Indian-born British historical novelist and children’s writer M. (Mary) M. (Margaret) Kaye (aka “Mollie Kaye”/“Mollie Hamilton”), best known for her 1978 novel The Far Pavilions, died on January 29th, aged 95. She wrote at least one children’s fantasy, The Ordinary Princess (1980).
Walt Disney artist John Hench, the official portraitist for Mickey Mouse, died of heart failure on February 5th, aged 95. He began his career at Disney in 1939 as a sketch artist on Fantasia, and went on to work on Dumbo, The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr Toad, Peter Pan, Alice in Wonderland, Cinderella, the unfinished Salvador Dali collaboration Destino, and was the lead special effects artist for the Academy A ward-winning 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (1954). As one of Walt Disney Imagineering’s chief designers, he played a key role in the creation all the theme parks and was working on designs for the latest, Hong Kong Disneyland, at the time of his death.
American academic and SF author Donald Barr, best known for his 1973 space opera Space Relations: A Slightly Gothic Interstellar Tale, died the same day, aged 82.
British cartoonist Norman Thelwell, best known for his fat little girls riding plump ponies in Punch magazine, died in his sleep on February 7th, aged 80. He had been suffering from Alzheimer’s disease. His will included an unusual clause precluding his son’s ex-wife benefiting from it in any way.
Multiple award-winning American comics editor and literary agent Julius Schwartz died of complications from pneumonia on February 8th, aged 88. He had been hospitalized for several weeks following injuries sustained in a fall. In 1932, with Mort Weisinger and Forrest J Ackerman, he launched The Time Traveler, credited as being the first SF fanzine to achieve a wide circulation. Two years later, again with Weisinger, he co-founded the first literary agency to specialize in science fiction, Solar Sales Service. His clients included Ray Bradbury, H.P. Lovecraft, Edmond Hamilton, Stanley G. Weinbaum, C.L. Moore, David H. Keller, Leigh Brackett, Henry Kuttner, Manly Wade Wellman and Robert Bloch. As an editor for DC Comics during the late 1950s and ’60s, he was responsible for the “Silver Age” of comics by creating Adam Strange and The Metal Men, as well as reinventing such superheroes as The Flash, Green Lantern, Hawkman, The Atom and The Justice League of America. He is also credited with restoring the flagging fortunes of Batman in the mid-1960s, before going on to edit the Superman family and Captain Marvel in the 1970s. After his retirement in 1987, he continued to consult for DC. In his 2000 autobiography, Man of Two Worlds: My Life in Science Fiction and Comics, co-authored by Brian M. Thomsen, Schwartz wrote his own epitaph: “Here Lies Julius Schwartz. He met his last deadline.”
Scriptwriter Robert Thompson died of complications from pneumonia on February 11th, aged 79. His credits include Ratboy, Brave New World, The Hound of the Baskervilles (1972) and episodes of The Man from U.N.C.L.E.
Novelist and biographer Martin Booth died on February 12th, aged 59. His books include two children’s novels in the proposed “The Alchemist’s Son” trilogy, Doctor Illuminatus and Soul Stealer, plus the biographies The Doctor, The Detective and Arthur Conan Doyle and A Magick Life: A Biography of Aleister Crowley.
Conductor and composer Samuel “Sandy” Matlovsky, whose credits include TV’s Star Trek and the movie version of Ray Bradbury’s The Illustrated Man, died on February 17th, aged 82.
Hugo-nominated artist Mel [Joseph] Hunter, best known for his “robot” covers on The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, died of multiple myeloma cancer on February 20th, aged 76. He also contributed to Galaxy, If, Life and National Geographic.
Composer Bart Howard, whose best-known song is the 1960 hit “Fly Me to the Moon” (written in 1954 as “In Other Words”), died of complications from a stroke on February 21st, aged 88. He also wrote songs for performers such as Peggy Lee, Eartha Kitt and Johnny Mathis.
Specialist bookseller, bibliographer and publisher Bradford M. (Marshall) Day died on February 25th, aged 87. Under his own imprint, Science Fiction and Fantasy Publications, he began publishing bibliographies of Talbot Mundy, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Sax Rohmer, H. Rider Haggard and others from 1951 onwards. He also edited the anthologies Past & Future and the Last Generation, Olden Tales, Old by Old and Ghost Stories from Where and When.
Science Fiction bibliographer Keith L. (Leroy) Justice and his wife Hilda Virginia Savell Juistice, both aged 54, were killed instantly when their car was hit from behind by a pick-up truck in Mississippi on February 27th. A major collector of Robert Silverberg material, in the 1980s Justice compiled Science Fiction Master Index of Names and Science Fiction, Fantasy & Horror Reference: An Annotated Bibliography of Works About Literature & Film.
