Alice K. (Kennedy) Turner, who was fiction editor at Playboy magazine from 1976 to 2000, died of antibiotic-resistant pneumonia on January 17, aged 75. Born in China, where her father was an American diplomat, she also edited the anthology The Playboy Book of Science Fiction and, with Andrew Greeley, she wrote the 1993 nonfiction study The History of Hell. Turner also co-edited a chapbook about the work of John Crowley, and her critical essays appeared in Asimov’s, The New York Review of Science Fiction and Locus.
Japanese manga writer Kazumasa Hirai died on January 17, aged 76. He created the anime superhero 8 Man and the Wolf Guy manga novel series.
British children’s author Pauline (Millicent) Fisk died of cancer on January 25, aged 66. From her first novel, the Nestlé Smarties Book Prize-winning Midnight Blue (1990), much of her work combined social realism with the supernatural. Her other ten books include the “Children of Plynlimon” parallel world trilogy (Sabrina Fludde, The Red Judge and Mad Dog Moonlight) and In the Trees, and she scripted six episodes of the Gerry Anderson animated TV series Lavender Castle.
American feminist SF writer, poet and linguist Suzette Haden Elgin (Patricia Anne Wilkins) died on January 27, aged 78. She suffered from dementia and had been in declining health for some time. Her first story appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction in 1969, and her novels include the “Native Tongue” trilogy (Native Tongue, The Judas Rose and Earthsong); the “Coyote Jones” series (comprising The Communipaths, Furthest, At the Seventh Level, Star-Anchored Star-Angered and Yonder Comes the Other End of Time), and the “Planet Ozark” trilogy (Twelve Fair Kingdoms, The Grand Jubilee and And Then There’ll Be Fireworks). Amongst Elgin’s other books are the stand-alone novel Peacetalk 101 and The Science Fiction Poetry Handbook. She founded the ScienceFiction Poetry Association in 1978.
Australian author Colleen McCullough, best known for writing The Thorn Birds, died on January 29, aged 77. Her SF novel A Creed for the Third Millennium was published in 1985.
American screenwriter and producer Robert (Sherwood) Blees died on January 31, aged 96. His writing credits include The Black Scorpion, Screaming Mimi, From the Earth to the Moon, Frogs, Whoever Slew Auntie Roo?, Dr. Phibes Rises Again (starring Vincent Price) and the TV movies Curse of the Black Widow and Savage Harvest, along with episodes of Alfred Hitchcock Presents and Project U.F.O. (which he also produced).
Emmy Award-winning American screenwriter Stewart Stern, best known for writing Rebel Without a Cause (1955), James Dean’s last movie, died of cancer on February 2, aged 92. The nephew of studio executive Adolph Zuckor and a cousin of the Loews, he began his career in the 1940s as a dialogue director on such films as The Cobra Strikes and The Amazing Mr. X (aka The Spiritualist). Stern also had a cameo in the 1985 version of Fright Night. He retired from scriptwriting in the mid-1980s due to anxiety.
American horror writer Melanie Tem (Melanie Kubachko) died on February 9, two years after being diagnosed with returning breast cancer, which metastasised to her stomach and bone marrow. She was 65. Presented with the British Fantasy Society’s Icarus award for Most Promising Newcomer in 1992, her short fiction is collected in The Ice Downstream and Singularities, while In Concert and the Bram Stoker Award-winning Imagination Box both featured collaborations with her husband, Steve Rasnic Tem. They also collaborated on the multiple award-winning novella ‘The Man on the Ceiling’, which they later expanded into a full-length work, and another novel entitled Daughters. Melanie Tem’s solo novels include the Stoker Award-winning Prodigal, Blood Moon, The Wilding, Revenant, Desmodus, Tides, Black River, Slain the Spirit, The Deceiver, The Yellow Wood and two collaborations with Nancy Holder, Making Love and Witch-Light.
American artist Gail J. Butler, whose work appeared in Marion Zimmer Bradley’s Fantasy Magazine and Analog, died after a short illness on February 13, aged 67. She was Artist Guest of Honour twice at Orycon.
British comic-strip illustrator Brett Ewins died on February 16, aged 56. He worked on such strips as ‘Judge Dredd’ and ‘Bad Company’ for 2000 AD, along with Hellblazer and Swamp Thing. In 1988 he created the independent comics magazine Deadline with Steve Dillon.
British comics artist John Cooper died after a short illness on February 22, aged 72. He had suffered from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease for some years. The many strips Cooper worked on include ‘Lady Penelope’, ‘Thunderbirds’, ‘Captain Scarlet’ and ‘Joe 90’ for TV Century 21, ‘Man from Atlantis’ in Look-In, ‘Judge Dredd’ and ‘Targ’s Terror Tales’ in 2000 AD, and ‘Doctor Who’ and ‘Blakes 7’ for Marvel UK.
