Influential American film critic and champion of the auteur theory, Andrew Sarris, died of complications from a stomach infection on June 20, aged 83. From the 1960s onwards, his reviews appeared in The Village Voice (in which he famously championed Hitchcock’s Psycho) and the New York Observer. Sarris also edited an English-language edition of the French magazine Cahiers du Cinéma, and he wrote the acclaimed reference work The American Cinema: Directors and Directions 1929–1968.
Tony Award-winning American composer and lyricist Richard Adler, who co-wrote (with Jerry Ross) the 1955 Broadway hit Damn Yankees!, died on June 21, aged 90. It was filmed in 1958 with Ray Walston as the Devil. He was married to actress Sally Annn Howes from 1958–66.
Seventy-one-year-old writer, director and producer Norah Ephron died in New York of leukaemia on June 26. Among her less successful credits are the John Travolta angel movie Michael and the 2005 remake of Bewitched.
Former Saturday Night Live writer and producer Tom Davis (Thomas James Davis), who also scripted the 1993 movie Coneheads, died of head and neck cancer on July 19, aged 59. He had a small role in that film, and also appeared in Blues Brothers 2000 and Evolution.
New Zealand children’s author and former librarian Margaret Mahy died after a brief illness on July 23, aged 76. The author of around 40 novels, 20 collections of stories and 100 picture books, some of her best-known titles are The Tricksters, Aliens in the Family, The Haunting, The Changeover: A Supernatural Romance, Memory, A Horribly Haunted School, Alchemy and Portable Ghosts. She was the first writer out side the UK to win the Carnegie Medal.
British film critic and writer James [Patrick Blackden] Marriott died in a drowning accident on July 28, aged 39. A Senior Library Assistant at the University of Bristol, he edited Horror: The Complete Guide to the Cinema of Fear (aka Horror! 333 Films to Scare You to Death, co-credited to Kim Newman), and his other books include the reference volumes Horror Films (under the pseudonym “Patrick Blackden”) and The Descent. Mariott also contributed pieces to 21st Century Gothic, The Exorcist: Studies in the Horror Film and SFX magazine.
Incisive and acerbic American author, playwright and screenwriter [Eugene Luther] Gore Vidal (aka Edgar Box/Katherine Everad/Cameron Kay), died of complications from pneumonia on July 31, aged 86. Along with a number of critical essays, he wrote such genre-related novels as Messiah, Kalki, Duluth, Live from Golgotha and The Smithsonian Institution, plus the 1957 play Visit to a Small Planet. Vidal’s screenplays includes Suddenly Last Summer, Visit to a Small Planet, Myra Breckinridge and Caligula, along with episodes of TV’s Omnibus (“The Turn of the Screw”, 1954) and Climax! (“Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde”, 1955). As an actor, he was in Suddenly Last Summer (uncredited) and Gattaca, and appeared as himself in episodes of Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In, Family Guy and The Simpsons.
Stalwart British illustrator Alan [Joseph] Hunter died on August 1 following a long illness. He was 89. Influenced by the work of Virgil Finlay, he became a commercial artist and draughtsman, and his SF art career began in the early 1950s illustrating for such magazines as New Worlds, Science-Fantasy and Nebula Science Fiction. He then went on to publish his often complex line illustrations in numerous semi-prozines and fanzines on both sides of the Atlantic, including Fantasy Tales, Whispers, Dark Horizons, Ghosts and Scholars, Science Fiction Chronicle, Algol/Starship, Vector, White Dwarf and many others. In 1981, Hunter was Special Artist Guest at Fantasycon VII.
Fifty-one-year-old French SF writer, critic and musician Roland C. (Charles) Wagner was killed in a car crash near Bordeaux on August 5. His partner and daughter who were in the same car only suffered minor injuries. His first novel, Le Serpent d’angoisse, appeared in 1987, and he went on to publish around fifty more (many under the pseudonym Richard Wolfram), including HPL (1890–1991), an alternate history biography of H. P. Lovecraft.
Tony, Emmy and Oscar-winning American composer and songwriter Marvin [Frederick] Hamlisch died after a short illness on August 6, aged 68. His movie soundtracks include The World’s Greatest Athelete, The Spy Who Loved Me, D.A.R.Y.L. and The Return of the Six Million Dollar Man and the Bionic Woman, while his songs have been used in Ski Party, The Devil and Max Devlin, The Fan, Big, Shrek the Third, Land of the Lost and episodes of TV’s Batman (1967), The Tick and Fringe.
