British author Hilary [Denham] Bailey (aka “Pippin Graham”), who was married to author Michael Moorcock from 1962-78, died on January 11, aged 80. She reportedly co-wrote the 1969 novel, The Black Corridor, credited solely to Moorcock, and edited volumes 7-10 of the New Worlds anthology series (the first with Charles Platt). As a literary novelist, she wrote a number of books that were pastiches or sequels to other works, including The Strange Adventures of Charlotte Holmes: Sister of the More Famous Sherlock, Frankenstein’s Bride and Miles and Flora: A Sequel to Henry James’ The Turn of the Screw.
British fan Vicky Stock, who was involved in the committees of the Birmingham SF Group and the British Fantasy Society/FantasyCon, died of breast cancer the same day, aged 37.
American best-selling novelist, screenwriter, producer and director William Peter Blatty, whose seminal 1971 demonic possession novel The Exorcist directly inspired the blockbuster movie, various sequels and a TV series, died of multiple myeloma on January 12, aged 89. Blatty’s novel spent fifty-seven consecutive weeks on the New York Times best-seller list. He won an Academy Award for his screenplay for The Exorcist (1973), and he wrote and directed the film versions of his novels Twinkle Twinkle “Killer” Kane! and Legion, as The Ninth Configuration and The Exorcist III, respectively. His other books include Demons Five Exorcist Nothing: A Fable, The Exorcist for the 21st Century and the 2001 memoir If There Were Demons Then Perhaps There Were Angels: William Peter Blatty’s Own Story of The Exorcist. Blatty was a recipient of the HWA Bram Stoker Award for Life Achievement in 1998.
British music and film critic, political theorist and blogger Mark Fisher (aka “K-punk”) committed suicide on January 13, aged 48. He had been battling with depession for a long time. Fisher’s insightful criticism ranged across such topics as M.R. James and H.P. Lovecraft to Sapphire & Steel and The Terminator. His books include The Weird and the Eerie (2016) and he contributed to Fact magazine, The Wire and Sight & Sound. In 2009 he co-founded the publishing imprint Zero Books with Tariq Goddard.
Dutch SF and fantasy fan, editor and translator Annemarie van Ewijck (aka “Annemarie Kindt”) died on January 15, aged 73. She edited the semi-prozine Holland SF for nineteen years.
British author Emma [Christina] Tennant (aka “Catherine Aydy”) died after a long illness on January 20, aged 79. Her many books feature genre elements, including The Time of the Crack (aka The Crack), The Last of the Country House Murders, The Bad Sister (filmed in 1983), The Ghost Child, Two Women of London: The Strange Case of Ms Jekyll and Mrs Hyde, The Magic Drum: An Excursion, Faustine and Heathcliff’s Tale. From 1975-78 she edited the magazine Bananas, where she published such authors as Angela Carter, J.G. Ballard and John T. Sladek. Tennant also scripted the 1990 TV mini-series Frankenstein’s Baby.
British comics artist John Watkiss died of cancer the same day, aged 55. Amongst the titles he worked on were DC Comics’ The Sandman, Sandman Mystery Theatre, Starman and the 2006-07 revival of Deadman, along with various Conan comics for Dark Horse. Watkiss was also a storyboard artist, best known for his contributions to Disney’s animated Tarzan, Atlantis: The Lost Empire and Treasure Planet.
American bookseller and fan Larry Smith (Laurence C. Smith) died of a dissected aortic aneurysm on January 20, aged 70. He co-chaired a number of conventions, including the 2010 World Fantasy Convention in Columbus, Ohio.
British SF fan Mike Dickinson died of lung cancer the same day, aged 69. He had been in poor health since being hit by a car a year earlier. He co-chaired the 1979 Eastercon (Yorcon) in Leeds with David Pringle, and was Toastmaster at Yorcon II in 1981. Dickinson’s fanzines included Adsun, Sirius (with Alan Dorey), Bar Trek (with Lee Montgomeries) and Spaghetti Junction (with Jackie Gresham), and he edited three issues of the British Science Fiction Association’s Vector in the late 1970s.
