of TV’s War of the Worlds, Silk Stalkings, Highlander, Poltergeist: The Legacy, The Lost World, First Wave and Flash Gordon (2007–08). He received producing credits on Highlander, Poltergeist: The Legacy and First Wave, and was creative consultant on Flash Gordon.

  Australian librarian, bibliographer and bookseller Graham [Brice] Stone died of a stroke on November 16, aged eighty-seven. He had been diagnosed with tubercular encephalitis in January. A leading authority on Australian SF, in 1951 he founded the Australian Science Fiction Society and published the newszine Science Fiction News (1953–59). Stone also contributed material to such titles as Future Science Fiction, Popular Science Fiction and Science-Fiction Monthly. In the 1960s he published two editions of his Australian Science Fiction Index, which was followed by the Journal of the Australian Science Fiction Association, Index to British Science Fiction Magazines 1934–1953, Notes on Australian Science Fiction and the comprehensive Australian Science Fiction Bibliography. Stone received the A. Bertram Chandler Award for Outstanding Achievement in Science Fiction from the Australian SF Foundation in 1999.

  Joseph J. Lazzaro, who contributed many articles to Analog magazine, died on November 18, aged fifty-six. He also published two collaborative SF short stories.

  Japanese-born American writer and publisher Robert Reginald (Michael Roy Burgess, aka “C. Everett Cooper”/“M. R. Burgess”/“Boden Clarke”) died of heart failure on November 20, aged sixty-five. In the mid-1970s he founded Borgo Press, which later became an imprint of Wildside Press. His many nonfiction works include Science Fiction and Fantasy Literature: A Checklist 1700–1974 (with Mary A. Burgess and Douglas Menville), Reginald’s Science Fiction and Fantasy Awards (with Daryl F. Mallett), A Guide to Science Fiction and Fantasy in the Library of Congress Classification Scheme and Futurevisions: The Golden Age of the Science Fiction Film, along with guides to the work of Jeffrey M. Elliott, Julian May, Charles Beaumont, William F. Nolan, Reginald Bretnor, Colin Wilson, Brian W. Aldiss, Elizabeth Chater, Jack Vance, William F. Temple, S. Fowler Wright, Gary Brandner, George Zebrowski, Stephen King, Pamela Sargent, Ursula K. Le Guin, Katherine Kurtz and himself. Reginald’s many anthologies include Ancestral Voices: An Anthology of Early Science Fiction, R.I.P.: Five Stories of the Supernatural, The Spectre Bridegroom and Other Horrors, Ancient Hauntings, Phantasmagoria: Supernatural & Occult Fiction and Dreamers of Dreams: An Anthology of Fantasy (all with Douglas Menville). He was also the author of a number of short stories collected in Katydid & Other Critters: Tales of Fantasy and Mystery, The Elder of Days: Tales of the Elders and The Judgment of the Gods and Other Verdicts of History, while his novels include the “Nova Europa”, “Phantom Detective” and “War of Two Worlds” series.

  Less than a month after he won the World Fantasy Award for his collection Where Furnaces Burn, British writer and editor Joel Lane died in his sleep on November 25 from heart failure brought on by sleep apnoea, with diabetes as a contributing factor. He was fifty. His short fiction appeared in the collections The Earth Wire & Other Stories (winner of the British Fantasy Award), The Lost District and Other Stories, The Terrible Changes and Do Not Pass Go, and he also published a novella, The Witnesses Are Gone. Lane was the author of two mainstream novels, From Blue to Black and The Blue Mask, he edited the anthologies Beneath the Ground, Birmingham Noir: Urban Tales of Crime and Suspense (with Steve Bishop) and Never Again (with Allyson Bird), and he published two volumes of poetry.

  American comics artist Al Plastino (Alfred John Plastino) died of complications from prostate cancer the same day, aged ninety-one. He began his career at DC Comics in 1948 and worked extensively on all the Superman titles during the 1950s, co-creating “Supergirl”, “Brainiac” and the “Legion of SuperHeroes” with writer Otto Binder. Plastino also illustrated the syndicated Batman with Robin the Boy Wonder newspaper strip (1968–72) and he was the uncredited ghost artist on the Superman strip from 1960–69.

  American author and historian T. (Theodore) R. (Reed) Fehrenbach who, as “T. R. Fehrenbach” published the SF story “Remember the Alamo!” in Analog (1961), died on December 1, aged eighty-eight. He also had a story in the anthology Lone Star Universe edited by George W. Proctor and Steven Utley.