Legendary American comic book artist Joe Kubert died of multiple myeloma on August 12, aged 85. Born in Poland, he travelled to America with his parents as an infant. He began is comics career in 1942 and went on to work with most of the major publishers on such titles as All-Star Comics, Tor, EC’s Two-Fisted Tales, The Brave and the Bold, Our Army at War (“Sgt. Rock”), Hawkman (who he had also illustrated back in the 1940s) and DC’s Tarzan, amongst many other titles. In 1976 he founded The Kubert School to train future comic artists, including his sons Adam and Andy.
Sixty-six-year-old American author Adam Niswander died of respiratory failure the same day, having spent several months in the hospice of a VA hospital in Arizona. Best known for his Shaman Cycle of novels, The Charm, The Serpent Slayers, The Hound Hunters, The War of the Whisperers and The Nemesis of Night, along with the stand-alone The Sand Dwellers and The Repository, his short fiction was collected in Blurring the Edges of Dream. Niswander also founded the Lovecraft convention MythosCon.
American-born Irish SF writer Harry Harrison (Henry Maxwell Dempsey), best known for his Stainless Steel Rat SF crime series, the Deathworld series and the 1966 novel Make Room! Make Room! (filmed as Solent Green in 1973), died in England on August 15, aged 87. Harrison began his career as an artist for such EC comics as Weird Fantasy and Weird Science, often collaborating with Wally Wood, and he was the principal writer on the Flash Gordon newspaper strip during the 1950s and 1960s. Harrison sold his first story in 1951 to Worlds Beyond, and he went on to become a prolific contributor to the SF magazines (under his own name and such pseudonyms as Felix Boyd and Hank Dempsey), most notably to John W. Campbell’s Astounding/Analog. His other novels include Planet of the Damned, Bill the Galactic Hero, A Transatlantic Tunnel Hurrah!, Star Smashers of the Galaxy Rangers, Skyfall, West of Eden and The Hammer and the Cross (written with Tom Shippey). As an editor, Harrison not only had short stints at Rocket Stories (as Wade Kaempfert), Amazing Stories, Fantastic and Impulse, but also compiled numerous anthologies, including the annual Best SF series (1968–75) with his friend Brian Aldiss, with whom he jointly founded the critical journal SF Horizons and the World SF organisation. As Leslie Charteris he wrote the 1964 novel Vendetta for the Saint, and he collaborated with artist Jim Burns on the 1979 graphic novel Planet Story. Amongst other awards, Harrison was named a SFWA Grand Master in 2009.
Fifty-six-year-old Chicago fan and convention organiser Ken Hunt, who was head of logistics for Chicon 7, the 70th World Science Fiction Convention held over August 30–September 4, 2012, died on August 20 of complications following a cascading cardiac event and emergency surgery.
British landscape painter Michael [Harvey] Embden died of cancer on August 21, aged 63. During the 1970s and 1980s he also produced more than 100, mostly SF, cover paintings for books by Roger Zelazny, Poul Anderson, Gordon R. Dickson, Tad Williams, C. J. Cherryh and Patricia Kenneally, along with an illustrated edition of H. Rider Haggard’s She (with Tim Gill) for Dragon’s Dream in 1981.
American SF and fantasy author Josepha Sherman died of early-onset Alzheimer’s disease on August 23, aged 65. She began publishing in 1986, and her novels include the Compton Crook Award-winning The Shining Falcon, The Horse of Flame, Child of Faerie Child of Earth, A Strange and Ancient Name, Windleaf, Gleaming Bright, King’s Son Magic’s Son and Son of Darkness. She edited a number of anthologies, including Lammas Night, Trickster Tales and Urban Nightmares (with Keith R. A. DeCandido), and compiled the 2008 study Storytelling: An Encyclopedia of Mythology and Folklore. Sherman also wrote tie-in books for Star Trek, Xena Warrior Princess, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Highlander and Andromeda, often in collaboration with other authors.
Eighty-three
-year-old American folklorist Shirley Climo, who authored 24 books of retold fairy tales and fables from around the world, died the same day.
Italian film poster artist Arnaldo Putzu died on September 1, aged 85. He had been suffering from Alzheimer’s disease. Best known for his iconic posters for the Carry On series, during the 1960s and 1970s his work in Britain included Hammer’s Creatures the World Forgot, Frankenstein Must Be Destroyed, Countess Dracula and Legend of the 7 Golden Vampires, along with UK posters for From Russia with Love, Dorian Gray, Voices, Blood on Satan’s Claw, Flesh for Frankenstein, The Island at the Top of the World, Westworld, The Golden Voyage of Sinbad and many others. Putzu also painted most of the covers for the children’s magazine Look-In, from 1973 until 1981.