Playwright Jerome Lawrence died on February 28th, aged 88. Among his credits is Shangri-La, a flop Broadway musical version of Lost Horizon which was produced on TV in 1960 starring Richard Basehart and Claude Rains.
British clinical psychologist and SF author Peter T. Garratt died from a probable heart attack on March 2nd, aged 54. His nearly forty published short stories appeared in a number of markets, including Interzone, Asimov’s Science Fiction and anthologies edited by Mike Ashley and Maxim Jakubowski.
Film and TV writer Drake Sather committed suicide on March 3rd, aged 44. Best known for co-scripting Zoolander with star Ben Stiller, the Saturday Night Live writer and stand-up comedian was working on a comedy remake of the TV series Mr Ed, on which he was also executive producer, when he shot himself in his Los Angeles loft.
Composer Arthur Kempel died of stomach cancer the same day, aged 58. His credits include such films as Double Impact and The Arrival, and episodes of the TV series Twilight Zone, Tiny Toon Adventures and Ripley’s Believe It or Not.
Author, lyricist, teacher and critic Joel E. Siegel died of spinal meningitis on March 11th, aged 63. His study Val Lewton: The Reality of Terror was published in 1973.
American fanzine publisher Jon White, whose 1962 incarnation of the fanzine Inside continued as Leland Sapiro’s Riverside Quarterly, died of a cerebral haemorrhage after a long illness on March 12th, aged 57.
American animation and computer games writer Katherine Lawrence (aka “Kathy Selbert”) apparently committed suicide in Arizona on March 25th, aged 49. Her body was found two days later by a group of hikers. Lawrence’s TV credits include such shows as Dungeons and Dragons, Conan the Adventurer, X-Men Evolution, ReBoot, Mighty Max, Beetle Juice, Stargate Infinity and Jim Henson’s Muppet Babies. She also worked on the video games Stratosphere and Mario is Missing, and co-scripted the animated movie Secret of Mulan.
Oscar and Emmy-winning film and TV composer Fred Karlin died of cancer on March 26th, aged 67. His credits include The Stalking Moon, Westworld, Chosen Survivors, Futureworld and TV’s Kiss Meets the Phantom of the Park, Vampire and Man from Atlantis.
Algerian-born French author Robert Merle died of a heart attack on March 27th, aged 95. His books include Un animal doué de raison (aka The Day of the Dolphin) and the John W. Campbell Memorial Award-winning Malevil, both filmed. He was awarded the Prix Goncourt in 1949.
Fifty-year-old Sherlock Holmes scholar and collector Richard Lancelyn Green was found dead in his bed the same day. He had been garrotted with a shoelace tightened by a wooden spoon. Although the coroner said that suicide was most likely, there was no note and he was unable to rule out murder and the death was left open. He added that garrotting was a painful and very unusual method of suicide. Green had earlier expressed fears for his safety after claiming that a batch of long-lost personal papers belonging to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle – sold at Christie’s in London on May 19th for almost £950,000 – was part of an estate willed to the British Library by the author’s daughter, Dame Jean.
British actor, director, composer, novelist, playwright and broadcaster Hubert [Robert Harry] Gregg died on March 29th, aged 89. Of his more than 200 songs, the best known is “Maybe It’s Because I’m a Londoner”, made famous by Bud Flanagan in 1947. From 1953–60 he directed Agatha Christie’s stage play The Mousetrap, which has been running in Londo
n’s West End since 1952.
American author Roger Dee (Roger D. Aycock) died on April 5th, aged 89. His stories appeared in SF magazines from the late 1940s until the early ’70s, including Planet Stories, Super Science Stories, Amazing, Analog, Astounding, Galaxy, If and The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. His short novel An Earth Gone Mad was published as half an Ace double in 1954.
Jerry Burge, who was art director for the magazine Witchcraft & Sorcery (1971–74), died of congestive heart failure on April 6th. With fellow fan Carson Jacks, Burge published the first hardcover history of SF fandom, The Immortal Storm (1954) by Sam Moskowitz, through ASFO Press.
L. Ron Hubbard collector and publisher Virgil Wilhite died following a brief illness on April 11th, aged 62. During the late 1970s and early ’80s, Wilhite’s Theta Books published Hubbard’s Buckskin Brigades, the short story collection Lives You Wished to Lead But Never Dared and the non-fiction collection The Way to Happiness.
Author and Los Angeles newspaper reporter Will Fowler, reportedly the first journalist on the scene of the infamous 1947 “Black Dahlia” murder, died of cancer on April 13th, aged 81.