  American SF author Hilbert [van Nydeck] Schenck [Jr] died on December 2, aged eighty-seven. An engineer and teacher, he published his first fiction in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction in 1953, and his books include the novels At the Eye of the Ocean, A Rose for Armageddon and Chronosequence, along with the collections Wave Rider and Steam Bird. Several of Schenck’s stories and novellas were nominated for Hugo and Nebula Awards in the 1980s.

  American publishing attorney, book packager and investor Richard Gallen, who worked with various publishers, including Baen Books, Bluejay, Tor and Carroll & Graf, died on December 3, aged eighty.

  British author Colin [Henry] Wilson died on December 5, aged eighty-two. He had suffered a stroke in June that had left him unable to speak. One of literature’s “angry young men” of the 1950s, he made his debut with The Outsider (1956), a study of outsiders in culture that took its title from an H. P. Lovecraft story. In 1967 Arkham House published Wilson’s Lovecraftian novel The Mind Parasites, and he followed it with The Glass Cage, The Philosopher’s Stone, The Space Vampires (filmed as Lifeforce), The Personality Surgeon and the four volume “Spider World” series. His other novels include Ritual in the Dark, The God of the Labyrinth and The Black Room, and he also wrote and edited a number of nonfiction books about the occult.

  American author and journalist Hugh Nissenson, who wrote the nearfuture SF novel The Song of the Earth (2001), died on December 13, aged eighty.

  Rosemary F. Wolfe (Rosemary Dietsch), who was married to author Gene Wolfe for fifty-seven years, died of complications from Alzheimer’s disease on December 14, aged eighty-two.

  Bestselling American young adult author Ned Vizzini (Edison Price Vizzini) committed suicide from a fall on December 19, aged thirty-two. He had suffered from depression for many years. The semi-autobiographical It’s Kind of a Funny Story (2006) was filmed four years later with Zach Galifianakis, and he also wrote the SF novel Be More Chill and an alternative fantasy, The Other Normals. House of Secrets and House of Secrets: Battle of the Beast were both co-written with movie director Chris Columbus, while Teen Angst? Naaah … was a memoir of his teenage years. Vizzini also wrote for TV’s Teen Wolf and The Last Resort, and he had been working on NBC’s Believe at the time of his death.

  Nancy Kemp, the former wife of American SF publisher Earl Kemp, with whom she co-edited the 1960 Hugo Awardwinning fanzine Who Killed Science Fiction? (1960), died after a long battle with uterine cancer on December 22.

  Polish composer Wojciech Kilar died of cancer on December 29, aged eighty-one. He composed the soundtracks to Dracula (1992), Fantôme avec chauffeur a
nd The Ninth Gate, and his music was also used in the first season of TV’s American Horror Story.

  PERFORMERS/PERSONALITIES

  American-born actress Patty Shepard (Patricia Moran Shepard, aka “Patty Sheppard”/“Patti Sheppard”) died of a heart attack in Madrid, Spain, on January 3, aged sixty-eight. A former model, her film credits include Dracula versus Frankenstein (aka Assignment Terror), The Werewolf versus the Vampire Woman, Escalofrío diabólico, The Witches Mountain, Hannah Queen of the Vampires (aka Crypt of the Living Dead), Refuge of Fear, Rest in Pieces, Slugs: The Movie (based on the novel by Shaun Hutson) and Edge of the Axe. Shepard also portrayed a ghost in a 1975 episode of the TV series El quinto jinete (“La renta espectral”).

  Italian actress Mariangela Melato died of pancreatic cancer in Rome on January 11, aged seventy-one. She made her debut in Pupi Avati’s Thomas and the Bewitched (1970) and went on to appear in many films, including the 1980 remake of Flash Gordon (as “Kala”).

  Canadian-born actor Conrad Bain, who starred in the 1978–85 TV series Diff’rent Strokes, died in California on January 14, aged eighty-nine. He also appeared as Mr Wells, the clerk at the Collinsport Inn, in four episodes of the 1960s Dark Shadows TV series.

  Bengali-British actress Sophiya Haque (Syeda Sophia Haque) died of cancer on January 16, age forty-one. A former music VJ/host, she appeared in episodes of Fairy Tales (2008) and House of Anubis, and was also in the nongenre Indian film Hari Puttar: A Comedy of Terrors (2008).

  Adult film actor, producer, writer and director Fred J. Lincoln (Fred Perna, aka “Tony Vincent”), who portrayed psychotic killer “Weasel Podowski” in Wes Craven’s The Last House on the Left (1972), died on January 17, aged seventy-five. He was also in the adult films The Altar of Lust, The Case of the Smiling Stiffs, A Touch of Genie, The Devil in Miss Jones Part II, Friday the 13th: Part II – The Next Generation, Edward Penishands 3 and The Last Whore House on the Left.