Austrian-Hungarian-born literary agent and film producer Ingo Preminger, the brother of director Otto, died in Los Angeles on June 7th, aged 95. Preminger represented a number of writers who were blacklisted during the McCarthy era, including Dalton Trumbo and Ring Lardner, Jr, along with such actors as Paul Henreid and Ralph Meeker. His film credits include M*A*S*H and The Salzburg Connection.
83-year-old Hungarian avant-garde composer Gyorgy Ligeti died after a long illness in Vienna, Austria, on June 12th. The creator of a pioneering sound technique called “micropolyphony”, he is best known for his work on the soundtrack for Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey.
Controversial American book publisher Lyle Stuart (Lionel Simon) died on June 24th following a heart attack. He was 83. After working as business manager for Mad magazine, he founded the investigative newspapers Exposé and The Independent. He launched his own publishing imprint, Lyle Stuart Inc., in 1956 with money won in a libel case. When he sold the publishing house in 1990, he founded Barricade Books.
62-year-old Jim Baen (James Patrick Baen), American editor and publisher and founder of the Baen Books imprint, died on June 28th after suffering a massive stroke two weeks earlier. He never regained consciousness. Baen began his career at Ace Books in 1972, and went on to edit the SF magazines Galaxy and If, and the paperback anthology Destinies, before forming Baen Books in 1983. He is credited as an innovator in using free e-texts and book extracts to publicise Baen’s print titles.
American radio and TV broadcaster Roderick MacLeish, who wrote the 1982 fantasy novel Prince Ombra, died on July 1st, aged 80.
Bookseller and author Martin [Arthur] Last died on July 6th, aged 76. With his long-time partner Baird Searles (who died in 1993) he co-founded The Science Fiction Shop in New York City’s West Village from 1973–86. Last also wrote fiction, poetry and reviews, and co-authored the 1979 study A Reader’s Guide to Science Fiction with Searles, Beth Meacham and Michael Franklin. From 1975–76 he edited The Science Fiction Review Monthly.
Tough-guy crime writer Mickey Spillane (Frank Morrison Spil-lane), who created PI Mike Hammer in his first novel, I, the Jury (1947), died of cancer on July 17th after a long illness. He was 88. The author began his career writing for the pulp magazines and the comics, including Batman, Captain America, Sub-mariner and The Human Torch, and he returned to the medium in the 1990s with the SF detective series Mickey Spillane’s Mike Danger. Many of his books and stories have been turned into films or TV series – including Robert Aldrich’s classic Kiss Me Deadly (1955) – and Spillane himself portrayed Hammer in the low budget 1963 movie The Girl Hunters. He received a Grand Master Award from the Mystery Writers of America in 1995.
Best-selling British fantasy writer David [Andrew] Gemmell died at his computer on July 28th. Just over a week earlier, the 57-year-old author had undergone a quadruple heart bypass and appeared to be recovering well. Best known for his heroic fantasy “Drenai” series, which he began in 1984 with Legend (aka Against the Horde) and continued through ten further volumes, his other books include Sword in the Storm, Wolf in Shadow (aka The Jerusalem Man), Ironhand’s Daughter, Knights of Dark Renown, Lion of Mace don and The Lord of the Silver Bow. Random House UK’s SF and fantasy list was renamed “Legend” in the late 1980s in honour of Gemmell’s debut novel, which has never been out of print.
Susan E. Michaud (Susan E. Roberts), who helped run small press imprint Necronomicon Press with her husband, Marc Michaud, died on August 3rd, aged 41.
Nebula-nominated American author Bob (Robert J.) Leman died of congestive heart failure on August 8th, aged 84. During the 1950s and ’60s he produced the fanzine The Vinegar Worm (aka Nematode) and between 1967 and 2002 he published fifteen stories, all but one in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. These later appeared in the 2002 collection Feesters in the Lake & Other Stories, which was included in Horror: Another 100 Best Books. His Nebula nominated story “Window” was adapted as an episode of the 2001 TV series Night Visions.
British SF author Philip E. (Empson) High died of respiratory failure on August 9th, aged 92. He had been admitted to hospital a week earlier following a heart attack. A contributor to such magazines as Authentic Science Fiction, Nebula Science Fiction and Vision of Tomorrow, he wrote fourteen novels between 1964 and 1979, including The Prodigal Son, No Truce with Terra, The Mad Metropolis, Come Hunt an Earthman, Speaking of Dinosaurs and Blindfold the Stars. His short fiction appeared in two collections, The Best of Philip E. High and A Step to the Stars.