Oscar-winning lyricist Hal David (Harold Lane David), best known for his numerous hit collaborations with Burt Bacharach (including “The Look of Love”), died of complications from a stroke the same day. He was 91. Among the many movies to feature his work are Casino Royale, On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, Lost Horizon (1973) and Moonraker.
American literary agent Wendy Weil died on September 22, aged 72. The genre authors she represented included Karen Joy Fowler, Carol Emshwiller and James Morrow.
English teacher turned video games pioneer Mike Singleton died of cancer in Switzerland on October 10, aged 61. Among the influential games he created were The Lords of Midnight, Doomdark’s Revenge, Midwinter, Midwinter II: Flames of Freedom, Star Trek: The Rebel Universe and Lord of the Rings: War in Middle-Earth. He also worked with LucasArts developing the games Indiana Jones and The Emperor’s Tomb and Wrath Unleashed.
American writer and editor Charles E. (Edward) Fritch (aka Eric Thomas and Christopher Sly), whose story “The Misfortune Cookie” was adapted for a 1986 episode of TV’s The Twilight Zone, died on October 11, aged 85. A member of the “The Group” – along with Richard Matheson, William F. Nolan, Charles Beaumont, George Clayton Johnson, John Tomerlin, Chad Oliver and others – he edited the SF magazine Gamma (1963–65 with Nolan) and was the last editor of Mike Shayne Magazine (1979–85). Some of his short fiction is collected in Crazy Mixed-Up Planet and Horses’ Asteroid, both published by Powell.
Patrick O’Connor, a former editor at US imprints Pinnacle and Popular Library, died on October 13, aged 87.
American comic book artist Marc Swayze (Marcus Desha Swayze) died on October 14, aged 99. During the Golden Age he worked on the adventures of Captain Marvel and the Marvel Family for Fawcett’s Whiz Comics, co-creating Mary Marvel with Otto Binder.
Paul Kurtz, founder of Prometheus Books in 1969, died on October 20, aged 86. In 2005 Prometheus launched the SF/fantasy imprint Pyr.
South African-born American author Janet Berliner (aka Janet Gluckman) died in Las Vegas of complications from an auto-immune disorder on October 24, aged 73. Her novels include The Madagascar Manifesto series (with George Guthridge), Execution Exchange (with Woody Greer), Rite of the Dragon and Artifact (with Kevin J. Anderson, F. Paul Wilson and Matthew J. Costello), while her short fiction appeared in Shayol, The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction and various anthologies. As an anthologist, she edited Peter S. Beagle’s Immortal Unicorn, David Copperfield’s Tales of the Impossible and David Copperfield’s Beyond Imagination. Berliner won a Bram Stoker Award in 1997 (with Guthridge) for the story “Children of the Dusk”.
American artist David Grove, who painted the movie poster for Disney’s Something Wicked This Way Comes (1983), died of emphysema on October 25, aged 72. During his career, Grove produced numerous book covers and film posters, and some of his work was collected in the 2011 volume David Grove: An Illustrated Life.
French critic and editor Jacques Goimard died of Parkinson’s disease the same day, aged 78. While an editor at Pocket Press, his Le Livre d’or de la science-fiction series published nearly 50 volumes from 1978–87. He also co-edited a number of SF and fantasy anthologies, including a “Year’s Best” from 1978–82.
American book dealer John D. Squires, a world authority of the life and works of M. P. Shiel, died after a long illness on November 2, aged 64. Squires also contributed to The New York Review of SF.
American SF author Kevin O’Donnell, Jr, best known for his four-volume Journeys of McGill Feigham series, died of complications from cancer on November 7, aged 61. He sold his first story to Analog in 1973, and his other books include Bander Snatch, Mayflies, War of Omission, ORA:CLE, Fire on the Border, and the horror novel The Shelter (with Mary Kittredge).
Russian SF writer Boris Strugatsky (aka S. Vititsky), the younger brother of frequent collaborator Arkady, died of complications from leukaemia on November 19, aged 79. Their acclaimed novel Roadside Picnic was filmed by Andrei Tarkovsky in 1979 as Stalker. Both brothers were Guests of Honour at the 1987 World Science Fiction Convention in Brighton, England.