American author Ryder Syvertsen, who wrote the SF survivalist “Doomsday Warriors” series as “Ryder Stacy” (some in collaboration with Jan Stacy), died on February 24, aged 73.
American author Albert J. Manachino died on February 28, aged 90. He began his writing career in 1975 and his work appeared extensively in the small press magazines. Manachino’s short fiction was collected in The Box Hunters & Others, The Odd Lot and Noctet: Tales of Madonna-Moloch, while his only novel was The Box Hunters, published in 2002.
Carnegie Medal-winning British author Mal Peet died of cancer on March 2, aged 67. His 2014 adult novel, The Murdstone Trilogy, was a satire of the publishing industry, about a children’s author forced to reinvent himself as a fantasy writer.
47-year-old American inker Norman Lee, who worked for both DC and Marvel Comics, apparently drowned while snorkelling off the Cayman Islands on March 5. His body was not recovered. Lee worked on such strips as ‘Supergirl’, ‘Starman’, ‘Spider-Man’, ‘The Avengers’ and ‘X-Men’.
American artist and sculptor Tom Loback died the same day, aged 66. An Elvish linguist, he was best known for his J.R.R. Tolkien-related and gaming work, and he created a line of fantasy figures for Dragontooth Miniatures.
Japanese manga artist Yoshihiro Tatsumi died on March 7, aged 79. He pioneered the alternative adult gekiga style of illustration in such works as Black Blizzard and A Drifting Life, the latter winning him multiple Eisner Awards.
American writer Lou Silverstone (Louis Donald Silverstone), who co-scripted the 1972 ABC Saturday Superstar Movie ‘The Mad, Mad, Monsters’, died on March 9, aged 90.
American newspaper comic strip artists Fred Fredericks, who illustrated and wrote Mandrake the Magician from 1965 until his retirement in 2013, died on March 10, aged 85.
Best-selling British fantasy author Sir Terry Pratchett (Terence David John Pratchett) died of a chest infection on March 12, aged 66. He had famously been suffering from PCA (posterior cortical atrophy), a progressive early-onset form of Alzheimer’s disease, for the past eight years. Pratchett wrote more than seventy books, selling over eighty-five million copies in thirty-seven languages worldwide. Best known for his forty-volume “Discworld” series, beginning in 1983 with The Colour of Magic, he began his career when a story published in his secondary school magazine in 1961 was reprinted in Science-Fantasy magazine two years later. After working as a newspaper journalist and as a press officer in the nuclear power industry, he became a full-time writer in 1987. His books range from YA novels and humorous fantasies, to collaborations with friends Neil Gaiman (the novel Good Omens) and Stephen Baxter (the “Long Earth” trilogy). Pratchett received the World Fantasy Life Achievement Award in 2010 and the British Fantasy Society’s Karl Edward Wagner Award for Special Achievement the following year.
American comics artist Irwin Hansen, best known for creating the 1955-86 newspaper strip Dondi (with Gus Edson), died on March 13, aged 96. During the 1940s he worked on such Golden Age strips as ‘The Green Hornet’, ‘Secret Agent Z-2’, ‘The Flash’, ‘Green Lantern’ and ‘The Justice Society of America’. Hansen created the character of Wildcat for National Comics/DC.
Danish author and feminist Inge Eriksen died the same day, aged 79. During the 1980s and early ‘90s she published several SF novels, including Amanda Screamer’s Desire, Benedetto and Lllalinini, Alice Alice, and the “Space Without Time” quartet, along w
ith the Gothic love story The Japanese Millionaire, and wrote the dystopian stage play The Wind is Not for Sale.
Danish-born screenwriter, director and author Ib (Jørgen) Melchior died in West Hollywood on March 14, aged 97. His scripts include The Angry Red Planet (which he also directed), Reptilicus, Journey to the Seventh Planet, Robinson Crusoe on Mars, The Time Travelers (another directing credit, featuring Forrest J Ackerman) and the English-language versions of Godzilla Raids Again and Planet of the Vampires. Both the Death Race 2000 (1975) and Death Race (2008) were based on his 1958 short story ‘The Racer’. Melchoir was also a technical director on the TV series Tom Corbett Space Cadet and scripted episodes of 13 Demon Street (hosted by Lon Chaney, Jr.), Men Into Space and The Outer Limits. His books include the novels The Marcus Device, The Halgerloch Project and The Tombstone Cipher, while Melchior a la Carte: A Collection of Short Stories by the Award-Winning Novelist Ib Melchior was published in 2009. The writer’s unfilmed 1964 script entitled Space Family Robinson, along with the Gold Key comic of the same title that preceded it, are controversially claimed to have been the inspiration for Irwin Allen’s 1960s TV series Lost in Space.