79-year-old ghost hunter and author Ed Warren who, with his wife Lorraine, investigated more than 10,000 suspected hauntings, died on August 23rd of complications from a stroke. Having investigated the Amityville house in New York, the couple worked as consultants on Amityville II: The Possession. The TV movies The Demon Murder Case and The Haunted were based on books written by the Warrens.
American scriptwriter/producer Joseph [William] Stefano, who co-created and produced the TV show The Outer Limits (1963–65) with Leslie Stevens, died of a heart attack on August 24th, aged 84. Best remembered as the writer of Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho and the 1998 remake, his other credits include Eye of the Cat, The Kindred, the TV movies Psycho IV the Beginning, Revenge, Home for the Holidays and Snowbeast, the 1990 series Swamp Thing and an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation. In 1964, Stefano directed the “lost” TV pilot The Ghost of Sierra de Cobre (aka The Haunted).
Pioneering TV animation designer Ed Benedict, who created such iconic cartoon characters as The Flintstones, Quick Draw McGraw, Huckleberry Hound, Yogi Bear and The Jetsons, died on August 28th, aged 94. After working at the Walt Disney studio, with Oswald Lantz at Universal and with Tex Avery at MGM, he became the main character designer for Hanna-Barbera from the late 1950s until his retirement in the mid-1970s.
American songwriter Paul Vance (Paul Van Valkenburgh), whose cult hit “Itsy Bitsy Teenie Weenie Yellow Polka Dot Bikini” went to #1 for 16-year-old Brian Hyland in August 1960, died of lung cancer on September 6th, aged 68. With Lee Pockriss he also co-wrote “Catch a Falling Star”, which was a #1 hit for Perry Como in 1958. Vance sold the rights to all his songs when he was younger.
Animator Berny Wolf died on September 7th, aged 95. After working on the Betty Boop cartoons at the Fleischer Studios, he moved to the Ub Iwerks Studio and then on to Disney Studios, where he contributed to Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Fantasia, Dumbo and many other titles. With Ward Kimball he worked on the design of Pinocchio’s Jiminy Cricket, and came up with the design for the costumes of the characters who still walk around Disney theme parks. Later, he worked in Tex Avery’s unit at MGM, for Film Roman Studios, and at Hanna-Barbera, where he was involved with Scooby-Doo and the Reluctant Werewolf, Scooby-Doo and the Ghoul School and such TV series as The Jetsons, Jonny Quest and The Flintstones.
French screenwriter and director Gérard Brach died of cancer on September 9th, aged 79. Best known for his many collaborations with director Roman Polanski (including Repulsion, Cul-de-sac, Dance of the Vampires, What? and The Tenant), he also scripted Bye Bye Monkey, Quest for Fire, The Name of the Rose and Renegade.
American horror author and editor Charles L. (Lewis) Grant died of a heart attack in front of the television on September 15th, aged 64. He had been suffering from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and emphysema from some years, and had returned from a care facility ten days earlier to his home in New Jersey to celebrate his birthday (and that of his wife of almost twenty-five years, editor and novelist Kathryn Ptacek) on September 12th. A prolific short story writer and novelist, Grant’s career spanned more than thirty-five years. During that time he cultivated his unique style of “quiet horror” in many novels and collections, including The Curse, The Hour of the Oxrun Dead, The Sound of Midnight, The Grave, The Bloodwind, The Soft Whisper of the Dead, The Nestling, The Tea Party, The Orchard, The Pet, For Fear of the Night, In a Dark Dream, Dialing the Wind, Stunts, Something Stirs, Jackals, The Black Carousel, Tales
from the Nightside, A Glow of Candles and Nightmare Seasons. More recent titles include the first two X Files novelisations, Goblin and Whirlwind, the “Millennium Quartet” inspired by the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, and the “Black Oak” series about a security team of paranormal investigators. Grant also published a variety of books under the pseudonyms “Felicia Andrews”, “Deborah Lewis”, “Geoffrey Marsh”, “Lionel Fenn”, “Steven Charles” and “Simon Lake”. As an editor he was responsible for two dozen anthologies, including the influential Shadows series (twelve volumes) along with Nightmares, Midnight, After Midnight, Greystone Bay, Doom City, The Dodd Mead Gallery of Horror, Night Visions: Dead Image and Gothic Ghosts (with Wendy Webb). He won three World Fantasy Awards and two Nebulas for his fiction. A recipient of the of the British Fantasy Society’s Special Award, the International Horror Guild Living Legend Award and the Horror Writers Association’s Lifetime Achievement Award, he was also named a Grand Master at the 2002 World Horror Convention.