American screenwriter Andy Ruben died of a stroke on January 23, aged 67. After working as an assistant editor on Tobe Hooper’s Eaten Alive, he teamed up with his wife (1979-92), director Katt Shea, to co-script Stripped to Kill, Stripped to Kill 2: Live Girls and Dance of the Damned. Ruben also wrote and directed Club Vampire starring John Savage.
American comics writer, artist and scriptwriter Jack Mendelsohn, who worked for DC and EC comics, died of lung cancer on January 25, aged 90. He co-scripted The Beatles’ Yellow Submarine (1968) and worked on numerous cartoon TV shows, including episodes of Sabrina and the Groovie Goolies, The New Scooby-Doo Movies, Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends (‘The Bride of Dracula!’), Toxic Crusaders and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.
Veteran American comics artist Dan Spiegle died on January 28, aged 96. He began his career in 1949 drawing Hopalong Cassidy, and went on to illustrate such TV tie-ins as My Favorite Martian, Space Family Robinson, The Green Hornet, The Invaders and various Scooby-Doo titles. Spiegle also contributed to Korak Son of Tarzan, Boris Karloff Tales of Mystery and Grimm’s Ghost Stories, plus graphic adaptations of Disney’s Son of Flubber, Mary Poppins, Herbie Rides Again, Return from Witch Mountain and The Black Hole. Later work included DC’s Secrets of Haunted House, House of Mystery and Blackhawk, Marvel’s Tarzan of the Apes, The Hunchback of Notre Dame and Who Framed Roger Rabbit, and Dark Horse’s Indiana Jones series. In 1972 he co-created the “Doctor Spektor” character with Donald F. Glut for Mystery Comics Digest.
American screenwriter John [Thomas] Gay died on February 4, aged 92. His many credits include George Pal’s The Power, No Way to Treat a Lady, The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1982), Around the World in 80 Days (1989 and 1999 versions) and Summer of Fear (1996). Gay also wrote the one-man play Diversions and Delights, which starred Vincent Price as Oscar Wilde. It premiered in San Francisco in 1977 and toured around more than 300 cities over the next three years.
The body of 71-year-old American writer, critic and essayist Edward [Winslow] Bryant [Jr.] was found at his home in Colorado on February 10. He had been ill for a long time and died in his sleep. The Nebula Award-winning author began publishing SF and horror stories in 1970, and his short fiction was collected in Among the Dead and Other Events Leading Up to the Apocalypse, Cinnebar, Wyoming Sun, Particle Theory, Neon Twilight, Darker Passions, The Baku: Tales of the Nuclear Age, Trilobyte and Predators and Other Stories. With Harlan Ellison he co-wrote Phoenix Without Ashes (1975), a novelisation of Ellison’s script The Starlost, and he co-edited the anthology 2076: The American Tricentennial with Jo Ann Harper in 1977. Bryant also wrote reviews, convention reports and essays for Locus and other magazines. He appeared in Somtow Sucharitkul’s low-budget movies The Laughing Dead and Ill Met by Moonlight, while a short story was adapted for an episode of TV’s The Hidden Room and the 2008 movie While She Was Out, starring Kim Basinger.
Italian-born artist Gino D’Achille died the same day, aged 81. After moving to the UK in the mid-1960s, he began painting book covers for such publishers as Ballantine, Ace Books, DAW Books, Granada/Grafton and Pan Books. His many credits include various titles in John Norman’s “Gor” series, H.P. Lovecraft and August Derleth’s The Lurker at the Threshold, Ron Goulart’s Vampirella: Bloodstalk, Tanith Lee’s The Storm Lord and The Birthgrave, Peter Tremayne’s The Vengeance of She, Michael Shea’s The Colour Out of Time and, most notably, eleven volumes in Ballantine’s series of Edgar Rice Burroughs’ “Mars” books.
American artist and author Dahlov Ipcar (Dahlov Zorach) died on February 10, aged 99. She wrote and illustrated more than thirty children’s books, and her adult fantasy trilogy consisits of The Warlock of the Night, The Queen of Spells and A Dark Horn Blowing. Ipcar had her first solo exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York when she was just twenty-one years old.
Canadian-born TV screenwriter and producer Howard [Michael] Leeds died in Los Angeles on February 11, aged 97. Leeds created and executive produced the SF sitcom Small Wonder (1985-89) and contributed scripts to Bewitched and The Ghost & Mrs. Muir. He also produced the latter show, along with My Living Doll.
