“How was your first day on the job?” Gené asked him.
“Job?”
“Your Dad called it a practice. Being Dr Shade.”
“Not sure about the handle. I thought I’d just go with ‘Shade’ for a bit. ‘Jamie Shade’, maybe? I’d use it for the band, but it sounds too much like Slade.”
“I quite like Slade,” said Richard.
“You would,” said Jamie. “What a year, eh?”
“It has had its meteorological anomalies.”
“No, I mean the charts. Telly Savalas, Real Thing, The Brotherhood of Man, Abba, the Wurzels, J. J. Barrie, Demis Roussos . . . ‘Brand New Combine Harvester’, ‘Save Your Kisses for Me’, bloody No Charge’. It has to be the low-point in music since forever. It’s like some great evil entity was sucking the guts out of our sounds. Some other great evil entity. You can’t blame Leech for all of it. Even he wouldn’t touch the Wurzels. Something’s got to change. Maybe I’ll stick with the band, leave monsters and magic to other folk. Kids are fed up, you know. They want to hear something new. And you lot are getting on.”
“Do you feel ‘long in the tooth’, Geneviève?” Richard asked.
Gené bared teeth that Jamie could have sworn were longer than they had been earlier.
“It’s not about how old you are,” said Susan, who had been quietly sipping a drink with fruit in it. “It’s about what you do.”
“Here’s to that,” said Richard, clinking his glass to hers.
Keith was sitting quietly, not letting on which of his selves was home. The primary Keith had reluctantly given Jamie back the Great Edmondo’s cloak and its hidden tricks. He had asked if Dr Shade needed an assistant, and started shuttling through selves when Jamie told him he really needed a new drummer. Now, despite what he’d said, he wasn’t sure. Being Dr Shade meant something, and came with a lot of baggage. He half-thought Vron was only with him because of who his Dad was. These people kept calling him “Junior Shade”, “Young Dr Shade” or “the New Dr Shade”. Perhaps he should take them seriously. He was already a veteran of the Winter War, if something over inside two days counted as a war.
Like Dad, he wasn’t much of a joiner. He couldn’t see himself putting a tie on to get into some fusty old club. But he played well with others. How randomly had his vanload of raw recruits been assembled? Even Sewell Head, now lost to Leech, had come in handy. Maybe, he’d found his new band. Susan, Gené and Keith all had Talents. Perhaps the old hippie with the ringlets and the ‘tache could take the odd guest guitar solo. One thing was for certain, they wouldn’t sign with a Derek Leech label.
In the house, the lights went off, and the garden was dark. Jamie didn’t mind the dark. From now on, he owned it.
“Catriona’s gone to bed,” said Richard.
Gene, another night person, stretched out on the grass, as if sunning herself in shadows.
“Some of us never sleep,” she said. “Someone has to watch out for the world. Or we might lose it.”
“We’re not going to let that happen,” said Richard.
STEPHEN JONES
& KIM NEWMAN
Necrology: 2007
ONCE AGAIN, we remember the passing of writers, artists, performers and technicians who, during their lifetimes, made significant contributions to the horror, science fiction and fantasy genres, or left their mark on popular culture and music in other, often fascinating, ways . . .
AUTHORS/ARTISTS/COMPOSERS
Turkish-born novelist turned now screenwriter A. (Albert) I. (Isaac) “Buzz” Bezzerides, who scripted Track of the Cat and Kiss Me Deadly, died on 1 January after complications from a fall. He was 98. He later co-created the Western TV series The Big Valley (1965-69) starring Barbara Stanwyck.
TV writer and producer Laurence Heath died on 9 January, aged 78. He worked on Mission: Impossible during the early 1970s, and his other credits include The Invaders, The Magician, Murder She Wrote and the 1978 TV movie The Beasts Are on the Streets.
American writer, lecturer and conspiracy theorist Robert Anton Wilson died after a long illness from post-polio syndrome on 11 January, aged 74. When his condition became known in 2006, and it was revealed that he had no money for care, an online appeal to fans raised enough to allow him to live out his remaining days in home hospice care. Best-known for his 1970s Illuminatus! trilogy (co-written with Robert Shea) – The Eye in the Pyramid, The Golden Apple and Leviathan – Wilson’s other books included Cosmic Trigger: The Final Secret of the Illuminati, The Illuminati Papers and Masks of the Illuminati. The original trilogy was adapted as a stage play and premiered in Liverpool in 1977. His Schrödinger’s Cat trilogy (The Universe Next Door, The Trick Top Hat and The Homing Pigeons) dealt with quantum mechanics and parallel universes, and he co-edited the anthology Semiotext(e) SF with Rudy Rucker and Peter Lamborn Wilson. Wilson’s fifteen-year-old daughter, Patricia Luna Wilson, was murdered in 1975, and the family had her brain cryogenically frozen.