British TV scriptwriter Peter [George Derek] Ling, best-known as the co-creator of the soap opera Crossroads, died of a heart attack on September 14th, aged 80. He wrote for Eagle comic at an early age, and his other TV credits include the children’s puppet series Whirligig and episodes of The Avengers, Sexton Blake and Doctor Who (“The Mind Robber”).
American socialite Patricia Kennedy Lawford, the sister of John and Robert Kennedy and the widow of actor Peter Lawford, died of complications from pneumonia on September 17th, aged 82. She was believed to be the last person alive to know the truth behind the mysterious suicide of Marilyn Monroe in 1962.
Author and fan Darrell C. (Coleman) Richardson (aka “D. Coleman Rich”) died after a long illness on September 19th, aged 88. He wrote more than forty books, several about the pulps that include J. Allen St. John: An Illustrated Bibliography, “King of the Pulps”: The Life and Writings of H. Bedford-Jones (with Victor A. Berch and Peter Ruber) and Those Macabre Pulps. Richardson was a co-founder of the FAX small press imprint in the 1970s and was a winner of the Big Heart Award and the Lamont Award.
British sculptor Allister Bowtell died of cancer on September 20th, aged 66. As well as creating the original Cybermen for Doctor Who, he also designed Rod Hull’s “Emu” and created props for Monty Python’s Flying Circus, The Goodies, Jonathan Miller’s Alice and Sir Henry at Rawlinson’s End.
Sir Malcolm [Henry] Arnold died of a chest infection on September 23rd, aged 84. Best known as the first British composer to win an Academy Award, for his score for The Bridge Over the River Kwai, his other credits include several of the St Trinian’s movies, Hammer’s Stolen Face and Four Sided Triangle, The Sound Barrier, 1984 (1956) and Suddenly Last Summer. When the classical music establishment ignored his symphonies, he suffered a number of violent episodes and was sanctioned in a mental asylum.
American science fiction and fantasy writer and poet John M. (Milo) “Mike” Ford (aka “Michael J. Dodge”/“Milo Dennison”) died on September 25th, aged 49. He was diabetic and had undergone a kidney transplant in 2000. The winner of two World Fantasy Awards for his 1983 novel The Dragon Waiting and his narrative poem “Winter Solstice, Camelot Station”, Ford’s other books include Web of Angels, The Princes of the Air, The Scholars of Night and the Star Trek novels The Final Reflection and How Much for Just the Planet?. He was also an award-winning writer of role-playing games. Reportedly, the headline in the St. Paul Pioneer newspaper for his memorial event read: “Crafters of Sci-Fi Attend Obscure Writer’s Eulogy”.
French writer, editor and translator Michel Demuth died of liver failure on September 30th, aged 67. He translated the French editions of Arthur C. Clarke’s 2001: A Space Odyssey and Frank Herbert’s Dune, and was the editor of Galaxie (the French edition of Galaxy).
American biographer and book collector Virgil S. (Starbuck) Utter, Jr died of congestive heart failure on October 3rd, aged 81. His published biographies of C. L. Moore and Henry Kuttner, Raymond King Cummings, Grant Allen and George Allen England, often in collaboration with Phil Stephensen-Payne and others.
Multiple Award-winning American SF author and fanzine writer [Arthur] Wilson “Bob” Tucker, credited with coining the term “space opera”, died after a short illness on October 6th, aged 91. His most famous fanzine was Le Zombie (1938–2001), and he was Fan Guest of Honor at the 1948 and 1967 World Science Fiction Conventions. The author of sixty short stories (in Super Science Stories, The Best of Wilson Tucker etc.) and novels (The City in the Sea, The Long Loud Silence, The Time Masters, The Year of the Quiet Sun etc.), Tucker’s many honours include three Hugo Awards (two retro), the First Fandom Hall of Fame Award, E. E. Smith Memorial Award and SFWA Author Emeritus. He was a 2003 inductee in the Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame.
British film critic Philip Strick, a regular contributor to the BFI’s Sight & Sound magazine, died on October 7th, aged 67. He also taught Britain’s first adult SF evening class, edited the humorous SF anthology Antigrav and was the author of the 1976 study Science Fiction Movies.
Emmy Award-winning scriptwriter, producer and director Jerry Belson, co-creator of TV’s The Odd Couple (1970–75) with Garry Marshall, died of prostate cancer on October 10th, aged 68. His film credits include Student Bodies, Jekyll and Hyde . . . Together Again (which he also directed), Close Encounters of the Third Kind (un-credited) and Always.