Ted (Edward William) Ball, co-founder (with Dave Gibson) and co-proprietor of London’s Fantasy Centre bookshop since 1969, died of lung cancer on March 18, aged 72. He was an avid collector of H.P. Lovecraft and Jack the Ripper material. The store closed in 2009.
American children’s and YA author Ellen Conford (Ellen Schaffer) died of heart failure on her birthday, March 20, aged 73. Her more than forty books include the fantasies Genie with the Light Blue Hair and The Frog Princess of Pelham.
American fan Peggy Rae Sapienza (Peggy Rae McKnight), who co-chaired the 2014 World Fantasy Convention in Virginia, died from complications from recent heart surgery on March 22. She was 70. Sapienza also chaired Bucconeer, the 1998 Worldcon in Baltimore, and the 2011 Nebula Awards Weekend, and she was a committee member on many other conventions. She was Fan Guest of Honour at Chicon 7, the 2012 Worldcon in Chicago.
Karl Alexander, who wrote the time-travel thriller Time After Time (1979), died on March 30, aged 70. The novel was turned into a cult movie the same year, a stage musical in 2010 and a TV series in 2016, while a sequel entitled Jaclyn the Ripper was published in 2011.
American composer Milton Delugg, who accompanied Al Jolson on the accordion and co-wrote the Nat King Cole hit ‘Orange-Colored Sky’, died of heart failure on April 6, aged 96. The musical director of the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade for three decades, he also composed the musical scores for the English-language versions of Puss in Boots, Sleeping Beauty and Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (all 1955), and Gulliver’s Travels Beyond the Moon, along with the infamous Santa Claus Conquers the Martians.
American author, editor, publisher and Edgar Rice Burroughs fan Patrick H. Adkins died on April 7, aged 67. He wrote the “Titan” fantasy trilogy (Lord of the Crooked Paths, Master of the Fearful Depths and Sons of the Titans) and the horror novel The Third Beast, and published The Last Magician, a booklet of David H. Keller stories.
Polish-born German author and poet Günter (Wilhelm) Grass died in a hospital in Germany on April 13, aged 87. The Nobel Prize-winning writer often included fantastic elements in his work, including the novels The Tin Drum (filmed in 1979), The Flounder and The Rat.
Herb (Herbert William) Trimpe, the first comics artist to draw Wolverine, died the same day, aged 75. Having helped out artist Tom Gill on such Dell comics titles as the movie adaptations of Journey to the Center of the Earth and Mysterious Island, and inked the second issue of Boris Karloff Thriller, Trimpe joined Marvel in 1967. There he worked on The Incredible Hulk, The Fantastic Four, Captain America, Iron Man, Ghost Rider, Chamber of Darkness, Creatures on the Loose and numerous other titles. He also illustrated such tie-in titles for the company as Planet of the Apes, Robocop, Star Wars, Godzilla, The Further Adventures of Indiana Jones and The Transformers.
American SF fan Art Widner (Arthur L. Widner, Jr.) died of prostate cancer on April 17, aged 97. He was an original member of First Fandom and a founder of the National Fan Federation, and attended the first Worldcon in New York City in 1939. As one of the founding members of The Stranger Club, the pioneers of Boston fandom, he chaired Boskone I (1941) and Boskone II (1942). Widner published more than 160 fanzines; his one story, ‘The Perfect Incinerator’, appeared in the Winter 1942 issue of Science Fiction Quarterly (as by “Arthur Lambert”), and he also contributed to the letter columns of Weird Tales, Amazing and Unknown (often as “R. Twidner”).
Edgar Award-winning British crime and mystery writer Ruth Rendell (Ruth Barbara Grasemann, aka “Barbara Vine”) died on May 2, aged 85. She had suffered a serious stroke in January. Two of her stories were adapted for the 1980s TV series Tales of the Unexpected. She was made a life peer in 1997 as Baroness Rendell of Babergh.
American screenwriter, director and playwright Norman Thaddeus Vane (Norman Theodore Vein) died of heart failure the same day, aged 86. His credits include Shadow of the Hawk, Horror Star (aka Frightmare), The Black Room (1983), Midnight (1989) and You’re So Dead, along with an episode of TV’s The Evil Touch. During the 1970s Vane was a contributing writer to Penthouse magazine while living in London, and he was the second-unit director on the 1978 adult movie Dracula Sucks.
