Reclusive American writer, editor and collector Bill Blackbeard (William Elsworth Blackbeard) died on 10 March, aged eighty-four. Widely credited with having one of the most comprehensive newspaper comic strip collections ever assembled – comprising more than 2.5 million strips published between 1893 and 1996 – he co-edited (with Martin Williams) The Smithsonian Collection of Newspaper Comics (1977). His other books include The Comic Strip Art of Lyonel Feininger, R. F. Outcault’s the Yellow Kid and Sherlock Holmes in America. Blackbeard’s story “Hammer of Cain” (co-written with James Causey) appeared in the November 1943 issue of Weird Tales. His archive was acquired by Ohio State University in 1997.
Hollywood and Broadway songwriter Hugh Martin who, with Ralph Blane (who died in 1995), composed the songs “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas”, “The Boy Next Door” and “The Trolly Song” for the 1944 MGM movie Meet Me in St. Louis, died on 11 March, aged ninety-six. In 1964 Martin wrote High Spirits, a musical version of Noël Coward’s Blithe Spirit, and he was a vocal arranger and accompanist for Judy Garland, Lena Horne and Debbie Reynolds.
J. K. Rowling’s former school chemistry teacher, John Nettleship, who was the original inspiration for “Severus Snape” in the Harry Potter books, died on 12 March, aged seventy-one.
Sixty-four-year-old English-born Canadian fanzine editor and mathematics teacher Mike Glicksohn (Michael David Glicksohn) died of a stroke on 18 March, following treatment for bladder cancer. A founding member of the Ontario Science Fiction Club, he won the Hugo Award in 1973 for his fanzine Energumen, which he co-published with his wife, Susan Wood. Glicksohn also published the fanzine Xenium and was Fan Guest of Honour at a number of conventions, including Aussiecon in 1975.
American graphic artist Jim Roslof (James Paul Roslof) who was TSR’s art director for the role-playing game Dungeons & Dragons in the 1980s, died on 19 March, aged sixty-five. He also provided artwork for adventure modules and scripted gaming scenarios. After leaving TSR, Roslof contributed art for Goodman Games’ Dungeon Crawl Classics.
Publisher April R. (Rose) Derleth, the daughter of Arkham House co-founder August Derleth (who died in 1971), died on 21 March, aged fifty-six. She was co-owner of the imprint with her brother, Walden.
British fantasy writer Diana Wynne Jones died after a long battle with lung cancer on 26 March, aged seventy-six. She published more than forty books, mostly for children and young adults, including The Ogre Downstairs, Dogsbody, Power of Three, The Time of the Ghost, The Homeward Bounders, Fire and Hemlock, Black Maria, A Sudden Wild Magic, Hexwood and Enchanted Glass. She was also the author of the “Dalemark”, “Chrestomanci”, “Howl”, “Magids” and “Derkholm” series. Jones’ short fiction was collected in Warlock at the Wheel and Other Stories, Everard’s Ride, Minor Arcana (aka Believing is Seeing), Mixed Magics and Unexpected Magic; she edited the anthologies Fantasy Stories (aka Spellbound) and Hidden Turnings, and wrote the non-fiction study The Tough Guide to Fantasyland. Archer’s Goon was adapted by the BBC into a six-part TV series in 1992, while Howl’s Moving Castle was turned into an Oscar-nominated anime by Hayao Miyazaki. A winner of the Mythopoeic Award and the British Fantasy Society Special Award, she was a Guest of Honour at the 1988 World Fantasy Convention in London and was a recipient of the 2007 World Fantasy Award for Life Achievement.
Prolific British crime writer and critic H. R. F. Keating (Henry Reymond Fitzwalter Keating) died on 27 March, aged eighty-four. Best known for his books featuring Detective Inspector Ghote, he also wrote the SF novels The Strong Man and A Long Walk to Wimbledon.
Welsh author Craig Thomas (aka “David Grant”), whose eighteen novels include the techno-thrillers Firefox (filmed by Clint Eastwood in 1982) and Firefox Down, died of leukemia on 4 April, aged sixty-nine.
American writer Larry [Eugene] Tritten died after a long illness on 6 April, aged seventy-two. His first SF story appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction in 1974, and he went on to contribute fiction to numerous magazines and anthologies over the next three decades. Tritten also wrote more than 1,500 reviews, columns and travel articles for newspapers and non-genre periodicals.
American TV scriptwriter and producer Sol Saks, who created the pilot episode of Bewitched (1964–72), died on 16 April, aged 100.
British TV, radio and film scriptwriter Ken Taylor (Kenneth Heywood Taylor) died 17 April, aged eighty-eight. In 1983 he scripted three episodes of the Granada TV series Shades of Darkness based on stories by Edith Wharton (“The Lady’s Maid’s Bell”), C. H. B. Kitchin (“The Maze”) and Walter De La Mare (“Seaton’s Aunt”).
