British scriptwriter Alan (Charles Langley) Hackney, best known for co-writing the Peter Sellers comedy I’m All Right Jack (based on his own novel), died on May 15, aged eighty-four. Among his other credits are Hammer’s TV spin-off Sword of Sherwood Forest (starring Peter Cushing) and the 1972 comedy Go For a Take (which featured Dennis Price as a movie Dracula).
British playwright and scriptwriter, Kenneth Jupp, died of lung cancer on May 18, aged eighty. In the early 1970s, he wrote three episodes of TV’s Orson Welles’ Great Mysteries.
British author and playwright Barry England died on May 21, aged seventy-seven. Best known for his 1968 novel Figures in a Landscape (filmed in 1970), he also wrote the post-holocaust novel No Man’s Land.
Fifty-two-year-old British movie fan Alan Keeley who, as “Mister Damage”, co-edited the spoof fanzine Horrorshow (1992–93) with Steve Green (aka Eddie Trenchcoat), died on May 22.
American screenwriter Jack Lewis died of lung cancer in Hawaii on May 24, aged eighty-four. A decorated Korean War veteran who, as a stuntman, had small uncredited roles in a few “B” Westerns in the 1950s, he scripted The Amazing Transparent Man. Lewis also wrote the cult classic Billy the Kid vs. Dracula (starring John Carradine), but sold all rights to credited screenwriter Carl K. Hittleman for a reported $250. He later became a novelist (as C. Jack Lewis) and founded Gun World Magazine. His autobiography, White Horse, Black Hat: A Quarter-Century on Hollywood’s Poverty Row, was published in 2002.
Japanese author Kaoru Kurimoto (Sumiyo Imaoka, aka Azusa Nakajima), who wrote more than 400 books, including the 127-volume “Guin Saga” heroic fantasy series, died of pancreatic cancer on May 26, aged fifty-six. Her books were adapted into manga, animation, musical albums, games and a play.
Best-selling American fantasy writer David (Carroll) Eddings died on June 2, aged seventy-seven. Beginning in 1982 with Pawn of Prophecy, the first volume in “The Belgariad” sequence, former grocery store manager Eddings and his wife Leigh (who died in 2007) turned out a string of popular post-Tolkien fantasies that also included “The Mallorean”, “The Elenium”, “The Tamuli” and “Dreamers” series. They also wrote the standalone fantasy The Redemption of Althalus. Leigh Eddings was only credited on the books from the mid-1990s onwards.
The 1983 John W. Campbell Award-winning SF author, poet and academic Paul O. (Osborne) Williams died of an aortic dissection the same day, aged seventy-four. He published seven novels in the “Pelbar Cycle” (1981–85), set in a post-apocalyptic Illinois, along with two other books in the “Gorboduc” series.
American artist Ilene Meyer, whose work appeared on book covers by Harlan Ellison, Jack Vance and Philip K. Dick, amongst others, died on June 3, aged sixty-nine. She also contributed to Omni and The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, and her work was collected in Ilene Meyer: Paintings, Drawings, Perceptions (2004).
American comic book artist Dave Simons died after a long battle with cancer on June 9, aged fifty-four. For Marvel he worked on Ghost Rider, King Conan, Red Sonja, Kull the Conqueror, Savage Sword of Conan and The Spectacular Spider-Man, amongst many other titles. Simons moved to DC Comics in the 1990s, where his credits include The Terminator, Dragonlance and Forgotten Realms. In later years, he created storyboards for the TV cartoon series Captain Planet, Exo-Squad and Masters of the Universe, and his last comic work was on Army of Darkness.
Eighty-six-year-old Bette Farmer (Bette Virginia Andre) died on June 10, exactly fifteen weeks after the death of her husband, author Philip José Farmer. The couple married in 1941.
American children’s author H. (Harriet) B. Gilmore, who is best known for the ten-book “T*witches’’ series (2001–04) with Randi Reisfield, died on June 21, aged sixty-nine. She worked for such publishing houses as E.P. Dutton, Bantam and Scholastic, before becoming a full-time writer in 1995. Her more than fifty other books include the film novelizations Saturday Night Fever, Eyes of Laura Mars, All That Jazz, Fatal Attraction, Pretty in Pink and Godzilla: A Junior Novelization. The “T*witches’’ books were turned into two popular TV movies by Disney.
Underground film-maker, musician and shock artist Joe Christ (Joe Linhart) died in his sleep of a heart attack on June 21, three days after turning fifty-two. For a number of years he was married to horror writer Nancy A. Collins.
American fan magazine and video game artist G. Scott Heckenlively died on June 26, aged forty-five. He had a history of heart problems.