Fifty-one-year-old John W. Brower, the founder of Minneapolis regional convention Arcana, was found dead in his apartment in early January. He had been suffering from intestinal problems and had died sometime in late December 2006.
British screenwriter and producer Tudor Gates died on 14 January, aged 76. Best remembered for his early 1970s lesbian vampire trilogy for Hammer Films – The Vampire Lovers, Lust for a Vampire and Twins of Evil – he also contributed to the scripts for Danger: Diabolk, Barbarella and The Young The Evil and The Savage (uncredited), and wrote Fright (aka Night Legs) plus episodes of TV’s Strange Report and Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Watson. As “Teddy White” or “Edward Hyde” he variously wrote, produced or directed such sexploitation films as The Love Box, The Sex Thief (directed by Martin Campbell), Intimate Games and Sex with the Stars.
Emmy Award-winning composer and orchestrator Harvey R. Cohen died of a heart attack on the same day, aged 55. He composed music for such 1990s animated TV shows as Aladdin, Batman, Casper, Superman, The New Batman Adventures and Superman: The Last Son of Krypton, along with the 1988 movie Ghost Town. Cohen also worked on a number of other films, including DeepStar Six, Wes Craven’s New Nightmare, Bicentennial Man, Little Nicky, King Kong (2005) and The Shaggy Dog (2006).
Renowned American author Daniel Stem died of complications from heart surgery on 24 January, aged 79. His short stories are collected in Twice Told Tales, Twice Upon a Time and One Day’s Perfect Weather, while his 1968 novel The Suicide Academy is set in a world where suicide is encouraged.
Brazilian-born American author Charles L. (Louis) Fontenay died on 27 January, aged 89. He published his first story in If in. 1954, and his shorter work is collected in Here There and Elsewhen, The Solar System and Beyond and Now and Elsewhen. He wrote three SF novels in the 1950s and 1960s (Twice Upon a Time, Rebels of the Red Planet and The Day the Oceans Overflowed), and returned in the 1980s and 1990s with a series of eighteen children’s novellas, the “Kipton Chronicles”. His later books include Target: Grant 1862 and Modál.
Bob Carroll Jr (Robert Gordon Carroll, Jr) who, with Madelyn Pugh Davis, wrote all 180 episodes of TV’s I Love Lucy (1951-57) and various spin-off shows, died on the same day, aged 87.
Sixty-eight-year-old Czechoslovakian pop composer Karel Svoboda was found dead at his home from a self-inflicted gunshot wound on 28 January. A former rock singer with the band “Mefisto”, he scored numerous films and TV shows, including Tomorrow I’ll Wake Up and Scald Myself With Tea (based on a SF story by Josef Nesvadba) and the animated TV series The Adventures ofPinocchio (1976). His stage musical of Dracula sold 250,000 soundtrack albums, and his last major work was a 2006 musical titled Golem.
Bestselling novelist and Oscar-winning Hollywood screenwriter Sidney Sheldon died of complications from pneumonia on 30 January, aged 89. He began writing at the age of fifty, and his eighteen published novels sold around 300 million copies and were translated into seventy-one languages. He created and produced the TV series / Dream ofjeannie (1965-69) and scripted
the 1986 vampire episode “Red Snow” for Twilight Zone.
Ninety-year-old Julius Dixson, Sr, who co-wrote the 1958 pop hit “Lollipop” for The Chordettes, reportedly starved to death in a Manhattan hospital the same day. Staff apparently ignored complaints that he needed his missing dentures to eat. “Lollipop” was covered in Britain by The Mudlarks, where it also went to the top of the charts. Dixson also wrote hits for Bill Haley and The Comets and The Spacemen.
Anthology editor and publisher Roger P. (Paul) Elwood died of cancer on 2 February, aged 64. Beginning with Alien Worlds in 1964 he edited or co-edited more than eighty original SF anthologies, most of which (fifty-five) were published between 1972 and 1977. As a result of this market saturation, he was blamed by many for the collapse of the anthology market, which has continued to this day. In 1975 Elwood founded the Laser Books imprint for romance publisher Harlequin and from 1975-77 fifty-eight books were issued, all with original covers by Frank Kelly Freas. These included first novels by Tim Powers and K. W. Jeter. A committed Christian, he edited SF lines for Pyramid, Bobbs-Merrill and Pinnacle before writing more than thirty “inspirational” novels, many with SF and fantasy elements.