British TV and radio comedy writer Bob Block (Timothy Robert William Block) died the same day, aged eighty-ine. He created and scripted such children’s TV series as Pardon My Genie (1972–73), Robert’s Robots (1973–74), Rentaghost (1976–80) and Galloping Galaxies! (1985–86). A Rentaghost: The Musical was produced on stage in 2006 starring Joe Pasquale, and a movie version of the series is currently in development.
American artist Doug (Douglas) Chaffee died on 26 April, aged seventy-five. After leaving his job as head of IBM’s Art Department, he became a freelance illustrator, working for NASA and contributing to such TSR role-playing games as Dungeons & Dragons and Magic: The Gathering.
Wiescka Masterton (Wiescka Walach), the Polish-German wife and literary agent of horror writer Graham Masterton, died on 27 April, aged sixty-five. She had been suffering from a long illness and died of complications from a fall. The couple met when they were both working at Penthouse magazine in the early 1970s, and Masterson’s first horror novel, The Manitou, was inspired by his wife’s pregnancy. In 1988 she sold the book to Poland, before the collapse of the Communist regime, and it became the first Western horror novel to be published in the country since World War II.
American feminist SF writer and ground-breaking critic Joanna [Ruth] Russ died on 29 April, following a series of strokes. She was seventy-four. Russ’ first story appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction in 1959, and her short fiction is collected in Alyx (aka The Adventures of Alyx), The Zanzibar Cat, Extraordinary People and The Hidden Side of the Moon. Best known for her influential 1975 novel The Female Man, her other novels include Picnic on Paradise, And Chaos Died, We Who Are About To . . ., and The Two of Them. Her essays and criticism are collected in a number of volumes, and during her career she won the Hugo, Nebula, Tiptree and Pilgrim Awards.
British scriptwriter Jeremy Paul [Roche] died of pancreatic cancer on 3 May, aged seventy-one. His credits include Hammer’s Countess Dracula and episodes of TV’s Out of the Unknown, Journey to the Unknown, Tales of the Unexpected, Play for Today (“The Flipside of Dominick Hide” and “Another Flick for Dominick”), The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, The Return of Sherlock Holmes, The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes (“The Last Vampyre”) and The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes. Paul also scripted the 1988 stage production The Secret of Sherlock Holmes starring Jeremy Brett.
British SF author and organic chemist Martin Sherwood, who published two novels with New English Library in the mid-1970s, Survival and Maxwell’s Demon, died on 10 May, aged sixty-nine.
Simon Heneage (Simon Anthony Helyar Walker-Heneage), co-founder of London’s Cartoon Museum and an expert on artist W. Heath Robinson, died on 14 May, aged eighty.
British psychologist, novelist, scriptwriter, engineer and artificial intelligence researcher Martin [Charlton] Woodhouse died on 15 May, aged seventy-eight. Credited with creating the first ebooks, his novels include the “Giles Yeoman” series of techno-thrillers: Tree Frog, Bush Baby, Mama Doll, Blue Bone and Moon Hill. In the 1960s Woodhouse scripted six early episodes of The Avengers featuring Honor Blackman and a later show featuring Diana Rigg. He also wrote twenty-two episodes of Supercar with his younger brother Hugh, and the children’s SF serial Emerald Soup.
Iconic fantasy artist Jeffrey [“Catherine”] Jones, who was once praised by Frank Frazetta as “the greatest living painter”, died of complications from emphysem
a, bronchitis and heart problems on 18 May, aged sixty-seven. He was reportedly severely underweight. A member of the legendary 1970s artists’ group The Studio (which also included Michael William Kaluta, Barry Windsor-Smith and Bernie Wrightson), Jones was one of the most prolific genre artists of the 1960s and ’70s, producing more than 150 covers for books by Fritz Leiber (notably the “Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser” series), Jack Vance, Andre Norton, Robert E. Howard, Karl Edward Wagner, Dean Koontz and many others, along with magazine and comics work. In 1998 Jones began hormone replacement therapy, and subsequently suffered an apparent nervous breakdown before returning to painting in the early 2000s. The World Fantasy Award-winning artist’s work is collected in The Studio, Age of Innocence: The Romantic Art of Jeffrey Jones, The Art of Jeffrey Jones, Jeffrey Jones Sketchbook and Jeffrey Jones: A Life in Art.
American author and music composer [Robert] Mark Shepherd committed suicide by a self-inflicted gunshot wound on 25 May. He was forty-nine. Shepherd was best known for his collaborations with Mercedes Lackey (whose personal secretary he was during the 1990s) on such fantasy novels as Wheels of Fire and Prison of Souls. His solo books set in the same worlds include Elvendude, Spiritride, Lazerwarz and Escape from Roksamur, while Blackrose Avenue was a dystopian SF novel.