Robert A. (Arnold) Collins who, as a professor of English at Florida Atlantic University founded the annual International Conference on the Fantastic in the Arts, died of lung cancer on June 27, aged eighty. From 1981 to 1988 he took over the magazine Fantasy Newsletter, changing the name to Fantasy Review. He also edited a number of hardcover volumes of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Book Review Annual with Rob Latham.
Nashville fan, collector and convention-runner Ken Moore (Kenneth Alan Moore, aka Khen) died after a long illness on June 30, aged sixty-six. A founding member and former president of the Nashville Science Fiction Club, he co-chaired DeepSouthCon in 1986, chaired it in 1995 and was Guest of Honour in 1991. He also founded and chaired the Kubla Khan convention and ran the art shows at the 1978 World Fantasy Convention and the 1979 NASFiC.
American UFOlogist and journalist John A. (Alva) Keel (Alva John Kiehle) died on July 3, aged seventy-nine. He had undergone surgery the previous October after suffering a heart attack. His many non-fiction books include UFOs: Operation Trojan Horse, Strange Creatures from Time and Space (aka The Complete Guide to Mysterious Beings), Our Haunted Planet, The Flying Saucer Subculture, The Mothman Prophecies (filmed in 2002 with Richard Gere) and Disneyland of the Gods.
Charles N. (Nikki) Brown, co-founder, editor-in-chief and publisher of Locus, “The Magazine of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Field”, died in his sleep of ventricular fibrillation on July 12 on his flight back to California from Readercon in Massachusetts. He was seventy-two. He started the magazine in 1968 with Ed Meskys and Dave Vanderwerf as a one-sheet news fanzine. The magazine grew from there to become the premier information source in the genre, winning the first of its twenty-nine Hugo Awards in 1971. Brown also edited the SF anthologies Alien Worlds, Far Travellers and The Locus Awards, along with a series of annual bibliographical indexes on CD-ROM with William G. Contento. He was the first book reviewer for Asimov’s, wrote the “Best of the Year” summary for Terry Carr’s annual SF anthologies and attended numerous conventions.
British television scriptwriter Vince (Vincent) Powell died on July 13, aged eighty. Although best known for a string of sitcoms through the 1960s, ’70s and ’80s (often in collaboration with Harry Driver, who died in 1973), the pair also wrote five episodes of Adam Adamant Lives! (1966–67). Powell also co-devised the celebrity game show Give Us a Clue (1979–97).
Eighty-three-year-old Canadian SF writer, poet and playright Phyllis Gotlieb (Phyllis Fay Bloom) died of complications from a burst appendix on July 14. Her first story appeared in Fantastic in 1959, and her novels include Sunburst, O Master Caliban!, A Judgment of Dragons, Emperor Swords Pentacles, Kingdom of the Cats, Heart of Red Iron, Flesh and Gold, Violet Stars, Mindworlds and Birthstones, while her short fiction has been collected in Son of the Morning and Other Stories and Blue Apes. She also co-edited Tesseracts 2 with Douglas Barbour. Often called “The Founder of Canadian Science Fiction”, that country’s SF prize, the Sunburst Award, is named in her honour and in 1982 she received Canada’s Aurora Award for Life Achievement.
Eleanor “Ellie” Frazetta (Eleanor Kelly), the wife of famed fantasy artist Frank Frazetta, died of cancer on July 17, aged seventy-four. The couple married in 1956 and, as her husband’s business partner, she was credited with establishing the record prices paid for his work.
Academic Arthur O. (Orcutt) Lewis, Jr., who was president of the Science Fiction Research Association from 1977 to 1978, died on July 18, aged eighty-eight. The author of the reference works Of Men and Machines, American Utopias: Selected Short F
iction and A Directory of Utopian Scholars, the latter title led to the creation of the national Society for Utopian Studies, which in 1984 named an award in his honour. In 2003 the Special Collections Library at the Pennsylvania State University Libraries also named its collection of utopian literature in his honour.
Czechoslovakian-born graphic designer and illustrator Heinz Edelmann, who created the psychedelic landscapes of Pepperland for the 1968 animated Beatles film Yellow Submarine, died from heart and kidney disease in Stuttgart, Germany, on July 21. He was seventy-five. Edelmann also illustrated the first German edition of J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings.