American fan writer, editor and author Lee Hoffman (Shirley Bell Hoffman) died of a heart attack on 6 February, aged 74. She published thirty issues of the fanzine Quandry (1950-53) and other small press titles, and a collection of essays and articles, In and Out of Quandry, was published to commemorate her appearance as Fan Guest of Honor at Chicon IV, the 1982 World Science Fiction Convention in Chicago. Best known as an award-winning writer of Westerns (her novel The Valdez Horses was filmed as Chino), her SF books include Telepower, The Caves of Karst, Always the Black Knight and Change Song. She was married to editor Larry Shaw from 1956-58, and during that period was assistant editor on his magazines Infinity Science Fiction and Science Fiction Adventures.
American author Fred Mustard Stewart, best known for his superior supernatural novel The Mephisto Waltz (filmed in 1971), died of cancer on 7 February. His other novels include Star Child and The Methuselah Enzyme.
Comics artist Joe Edwards died of complications from heart problems on 8 February, aged 85. After working for Dell and Timely, he joined MLJ Comics, which subsequently changed its name to Archie. A former animation artist, he drew a number of “funny animal” strips for Archie Comics #1 (1942) and went on to illustrate many flagship characters, including “Super Duck”, “Captain Sprocket” and, most notably, “Li’l Jinx”.
English-born Australian writer Elizabeth Jolly (Monica Elizabeth Knight) died of complications from Alzheimer’s disease in Perth on 13 February, aged 83. Her “Australian Gothic” novels include Milk and Honey and The Well, and her short fiction is collected in Five Acre Virgin.
Oscar-winning lyricist Ray Evans died on 15 February of an apparent heart attack. He was 92. During the 1940s and 1950s with writing partner Jay Livingston (who died in 2001) he was responsible for such hits from the movies as “Buttons and Bows”, “Mona Lisa”, “Silver Bells”, “Que Sera Sera”, “Tammy” and “Dear Heart”. After their song “G’bye Now” from Olsen & Johnson’s Broadway revue Hellzapoppin’ became a hit in 1941, Evans and Livingston moved to Hollywood three years later, where they were put under contract by Paramount. They were later responsible for the TV themes for Bonanza and Mr Ed.
British biographer, theatre critic and broadcaster Sheridan Morley died in his sleep on 16 February, aged 65. The son of the late actor Robert Morley, he wrote more than thirty books, including biographies of David Niven, John Gielgud, Audrey Hepburn, Elizabeth Taylor and Marlene Dietrich, among others.
Scottish-born SF writer and rare books librarian David I. (Irvin) Masson died on 25 February, aged 91. In the mid-1960s he had seven stories published in Michael Moorcock’s New Worlds magazine, and these were collected as The Caltraps of Time (1968). A 2003 reprint included three additionally published stories. Masson also contributed regular reviews to Foundation in the 1970s.
French editor, translator, author and screenwriter Patrice Duvic died on the same day after a long battle with cancer. He was 61. During the 1980s he compiled a number of “Best of” anthologies for Presses Pocket before moving to La Decouverte, where he published many important SF novels and launched an impressive paperback horror line. His own novels include Naissez, nous ferons le’reste (Get Born, We’ll Take Care of the Rest), Poisson-pilote (Pilotfish) and Autant en emporte le divan (Gone With the Couch), and in 1986 he wrote both the screenplay and novelization of Pierre-William Glenn’s film Terminus.
Sixty-nine-year-old Leigh Eddings (Judith Leigh Schall), who co-wrote bestselling epic fantasy novels with her husband David, died on 28 February after a long illness and a series of strokes. Although she worked on all her husband’s novels, it was only from the mid-1990s that she was credited on such books as Belgarath the Sorcerer, Polgara the Sorceress, Regina’s Song, The Elder Gods, The Crystal Gorge, The Younger Gods and others.
Emmy-nominated film and TV composer Robert Prince (aka “Bob Prince”) died on 4 March after a brief illness, aged 78. His credits include Squirm and Claws, plus episodes of The Wild Wild West, Land of the Giants, Rod Serling’s Night Gallery, The Name of the Game (“LA 2017”, directed by Steven Spielberg), Mission Impossible, Ghost Story, The Sixth Sense, Wonder Woman, The Fantastic Journey, Buck Rogers in the 25th Century (“Space Vampire”), and the TV movies Gargoyles, The Return of Charlie Chan, Scream Pretty Peggy, The Strange and Deadly Occurrence, Where Have All the People Gone, The Dead Don’t Die and Snowbeast.