Edgar Award-winning American scriptwriter and producer William Bast died of complications from Alzheimer’s disease on May 4, aged 84. A close friend of James Dean (he wrote two controversial biographies of the actor), his credits include the spy spoof Hammerhead, The Valley of Gwangi, The Legend of Lizzie Borden, The Big One: The Great Los Angeles Earthquake, Deadly Invasion: The Killer Bee Nightmare and The Fury Within. On TV Bast created the series Tucker’s Witch (1982-83) and wrote episodes of The Outer Limits, The Alfred Hitchcock Hour and Circle of Fear.
British SF reviewer, copy-editor and short story writer Chris (Christopher) Gilmore died on May 6, aged 66. He worked for such magazines as Interzone and Spectrum SF.
British screenwriter Christopher (Hovelle) Wood died on May 9, aged 79. Although he wrote the Confessions of…series of softcore sex books under the pen-name “Timothy Lea”, he is best known for his screenplays and novelisations of the James Bond films The Spy Who Loved Me and Moonraker (for which he created the character of “Jaws”), along with Remo Williams: The Adventure Begins.
Danish SF fan, author, editor, critic and translator Jannick Storm died after a long illness the same day, aged 75. Apparently, Storm’s translation of Brian Aldiss’ The Atrocity Exhibition preceded the UK edition by quite some time. His own book on science fiction, Vor tids eventyr: Katastrofe-området (The Fairy Tales of Our Time: Disaster Area), appeared in 1978.
American surrealist/horror artist James (Richard) Powell (“JP”) was killed by a suspected drunk driver in George County, Mississippi, on May 13, aged 42. His 69-year-old mother, Donna Faye Powell, and 36-year-old girlfriend, April Eugina Livingstone, also died in the head-on automobile accident. Powell designed the badge for the 2015 World Horror Convention in Atlanta, and his artwork graced numerous small-press book covers, including Dean M. Drinkel’s anthologies The Grimorium Verum, Demonologia Biblica and Masks, plus many titles by Joe R. Lansdale.
62-year-old Eric (Jonathon) Caidin, proprietor of the Hollywood Book & Poster Co. memorabilia store on Hollywood Boulevard from 1977, died of an aneurysm on May 18, shortly after attending a noir film festival in Palm Springs. Caidin had small roles in the movies The Aftermath, Star Slammers (aka Prison Ship), Cannibal Hookers, Hellroller and the forthcoming Resurrecting Doug Dunning, and he was featured in the documentaries Flying Saucers Over Hollywood: The ‘Plan 9’ Companion and Confessions of Lemora. Caidin reportedly inherited the rights to several classic titles in the R.K.O. film library from his father, who was an attorney specialising in intellectual property. Profits from the movies contributed to the running of the store, which closed its doors in early 2015.
American SF fan and reviewer Yvonne “Vo
nnie” Carts-Powell, who wrote The Science of Heroes (2008), a study of the superhero TV series, died of cancer on May 22, aged 49.
South African-born UK author Moyra Caldecott (Olivia Brown Caldecott) died on May 23, aged 87. She wrote many children’s and YA fantasies, notably “The Tall Stones” sequence.
Acclaimed British fantasy, horror, SF and children’s author Tanith Lee (aka “Esther Garber”) died after a long battle with cancer on May 24. She was 67. A discovery of Donald A. Wollheim, since 1971 Lee published more than 100 novels and collections, including The Birthgrave, Death’s Master, The Silver Metal Lover, Red as Blood and the Arkham House volume Dreams of Dark and Light. She also scripted two episodes of the BBC series Blake’s 7, and her story ‘Nunc Dimittis’ was adapted as an episode of the TV series The Hunger. She was a winner of the World Fantasy Award and the British Fantasy Award, and she received Life Achievement Awards from the World Horror Convention, the World Fantasy Convention and the Horror Writers Association.
American publisher, editor, writer and independent bookseller “Chuck” Miller (Charles Franklin Miller II) died the same day, aged 62. With Tim Underwood, he co-founded the highly respected small press imprint Underwood-Miller in 1976, which published more than 150 books by such authors as Jack Vance, Philip K. Dick, Robert E. Howard, Harlan Ellison, Clive Barker, Peter Straub, Robert Silverberg and Roger Zelazny, amongst many others. Miller and Underwood chaired the 1980 World Fantasy Convention in Baltimore, and they also co-edited and published a number of volumes about Stephen King, including the Hugo Award-nominated Fear Itself: The Horror Fiction of Stephen King (1983), before the partnership was dissolved in 1994.
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