Japanese manga writer and artist Jirô Taniguc
hi died the same day, aged 69. His time-travel fantasy Harukanaru machi e was filmed in 2010 as Quartier lointain.
British SF fan and bookseller Dave Holmes died of cancer on February 13, aged 61. He began selling books for Roger Peyton and Rod Milner’s Birmingham store Andromeda Bookshop in the 1970s, and later started up his own mail-order store, Magic Labyrinth, in Leicester. Holmes used his position as a book dealer to promote the careers of many up-and-coming authors.
American wargame and role-playing designer and developer Loren Wiseman died of a heart attack on February 14, aged 65. He co-founded the Game Designers’ Workshop in 1973, and helped developed such SF games as Traveller, Space 1889 and Twilight 2000. In 2004 Loren was inducted into the Adventure Gaming Hall of Fame.
Hungarian-born SF fan Thomas Endrey died in mid-February, aged 77. He moved to the US in 1956 and attended many conventions. In the late 1990s he was assistant editor of Andrew I. Porter’s magazine Science Fiction Chronicle.
British-born artist and designer Alan Aldridge died in Los Angeles on February 17, aged 78. From 1965-67 he was art director at Penguin Books, creating surreal and psychedelic covers for their SF books by Robert A. Heinlein, J.G. Ballard, Harry Harrison, Clifford D. Simak, Frank Herbert, William Hope Hodgson and others. After going freelance, he published the best-selling art book The Butterfly Ball and the Grasshopper Feast (with William Plomer, filmed in 1977), The Penguin Book of Comics (with George Perry) and the novel The Gnole (with Steven R. Boyett and Maxine Miller), along with designing the iconic logo for the Hard Rock Cafe and illustrating two volumes of Beatles lyrics. The Man with Kaleidoscope Eyes: The Art of Alan Aldridge was a 2009 retrospective. The artist also worked as a production designer on the animated films Faeries and The Wind in the Willows (1987).
American screenwriter and novelist Hank Searls (Henry Hunt Searls, Jr.) died the same day, aged 94. His 1964 SF novel The Pilgrim Project was filmed four years later as Countdown, and he also wrote the novelisation of Jaws II.
84-year-old American movie historian and critic Richard [Warren] Schickel died on February 18, following a series of strokes. The film critic for Time magazine from 1965-2010, he also wrote for Life and the Los Angeles Times Book Review. His many books include The Disney Version: The Life, Times, Art and Commerce of Walt Disney, along with biographies of Douglas Fairbanks, Sr., Cary Grant, D.W. Griffith, James Cagney, Gary Cooper, Marlon Brando, Clint Eastwood, Woody Allen, Elia Kazan, Humphrey Bogart, Charles Chaplin and Steven Spielberg. Schickel also recorded many DVD commentaries and wrote, produced and directed a number of documentaries, including The Horror Show (1979) and The Harryhausen Chronicles (1998).
American children’s author and poet Nancy [Margaret] Willard died on February 19, aged 80. She won the Newbery Award for her 1982 poetry volume William Blake’s Inn, and her other books include Sailing to Cythera and Other Anatole Stories, Things Invisible to See, Firebrat, Sister Water, The Ballad of Biddy Early and Pish Posh Said Hieronymous Bosch, the latter illustrated by Leo and Diane Dillon.
American writer and editor Susan Casper, the wife and companion of editor Gardner Dozois for forty-seven years, died in her sleep on February 24, aged 69. She had been ill for some time. She made her fiction debut in Charles L. Grant’s anthology Fears (1983), and published a number of short stories (often in collaboration with her husband and Jack Dann). Casper’s collaborations with Dozois were collected in Slow Dancing Through Time (1990), and the pair co-edited the 1988 horror anthology Ripper!, Up the Rainbow: The Complete Short Fiction of Susan Casper and the novel The Red Carnival appeared posthumously.