Scottish author, illustrator and animator John (Gerald Christopher) Ryan, who created children’s cartoon character “Captain Horatio Pugwash”, died on July 22, aged eighty-eight. Pugwash made his debut in the first issue of Eagle comic in April 1950, before the bumbling buccaneer and his shipmates moved to Radio Times and eventually became a long-running animated series on BBC television. Eighty-six episodes of The Adventures of Captain Pugwash were filmed between 1957 and 1975 in “real-time”, using cardboard cut-outs. Ryan also created inept special agent “Harris Tweed” for Eagle, Mary, Mungo and Midge (1969) and The Adventures of Sir Prancelot (1972) for the BBC, and wrote and illustrated more than fifty books.
Italian screenwriter and occasional actor Renato Izzo died on July 30, aged eighty. Best known for his Spaghetti Westerns in the late 1960s and early 1970s, he also scripted the thrillers The Killer Wore Gloves and Night Train Murders. As a voice actor, Izzo dubbed more than 1,000 films and was the voice of Paul Newman and Gregory Peck, amongst many others.
Journalist, novelist and screenwriter Budd (Wilson) Schulberg, who won an Academy Award for scripting On the Waterfront, died on August 4, aged ninety-nine. Although his novels include the controversial What Makes Sammy Run? and The Harder They Fall, Schulberg is best remembered for naming names – including two of the “Hollywood 10” – before the 1951 House Un-American Activities Committee.
American pop culture collector Lester Glassner died of pancreatic cancer on August 9, aged seventy. For almost fifty years the former picture editor, designer and art librarian for CBS Records accumulated a massive and diverse collection of vintage movie material, books, magazines, records, mechanical toys, antique postcards and other kitsch items numbering into the hundreds of thousands. In 1981 he published Dime-Store Days with photographer Brownie Harris, which featured choice items from his various collections.
Rhode Island specialty press publisher and bookseller Donald M. (Metcalf) Grant, best known for his influential Donald M. Grant publishing imprint, died on August 19, aged eighty-two. He had been in declining health for many years. Grant’s first book was Rhode Island on Lovecraft (1945), and he went on to publish books by Robert E. Howard, A. Merritt, H. Warner Munn, C.L. Moore, William Hope Hodgson, Fritz Leiber, Talbot Mundy and many others, including Stephen King’s Dark Tower sequence. Grant was also involved, in various capacities, with Grant-Hadley Enterprises, the Buffalo Book Company, Grandon Publishers, Centaur Press, Shroud, Fantasy Press, Phantagraph Press and Macabre House. A founding member of the World Fantasy Convention, he won three World Fantasy Awards for publishing and was given the Life Achievement Award in 2003.
American SF fan and occasional writer Anne J. (Janet) Braude died of complications from advanced intestinal infection on August 25, aged sixty-seven. She had undergone abdominal surgery two months earlier. A contributor to the 1960s fanzines as Yandro and Niekas (she was a co-editor with Ed Meskys and Mike Bastraw), her fiction appeared in such anthologies as Catfantastic IV and Olympus, and she edited Andre Norton: Fables and Futures.
American songwriter, singer and producer Ellie Greenwich (Eleanor Louise Greenwich) died of a heart attack the same day, aged sixty-eight. She had been suffering from pneumonia. With her husband Jeff Barry she wrote such early 1960s hits as “Da Doo Ron Ron”, “Then He Kissed Me”, “Be My Baby”, “Baby I Love You”, “Chapel of Love”, “Leader of the Pack”, “Do Wah Diddy Diddy”, “I Can Hear Music” and “River Deep, Mountain High”, often working closely with producer Phil Spector. Greenwich suffered a nervous breakdown after she and Barry divorced in 1965, but she made a comeback in the 1980s with Leader of the Pack, a stage musical about her life.
Acclaimed British novelist, journalist, playwright and screenwriter Keith (Spencer) Waterhouse died after a long illness on September 4, aged eighty. Best known for his satirical novel Billy Liar, Waterhouse was also the co-creator (with Willis Hall) of the children’s TV fantasy series Worzel Gummidge (1979-81), starring Jon Pertwee as the bumbling scarecrow who came to life.
American artist Ed (Edward I.) Valigursky (aka “William Rembach”) died of heart failure on September 7, aged eighty-two. Best known for his depictions of robots and other mechanical devices, he became a staff artist at the Ziff-Davis Publishing Company in the early 1950s, working as a cover artist on Amazing and Fantastic Adventures. He later contributed to Galaxy, Argosy and If (where he was briefly art director). In a career spanning more than sixty years as a commercial illustrator, Valigursky also produced countless paperback covers for Ace Doubles, Bantam, Ballantine, Lancer, Pyramid and other publishers.