Veteran Disney animator Harry Holt died on April 14th, aged 93. He helped design Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs and Lady and the Tramp before joining Hanna-Barbera Studios, where he worked on The Flintstones and Tom and Jerry. He later became chief designer of Walt Disney World in Orlando, Florida.
Manga comics artist Mitsutera Yokoyama died in a fire on April 15th, aged 69. Many of his works were animated, including Tetsujin 28, Giant Robo, Gigantor, Sally the Witch and Red Shadow.
American composer John Seely died on April 23rd, aged 88. He worked on TV’s Looney Tunes and also The Hideous Sun Demon.
American author Hubert Selby, Jr. died of lung disease on April 26th, aged 75. Best known for his books Last Exit to Brooklyn (the subject of an obscenity trial in Britain in 1966 and filmed in 1989), The Room and The Demon, Selby scripted the 2004 horror film Fear X.
American screenwriter Nelson Gidding died on May 2nd, aged 84. He worked with director Robert Wise on such films as The Haunting and The Andromeda Strain. His other credits include Skullduggery, Beyond the Poseidon Adventure, The Mummy Lives and episodes of such TV series as Suspense and The Inner Sanctum.
Australian-born poet, short story writer and editor Robyn [Meta] Herrington died in Canada after a long battle against cancer on May 3rd, aged 43. She was an acquisitions editor for Edge Science Fiction and Fantasy and her stories appeared in a number of magazines and DAW anthologies.
American horror writer Brian McNaughton (aka “Mark Bloodstone”) died on May 13th, aged 68. The author of more than 200 short stories, his third collection The Throne of Bones won the World Fantasy Award and the International Horror Guild Award in 1998. McNaughton’s other books include Satan’s Love Child (aka Gemini Rising), Satan’s Mistress (aka Downward to Darkness), Satan’s Seductress (aka Worse Things Waiting) and Satan’s Surrogate (aka The House Across the Way), along with the earlier collections Nasty Stories and More Nasty Stories.
American comics writer and artist Gill Fox died on May 15th, aged 88. During the 1940s he produced covers for Police Comics, featuring Jack Cole’s Plastic Man, and backgrounds and scripts for Will Eisner’s daily newspaper strip of The Spirit.
Romanian-born composer Marius Constant, best known for his memorable theme to The Twilight Zone, died the same day, aged 79.
American horror writer Rex Miller [Spangberg] died on May 21st, aged 65. He had spent the previous six years in hospitals and nursing homes. Starting with his Bram Stoker Award-nominated Slob in the late 1980s, he published a series of novels featuring detective Jack Eichord and/or serial killer Daniel “Chaingang” Bunkowski. These included Frenzy, Stone Shadow, Slice, Iceman, Chaingang, Savant, Butcher and St Louis Blues. His short fiction appeared in the anthologies Splatterpunks, Stalkers, Borderlands 2 and Narrow Houses, while Rex Miller: The Complete Revelations was a 1993 biographical study by T. Winter-Damon.
Known as the “Spectre Inspector”, freelance parapsychologist and “secular exorcist” Andrew Green died the same day, aged 76. The author of fifteen books, including Ghost Hunting: A Practical Guide, Shire Album of Haunted Houses, Our Haunted Kingdom, Ghosts in the South-East, Phantom Ladies, Haunted Sussex Today and Ghosts of Today, in 1996 he was famously asked to investigate reports of paranormal sightings at London’s Royal Albert Hall.
53-year-old British literary agent Rod Hall was found stabbed to death in his South London flat on May 23rd. He was the former film and TV agent for such SF authors as Brian W. Aldiss and Christopher Priest. While working at Penguin Books, he created the UK’s first film/TV tie-in department in 1978. A twenty-year-old student was subsequently charged with his murder.
American biographer, critic and editor Edward [Charles] Wagen-knecht (aka “Julian Forrest”) died on May 24th, aged 104. Born at the turn of the century, his books include Utopia Americana, a 1929 monograph on L. Frank Baum’s Wizard of Oz series, plus Edgar Allan Poe: The Man Behind the Legend, The Letters of James Branch Cabell and Seven Masters of Supernatural Fiction. A regular contributor to The Arkham Sampler, he also wrote biographies of Nathaniel Hawthorne, Washington Irving and three works on Henry James, as well as also editing Six Novels of the Supernatural and The Fireside Book of Ghost Stories.
Author and artist Raymond Bayless, best known for his covers for Arkham House’s four revised reprints of H.P. Lovecraft during the late 1980s, died after a long illness in Los Angeles on May 25th, aged 84.
Roger W. (William) Straus, Jr., co-founder of New York publishing imprint Farrar Straus & Giroux, died of pneumonia the same day, aged 87.