British fan artist, writer and publisher [Byron] Terry Jeeves died on 29 May, aged eighty-eight. A founder of the British Science Fiction Association in 1958, he edited the group’s journal Vector from 1958–59. Jeeves also edited the fanzines Triode and ERG, and his articles and artwork appeared in numerous publications, winning him the Rotsler Award in 2007. He was also a recipient of the Doc Weir Award for services to British fandom, and he was inducted into the First Fandom Hall of Fame in 2010. Jeeves’ story “Upon Reflection” appeared in The 25th Pan Book of Horror Stories, and much of his fanzine writing was collected in the tribute magazine Wartime Days (2010).
Fifty-seven-year-old Canadian-born fantasy and SF author Joel Rosenberg, an outspoken gun advocate, died in Minneapolis on 2 June after suffering respiratory problems that resulted in a heart attack, brain damage and major organ failure. He made his writing debut in Asimov’s magazine in 1982, and his novels include The Sleeping Dragon (and nine sequels in his “Guardians of the Flame” series), Ties of Blood and Silver, D’Shai, The Fire Duke, The Silver Stone, The Crimson Sky, Home Front, the “Riftwar” novel Murder in LaMut (with Raymond E. Feist), Paladins and Knight Moves. In November 2010, Rosenberg, who also wrote Everything You Need to Know About (Legally) Carrying a Handgun in Minnesota, was arrested for carrying a holstered semi-automatic handgun into a meeting at City Hall.
American writer, editor, journalist and book critic Alan [Peter] Ryan died of pancreatic cancer in Brazil on 3 June, aged sixty-eight. His articles and reviews appeared in the Washington Post, Chicago Tribune, USA Today, New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Village Voice and other periodicals. The author of such superior 1980s horror novels as Panther!, The Kill, Dead White and Cast a Cold Eye, he won a World Fantasy Award for his story “The Bone Wizard”, and his short fiction is collected in Quadriphobia and The Bone Wizard and Other Stories. Ryan was also an accomplished editor whose anthologies include Perpetual Light, Night Visions 1, Halloween Horrors, The Penguin Book of Vampire Stories (aka Vampires) and Haunting Women. Following a twenty-year absence from the genre, and after suffering a stroke and a heart attack in recent years, he had begun contributing fiction to magazines and anthologies again.
Sixty-four-year-old British author, editor and journalist Tim (Timothy) Stout died in County Wexford, Ireland, on 5 June. He had been suffering from Alzheimer’s disease for many years. Stout began his career in the genre with contributions to John Carpenter’s fanzine Fantastic Films Illustrated, and he edited the only two issues of the superior British horror film magazine Supernatural (1969). As an author, his short story “The Boy Who Neglected His Grass Snake” appeared in The 9th Pan Book of Horror Stories (1968), and during the 1970s and ’80s he had fiction published in such anthologies as Space 2, 5 and 8, Armada Sci-Fi 1 and 2, The Year’s Best Horror Stories: Series III, Spectre 2, 3 and 4, and The Jon Pertwee Book of Monsters, all edited by Richard Davis, along with Peter Haining’s Tales of Unknown Horror. Stout’s short fiction was collected in Hollow Laughter and The Doomsdeath Chronicles, and his only published novel was The Raging (1987).
Prolific British SF author, professional research chemist and astronomer John [Stephen] Glasby died of complications from a fall the same day, aged eighty-three. His first novel appeared in 1952 and, while working for ICI, over the next two decades he produced more than 300 novels and short stories in all genres, most of them published pseudonymously (under such shared bylines as “A.J. Merak”, “Victor La Salle”, “John E. Muller”, etc.) for the legendary Badger Books imprint. More recently, he published a new collection of ghost stories, The Substance of Shade (2003), the occult novel The Dark Destroyer (2005), and the SF novel Mystery of the Crater (2010). Glasby also wrote four novels continuing the late John Russell Fearn’s “Golden Amazon” series, and his short fiction was anthologized by, amongst others, Richard Dalby, Robert M. Price, Philip Harbottle and Stephen Jones.
American writer and bookseller Malcolm M. (Magoun) Ferguson died on 11 June following hip surgery. He was ninety-one. Between 1946 and 1950 he had five stories published in Weird Tales, and he was also a regular contributor to The Arkham Sampler. Ferguson was also an antiquarian bookseller, and his own collection reportedly contained around 30,000 volumes.