Belgium writer Jacques Sternberg died of lung cancer on October 11th, aged 83. He is credited with publishing the first French SF Fanzine, Le Petit Silence illustre, edited many anthologies and wrote several hundred short stories, many of them fantastic. Sternberg also scripted Alain Resnais’ 1968 film Je t’aime, je t’aime.
British children’s author and illustrator Ursula Moray Williams died on October 17th, aged 95. Her more than seventy books include The Adventures of the Little Wooden Horse and Gobbolino the Witch’s Cat. Her uncle was Sir Stanley Unwin, founder of the publishing imprint Allen & Unwin.
Animator and cartoonist Don R. Christensen (aka “Don Arr”) died on October 18th, aged 90. He was a sketch artist at Disney from 1937 to 1941, working on such films as Pinocchio and Dumbo. After a brief stint with Bob Clampett’s animation unit at Warner Bros, where he scripted several Looney Tunes shorts, Christensen moved to Dell/Gold Key, where he contributed to such comic books as Magnus Robot Fighter and Scooby Doo.
British playwright and YA author John Symonds died on October 21st, aged 92. He was also Aleister Crowley’s literary executor.
British playwright and author Paul [Victor] Ableman, whose SF novel The Twilight of the Vilp was published in 1969, died on October 25th, aged 79. He also scripted episodes of TV’s Tales of the Unexpected.
British author and screenwriter [Thomas] Nigel Kneale, best remembered for his pioneering Quatermass trilogy for BBC-TV, died after a long illness and a series of strokes on October 29th, aged 84. When The Quatermass Experiment was first broadcast in 1953, it emptied the streets and pubs for the six weeks it ran. Hammer produced the film version in 1955 (aka The Creeping Unknown) and the studio went on to film the two sequels as well, Quatermass 2 (aka Enemy from Space) and Quatermass and the Pit (aka Five Million Years to Earth). A fourth and final episode, Quatermass (aka The Quatermass Conclusion), was shown in 1979. There was a radio version, The Quatermass Memoirs, broadcast on BBC Radio 3 in 1996, and the original show was remade as a live broadcast by the BBC in 2005. The live broadcast of Kneale’s adaptation on Nineteen Eighty Four (starring Peter Cushing and Donald Pleasence) in 1954 prompted questions in the British parliament. His other TV work includes such dramas as The Creature (filmed by Hammer as The Abominable Snowman), Wuthering Heights (1962), The Road, The Year of the Sex Olympics, The Chopper, The Stone Tape, The Woman in Black and the series Beasts (1976) and Kinvig (1981), although he turned down a request to contribute to The X Files in the 1990s. He also wrote the scripts for First Men in the Moon, Hammer’s The Witches (aka The Devil’s Own) and the original draft of Halloween III: Season of the Witch. Kneale
’s best short stories are collected in Tomato Cain and Other Stories (1949).
Leonard Schrader, the Oscar-nominated screenwriter of Kiss of the Spider Woman, died of heart failure on November 2nd, aged 62.
American pulp author and rare book dealer Nelson S. (Slade) Bond died of complications from heart problems on November 4th, just short of his 98th birthday. After making his SF debut in Astounding in 1937 with “Down the Dimensions”, his work appeared in Weird Tales, Unknown, Fantastic Adventures, Planet Stories and such mainstream magazines as Esquire, Blue Book and Argosy. His books include the 1949 novel, Exiles of Time, and the short story collections Mr Mergenthwirker’s Lobblies and Other Fantastic Tales, The Thirty-first of February, The Remarkable Exploits of Lancelot Biggs Spaceman, Nightmares and Daydreams, The Far Side of Nowhere and Other Worlds Than Ours (the last three titles from Arkham House). A scriptwriter for radio and TV, he wrote the 1957 teleplay The Night America Trembled, about Orson Welles’ War of the Worlds radio broadcast. He was honoured by the SFWA in 1998 as Author Emeritus.
British SF fan and book dealer Ron Bennett, whose fanzine newsletter Skyrack ran from 1959–71, died of leukaemia on November 5th, aged 73.
American composer Basil Poledouris died of cancer on November 8th, aged 61. His many film scores include Tintorera, Conan the Barbarian, Conan the Destroyer, Red Dawn, Flesh+Blood, Robo-Cop, Cherry 2000, Spellbinder, The Hunt for Red October, Harley Davidson and the Marlboro Man, RoboCop 3, Serial Mom, The Jungle Book (1994), Starship Troopers and The Touch. Poledouris also contributed music to the 1980s TV series Alfred Hitchcock Presents, The Twilight Zone, Misfits of Science and the mini-series Amerika, as well as the 3-D computer game Conan (2004).
The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror 18 Page 67