Disney development and design artist Mel Shaw (Melvin Schwartzman) died of congestive heart failure on November 22, aged 97. He began his career in animation in 1933, and went on to work in various capacities on Bambi, Fantasia, The Rescuers, The Fox and the Hound, The Black Cauldron, The Great Mouse Detective, Beauty and the Beast (1991) and The Lion King. In the late 1940s, Shaw and his business partner Bob Allen redesigned “Howdy Doody”, the marionette featured in the 1950s NBC-TV show of the same name.
American underground cartoonist Spain Rodriguez (Manuel Rodriguez), the creator of the post-holocaust hero Trashman, died of cancer on November 28, aged 72. A former biker gang member, during the late 1960s he published his own comics magazine, Zodiac Mindwarp. Rodriguez’s other titles include Sherlock Holmes’ Strangest Cases, Alien Apocalypse and Nightmare Alley.
American cartoonist and film critic Jeff Millar (Jeffrey Lynn Millar) died of bile duct cancer on November 30, aged 70. With illustrator Bill Hinds he created the syndicated Tank McNamara comic strip, and his zombie story “Dead and Buried” (with Alex Stern) was the basis for the 1981 movie of the same name and the novelisation by Chelsea Quinn Yarbro. Millar’s other stories appeared in Orbit Science Fiction and Damon Knight’s Orbit 17.
Julie Ann Jardine who, with her then-husband Jack Owen Jardine, wrote The Swords of Lankor and The Mind Monsters (both 1966) under the pseudonym Howard L. Cory, died in November, aged 86.
Christopher [John Dusser] Davies, one of the three founders of UK publishing imprint Dorling Kindersley (DK), died on December 2 after a lengthy illness. He was 71. Davies was with the company, best known for its illustrated books (including the infamous Star Wars debacle – four million copies sold but seventeen million printed!), from 1974 until his retirement in 2005.
American writer Michael Alexander died of cancer on December 4, aged 62. He published his first story in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction in 2010, and he also contributed to Analog.
Croatian fan, translator and convention organiser Krsto A. (Anton) Mazuranic died on December 21, aged 70. He was the editor-in-chief of Future magazine (1993–97) and is credited for bringing SF to Croatia and the rest of the former Yugoslavia.
Eclectic British composer Sir Richard Rodney Bennett died in New York City on December 24, aged 76. His many credits include Hammer’s The Man Who Could Cheat Death, The Nanny and The Witches, along with Billion Dollar Brain, Voices, Sherlock Holmes in New York, The Tale of Sweeny Todd and the 2000 TV mini-series of Ghormenghast. In 1964, Bennett also contributed incidental music to the BBC’s Doctor Who.
Archie [Edmiston] Roy, Professor Emeritus of Astronomy at the University of Glasgow, died on December 27, aged 88. A Founding President of The Scottish Society for Psychical Research, between 1968 and 1978 he published six SF and horror novels: Deadlight, All Evil Shed Away, The Curtained Sleep, Sable Night, The Dark Host and Devil in the Darkness.
Controversial American convention promoter and publisher Rick Olney (Richard L. Olney) died on December 28, aged 58. He was often accused of abruptly cancelling events and not paying his artists.
PERFORMERS/PERSONALITIES
British st
untman and fencing master Bob Anderson (Robert James Gilbert Anderson), who doubled for David Prowse’s Darth Vader during the light-sabre duels in The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi, died on January 1, aged 89. A former Olympic fencer, Anderson also worked on From Russia with Love, Casino Royale, One of Our Dinosaurs is Missing, Star Wars, Superman II, Highlander, The Princess Bride, The Lord of the Rings trilogy and The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, along with the TV series Highlander and an episode of Doctor Who.
Cockney character actor Harry Fowler MBE (Henry James Fowler) died on January 4, aged 85. A stalwart of British cinema from the 1940s through to the 1980s, his credits include Went the Day Well?, Mister Drake’s Duck, Fire Maidens of Outer Space and Hammer’s The Nanny. He was also a regular on the short-lived 1982 TV series Dead Ernest, and appeared in an episode of The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles and the Doctor Who serial “Remembrance of the Daleks”.
South African-born Bob Holness (Robert Wentworth John Holness) died in England on January 6, aged 83. Best known as a TV quiz-master on such shows as Blockbusters and Call My Bluff, Holness was the second actor to portray James Bond when he voiced the character in a 1957 South African radio dramatisation of Moonraker. He later turned up as an announcer in an episode of the 1970s TV series Thriller.
1940s Hollywood actress Natalie Draper, the niece of Marion Davies, died on January 13, aged 92. She appeared in small roles in a number of films, including the 1945 version of The Picture of Dorian Gray.
The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror 24 (Mammoth Books) Page 45