American scriptwriter David Rayfiel died of congestive heart failure on 22 June, aged eighty-seven. His credits include the allegorical war film Castle Keep (1969), Lipstick, Death Watch (based on the novel by David Compton) and two episodes of Rod Serling’s Night Gallery (“She’ll Be Company for You” and “Whisper”). Rayfiel was married to actress Maureen Stapleton from 1963–66.
American comics artist Gene Colon (Eugene Jules Colan) died of complications from a broken hip and liver disease on 23 June. He was eighty-four. Colan began his career in comics in 1944, but he is best remembered for his work for Marvel Comics on such titles as Daredevil, Captain America, Doctor Strange, The Avengers, Howard the Duck, Dracula Lives and The Tomb of Dracula. With Stan Lee he created the “Falcoln”, the first African-American superhero in mainstream comics, and also vampire-hunter “Blade”, whose exploits were adapted into a series of films and a TV series. During the 1980s the artist also worked at DC Comics on such titles as Batman and Detective Comics, along with Wonder Woman, Spectre, Elvira’s House of Mystery and the movie tie-in of Little Shop of Horrors.
American music composer and orchestrator Fred (Frederick) Steiner, who wrote the memorable theme for TV’s Perry Mason, died the same day in Mexico, aged eighty-eight. The son of noted film composer George Steiner, he worked (often uncredited) on Run for the Sun, The Colossus of New York, Teenagers from Outer Space, Snow White and the Three Stooges, Robinson Crusoe on Mars, The Greatest Story Ever Told, Project X, Return of the Jedi, Cloak & Dagger and Gremlins 2: The New Batch, along with episodes of The Twilight Zone, The Wild Wild West and the original Star Trek.
Prolific anthologist, packager and author Martin H. (Harry) Greenberg died on 25 June after a long battle with cancer. He was 70. Greenberg – who used his middle initial to differentiate himself from Gnome Press publisher Martin Greenberg – worked on more than 1,000 anthologies in all genres, many of them published through his own Tekno Books business. His first anthology, Political Science Fiction (co-edited with Patricia Warrick), appeared in 1974, and his other collaborators included Isaac Asimov, Poul Anderson, Arthur C. Clarke, Peter Crowther, Ed Gorman, Andre Norton, Frederik Pohl, Robert Silverberg, Robert Weinberg and numerous others. Greenberg won the Milford Award for Lifetime Achievement in 1989 and the Life Achievement Award from the Horror Writers Association in 2004.
Belgian SF and crime author, anthology editor and comics historian Thierry Martens (aka “Yves Varende”) died on 27 June, aged sixty-nine. He also ed
ited the comic Journal de Spirou.
British novelist, poet and short story writer Francis [Henry] King CBE died on 3 July, aged eighty-eight. Three of his early novels were published by Herbert van Thal, who also included King’s story “School Crossing” in The 20th Pan Book of Horror Stories.
American author Theodore Roszak, best known for his 1991 novel Flicker, died of liver cancer on 5 July, aged seventy-seven. Among his other novels are Pontifex, Bugs, Dreamwatcher, The Memoirs of Elizabeth Frankenstein and The Devil and Daniel Silverman. A professor emeritus of history at Cal State East Bay, his scholarly works include the ground-breaking study The Making of a Counter Culture: Reflections on the Technocratic Society (1969).
Japanese anime artist Shinji Wada (Yoshifumi Iwamoto) died of ischaemic heart disease the same day, aged sixty-one. He was best known for creating the Sukeban Deka franchise in 1979, which was turned into TV series and movies.
Veteran American comedy TV writer and producer Sherwood [Charles] Schwartz died on 12 July, aged ninety-four. Best known for creating such shows as Gilligan’s Island, It’s About Time and The Brady Bruch, he also co-scripted the 1983 TV movie The Invisible Woman.
Philip J. Rahman, one half of the publishing imprint Fedogan & Bremer, took his own life on 23 July, aged fifty-nine. He had been in declining health for some years and suffering personal difficulties. F&B was set up in the late 1980s by Rahman and Dennis Weiler (who named the imprint after nicknames they had in college – Weiler was “Fedogan” and Rahman was “Bremer”) to produce the kind of books they no longer felt Arkham House was publishing. Following an audio version of H. P. Lovecraft’s Fungi from Yuggoth, the first F&B book title was Colossus: The Collected Science Fiction of Donald Wandrei, and they went on to publish collections and novels by Robert Bloch, Hugh B. Cave, Howard Wandrei, Carl Jacobi, Basil Copper, Karl Edward Wagner, Richard L. Tierney, Brian Lumley, R. Chetwynd-Hayes, Richard A. Lupoff and Adam Niswander, along with anthologies edited by Robert M. Price and Stephen Jones. The imprint won the World Fantasy Award – Non-Professional, and many of the titles it published were also award winners or nominees.
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