Early SF fan Jack Agnew died on 5 March, aged 84. With Robert A. Madle he launched the SF specialty book-selling service Fan-tascience Sales Service in 1946, and two years later with Madle and Al Pepper he co-published David H. Keller’s The Solitary Hunters and The Abyss, the only book from New Era Publishers.
Elly Bloch (Elly Zalisko), who was married to Psycho author Robert Bloch for thirty years until his death in 1994, died in a nursing home in Manitoba, Canada, on 7 March. She was 91.
Librarian Paul G. Walker, who published a number of SF stories in Galaxy and The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction during the 1970s, died on 8 March, aged 64. He also contributed the “Galaxy Bookshelf” review column to several issues of Galaxy, and the 1978 book Speaking of Science Fiction was based on his interviews with SF writers during that decade.
Ninety-year-old Joan Temple (Joan Streeton), the widow of British SF author William F. Temple (who died in 1989), died in Edinburgh, Scotland, on 10 March. She was the inspiration for the main female character “Lena” in her husband’s first novel, Four-Sided Triangle.
DC Comics writer Arnold Drake, who created the Doom Patrol and Deadman, died of pneumonia on 12 March, aged 83. Introduced to DC in the 1940s by his neighbour, Batman creator Bob Kane, Drake wrote for House of Mystery, Tommy Tomorrow, Batman and many other titles before moving briefly to Marvel to work on X-Men. He then went to Gold Key Comics, where he wrote for Twilight Zone and Star Trek. Drake also scripted the 1963 nudie film 50,000 BC (Before Clothing) and the 1964 cult horror movie The Flesh Eaters.
Sportswriter Charles Einstein, whose first novel The Bloody Spur was filmed by Fritz Lang as While the City Sleeps (1956), died on 14 March, aged 80. During the 1950s he published a number of stories in Saturn, Satellite and If, and his 1964 novel The Day New York Went Dry was also SF.
The 1950s Universal-International staff composer Herman Stein, who often went uncredited, died of congestive heart failure on 15 March, aged 91. He worked for the studio on such films as The Strange Door, Abbott and Costello Meet Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, Abbott and Costello Go to Mars, Creature from the Black Lagoon, Revenge of the Creature, This Island Earth, Tarantula, The Creature Walks Among Us, Francis in the Haunted House, The Incredible Shrinking Man, Monster on the Campus, The Land Unknown, The Monolith Monsters, The Thing That Couldn’t Die and King Kong vs Godzilla. Stein also contributed music to Let’s Kill Uncle, Blazing Stewardesses, and episodes of TV’s Voyage to the
Bottom of the Sea, Lost in Space and The Time Tunnel.
Comics artist Marshall Rogers, who was best known for his stylish depiction of Batman in Detective Comics in the late 1970s, died of a heart attack on 25 March, aged 57. He began his career working on Marvel’s black and white comics before moving over to DC Comics where he contributed to such titles as Mister Miracle, House of Mystery, The Shadow and Weird War Tales. In the 1980s he worked for Eclipse Comics and then back at Marvel again, where he illustrated Doctor Strange, Spider-Man and The Silver Surfer. Rogers briefly became the artist on the Batman daily newspaper strip in 1989, and he returned to DC to illustrate the miniseries Green Lantern: Evil’s Might, Batman: Legends of the Dark Knight and Batman: Dark Detective, along with a 1986 graphic adaptation of Harlan Ellison’s Demon With a Glass Hand.
American author Leslie [Elson] Waller, who wrote the novelization of Close Encounters of the Third Kind, died on 29 March, aged 83. He published more than fifty books, including a 2001 thriller about the assassination of Princess Diana.
Madelon Gernsback, the daughter of pioneering SF editor Hugo Gernsback, died on the same day, aged 98.
British scriptwriter Dave [Ralph] Martin, who co-created the annoying robotic companion “K-9” for BBC’s Doctor Who (“The Invisible Enemy”), died of lung cancer on 30 March, aged 72. With Bob Baker, he wrote eight episodes of the original show during the 1970s, including “The Hand of Fear”, “The Three Doctors” and “The Claws of Axos”. His other credits include an episode of Into the Labyrinth and the 1986 HTV film Succubus.
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