American SF and thriller writer Alfred Coppel (Alfredo José de Araña-Marini y Coppel, aka “Sol Galaxan”, “Robert Cham Gilman”, “Derfla Leppoc” and “A.C. Martin”) died on May 30th, aged 82. He made his writing debut in 1943 and contributed more than forty stories to Astounding, Planet Stories, Super Science Stories, Fantastic Adventures and Future Fiction. His novels include Dark December, Thirty-Four East, The Dragon, The Hastings Conspiracy, The Apocalypse Brigade, The Burning Mountain, “The Goldenwing Cycle” (Glory, Glory’s People and Glory’s War) and the young adult “Rhada” series as “Gilman” (The Rebel of Rhada, The Navigator of Rhada, The Starkahn of Rhada and The Warlock of Rhada).
Australian small press editor and publisher Peter (“Mac”) McNamara died of brain cancer on June 1st, aged 57. He was diagnosed in early 2002. His mid-1980s SF magazine Aphelion, co-founded with his wife Mariann, led to the creation of Aphelion Publications, and he co-edited the anthologies Alien Shores and Forever Shores: Fiction of the Fantastic with Margaret Winch (who also died in 2004). McNamara also edited Wonder Years: The Best Australian Stories of a Decade Past and had reportedly completed Future Shores at the time of his death.
The severed head of 91-year-old blacklisted American film and TV writer Robert Lees (a.k.a. “J.E. Selby”) was discovered on June 15th in the home of his neighbour, Morley Hal Engleson. Sixty-seven-year-old retired physician Engleson, who lived about two miles from the gates of Paramount Studios, had also been stabbed to death by a 27-year-old homeless man while trying to book an airline flight on the phone. Kevin Lee Graff was arrested after he was recognized from a TV news conference by a studio guard. A former extra in such films as Rasputin and the Empress (1932), Lees’ credits (often in collaboration with Frederic I. Rinaldo) include the scripts for The Black Cat (1941), The Invisible Woman and the Abbott and Costello comedies Hold That Ghost, Meet Frankenstein and Abbott and Costello Meet the Invisible Man, plus episodes of TV’s Alfred Hitchcock Presents under a pseudonym.
Eighty-two-year-old American screenwriter Tom Rowe died in Greece of heart failure the same day. His credits include the story for Disney’s The Aristocats and he worked on the scripts for The Green Slime, Jules Verne’s The Light at the Edge of the World and John Derek’s Tarzan, the Ape Man. Rowe also wrote several episodes of TV’s Fantasy Island. Durin
g the United States’ occupation of Japan, he was General Douglas MacArthur’s chief translator.
British-born pulp author Hugh B. (Barnett) Cave (aka “Justin Case”, “H.C. Barnett”, “Jack D’Arcy”, “Rupert Knowles” and “Geoffrey Vace”) died in a Florida hospice after a short illness on June 27th, aged 93. Cave emigrated to America with his family when he was five. He sold his first fiction in 1929 and went on to publish 800 stories in such pulp magazines as Weird Tales, Strange Tales, Ghost Stories, Black Book Detective Magazine, Spicy Mystery Stories and the so-called “shudder” or “weird menace” pulps, Horror Stories and Terror Tales. Cave left the field for almost three decades, moving to Haiti and later Jamaica, where he established a coffee plantation and wrote two highly-praised travel books, Haiti: Highroad to Adventure and Four Paths to Paradise: A Book About Jamaica. He also continued to write for the “slick” magazines, such as Collier’s, Cosmopolitan, Esquire, The Saturday Evening Post and many other titles. In 1977, Karl Edward Wagner’s Carcosa imprint published a volume of Cave’s best horror tales, Murgunstrumm and Others, and he returned to the genre with new stories and a string of modern horror novels: Legion of the Dead, The Nebulon Horror, The Evil, Shades of Evil, Disciples of Dread, The Lower Deep, Lucifer’s Eye, Isle of the Whisperers, The Dawning, The Evil Returns and The Restless Dead. His short stories were also collected in a number of volumes, including The Corpse Maker, Death Stalks the Night, The Dagger of Tsiang, Long Live the Dead: Tales from Black Mask, Come Info my Parlor, Door Below and Bottled in Blonde. Pulp Man’s Odyssey: The Hugh B. Cave Story was a biography by Audrey Parente; Magazines I Remember was a personal memoir by the author, and Milt Thomas’ biography, Cave of a Thousand Tales: The Life & Times of Hugh B. Cave, was published by Arkham House the week after the author’s death. Cave received Life Achievement Awards from The Horror Writers Association in 1991, The International Horror Guild in 1998 and The World Fantasy Convention in 1999. He was also presented with the Special Convention Award at the 1997 World Fantasy gathering in London, where he was co-Special Guest of Honour.
The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror 16 Page 72