Emmy and Tony Award-winning American comedy writer and producer Larry [Simon] Gelbert died of cancer on September 11, aged eighty-one. Best known for developing the long-running TV series M*A*S*H, he also wrote the movie Oh God! and contributed to the script for the 2000 remake of Bedazzled (which he unsuccessfully tried to have his name removed from).
Scottish-born scriptwriter Troy Kennedy Martin, best known for writing the 1969 crime caper The Italian Job, died of liver cancer on September 15, aged seventy-seven. His other credits include the acclaimed BBC mini-series Edge of Darkness and an episode of Out of the Unknown (“The Midas Plague”, based on the story by Frederik Pohl).
Irish-born scriptwriter and TV producer Frank Deasy died of liver cancer in Edinburgh, Scotland, on September 17, aged forty-nine. The Emmy Award-winning writer scripted the 2002 TV movie The Rats (which had nothing to do with James Herbert’s novel of the same title).
Literary agent Barbara Bova, the wife of SF author Ben Bova, died of cancer on September 23, aged seventy-four.
American writer Mary H. (Hunter) Schaub died of cancer on September 25, aged sixty-six. She collaborated with Andre Norton on the 1996 novel The Magestone and published a number of stories, as well as the solo novel Exile, set in Norton’s “Witch World”.
American SF fan, critic and author Ben P. Indick (Benjamin Philip Indick) died after a long illness on September 28, aged eighty-six. From 1983 onwards he published more than ninety issues of Ben’s Beat and contributed to numerous other fanzines, anthologies and reference books (including studies of Stephen King and Robert E. Howard). Indick’s non-fiction books include Ray Bradbury: Dramatist, A Gentleman from Providence Pens a Letter and George Alec Effinger: From Entropy to Budayeen. He was inducted into the First Fandom Hall of Fame in 2009.
American-born SF writer and journalist Jennifer Swift died of breast cancer in Oxford on September 30. She was 54. A British resident since the mid-1980s, her work appeared in Amazing, Asimov’s, The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction and Interzone.
Edgar Award-winning mystery writer Stuart M. (Melvin) Kaminsky, best known for his 1940s movie-inspired “Toby Peters” series, died of complications from hepatitis and a recent stroke on October 9, aged seventy-five. He also wrote a number of fantasy stories, two graphic novels and a graphic story about Kolchak: The Night Stalker. Kaminsky’s other books include non-fiction works about John Huston, Don Siegel, Ingmar Bergman and novelizations of The Rockford Files and CSI, and he contributed dialogue to Sergio Leone’s film Once Upon a Time in America. He received the Grand Master Award from the Mystery Writers of America in 2006.
American scriptwriter Al C. (Altie) Ward, who scripted the American-shot sequences for Godzilla, King of the Monsters! (1956), died the same day, aged ninety. He mostly wrote f
or TV and co-created the 1969–76 CBS series Medical Center.
American artist Dean Ellis died on October 12, aged 88. During the 1960s and 1970s he painted covers for many publishers and magazines, most notably for several Ray Bradbury novels. He also designed stamps for the US Postal Service.
British composer and arranger Albert (George) Elms died on October 14, aged eighty-nine. Best known for his work as musical director for ITV’s The Prisoner (1967– 68), his other credits include Devil Girl from Mars, Alias John Preston (featuring Christopher Lee), Manfish (featuring Lon Chaney, Jr), Satellite in the Sky, The Man Without a Body, Bluebeard’s Ten Honeymoons and The Omegans, along with episodes of The Champions and Randall and Hopkirk (Deceased).
Veteran American comics artist George Tuska died on October 15, aged ninety-three. He began his career in 1939 and worked on Captain Marvel Adventures, The Spirit, Uncle Sam, Adventure Into Weird Worlds, Adventures Into Terror, Mystic, Menace and Strange Tales before moving to Marvel Comics in the 1960s where his credits include Sub-Mariner, The X-Men, Planet of the Apes and ten years on Iron Man. From 1959 to 1967 he was the final artist on the Buck Rogers comic strip, and between 1978 and 1993 he illustrated the DC Comics newspaper strip The World’s Greatest Superheroes.
Vic Mizzy, who composed and sang the memorable finger-snapping theme for the 1960s and 1990s The Addams Family TV series, died of heart failure on October 17, aged ninety-three. His other credits include William Castle’s The Night Walker (scripted by Robert Bloch), The Busy Body and The Spirit is Willing, The Ghost and Mr Chicken and The Reluctant Astronaut (both starring Don Knotts), The Perils of Pauline (1967), Halloween with the New Addams Family, The Munsters’ Revenge, and episodes of Shirley Temple’s Storybook (including “The House of the Seven Gables”) and Captain Nice.
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