British artist Vic Fair, who created the movie posters for Hammer’s Countess Dracula and Vampire Circus, died of complications from Alzheimer’s disease and diabetes the same day. He was 78. Fair’s other posters include Theatre of Blood, Death Line, It’s Alive!, The Devil’s Rain, Vampyres, Legend of the Werewolf, The Uncanny, The Man Who Fell to Earth, Death Weekend, Harlequin and many others, along with unused designs for Hammer’s Frankenstein and the Monster from Hell and The Legend of the Seven Golden Vampires, Dragonslayer, The Adventures of Baron Munchausen, The Clan of the Cave Bear, The Emerald Forest and the Bond film A View to a Kill. Fair also designed the UK poster for the Stephen King adaptation Graveyard Shift, painted by Les Edwards. He retired in the late 1980s.
British publishing editor Georgina Hawtry-Woore, the wife of SF author Paul McAuley, died of cancer on February 27, aged 50. After working in bookselling and at the David Grossman Literary Agency, she joined HarperCollins in 1995 as an editorial assistant and was promoted to editor five years later. She moved to Century and Arrow in 2002, eventually becoming senior editor at the Cornerstone imprint. An award for self-published writers was re-named in her memory by Words for the Wounded, a literary organisation in aid of wounded and disabled veterans.
Author and musician Avalon Brantley died on March 5. She was in her mid-30s. Her stories were published in anthologies from such literary small presses as Ex Occidente Press, Egaeus Press, Mount Abraxis and The Swan River Press. Her only novel, The House of Silence, was inspired by the work of William Hope Hodgson and published posthumously by Zagava in 2017. Her short fiction was collected in Descended Suns Resucitate, and she co-authored the prose and poety collection Transcensience with her partner Lockett Hollis. She also contributed a number of essays on Russian symbolist writers to Tartarus Press’ periodical Wormwood.
American comics artist Dave Hunt (David Hunt) died of cancer the same day, aged 74. He worked as a penciller and inker for both Marvel and DC on such titles as Captain America, Fantastic Four, The Amazing Spider-Man, Superboy, Wonder Woman and Scooby-Doo, and he also contributed to such Disney titles as Darkwing Duck, The Little Mermaid and Beauty and the Beast.
Influential American underground comix artist and writer Jay [Patrick] Lynch (aka “Jayzey Lynch”) died on March 5, aged 72. Best known for such titles as Bijou Funnies, Bazooka Joe and the comic strip ‘Nard n’ Pat’, he later collaborated on the children’s books Otto’s Orange Day and Otto’s Backwards Day with Frank Cammuso.
American-born screenwriter Julian Zimet died in Rome, Italy, on March 9, aged 97. As “Julian Halevy” he scripted Psyche 59, Crack in the World, Horror Express (with Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing) and Psychomania (aka The Death Wheelers).
American underground comix artist Skip Williamson (Mervyn Wilton Williamson, Jr.) died of renal failure on March 16, aged 72. He had been suffering from heart disease and diabetes. Williamson’s work was published in Bijou Funnies, National Lampoon, High Times and other titles. He was the art director of Gallery and Hustler, and he illustrated Arthur C. Clarke’s satirical SF story ‘When the Twerms Came’ for Playboy.
Legendary comics artist and illustrator Bernie Wrightson (Bernard Albert Wrightson, aka “Berni Wrightson”), who co-created the character “Swamp Thing” with writer Len Wein for DC Comics in 1971, died of brain cancer on March 18, aged 68. He began his career in the 1960s, working for such magazines as Amra, Squa-Tront, Trumpet and Spa-Fon, and he made his professional comics debut in 1969 with ‘The Man Who Murdered Himself’ in DC’s House of Mystery. He went on to work with all the major comics publishers, and in 1975 joined the artists’ collective “The Studio”, along with Barry Windsor-Smith, Jeff Jones and Michael Kaluta. His collections include Badtime Stories, The Berni Wrightson Treasury, Berni Wrightson: A Look Back, Back for More, The Mutants, The Reaper of Love and Other Stories, The Monstrous Collection and many others, while his 1983 adaptation of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein still stands as a pinnacle of his skill. He illustrated editions of Stephen King’s Cycle of the Werewolf, The Stand and Wolves of Calla, along with a graphic version of the movie Creepshow. Wrightson also contributed conceptual art to a number of movies, including The Faculty, Galaxy Quest, Thir13en Ghosts, Reign of Fire, George R. Romero’s Land of the Dead, Frank Darabont’s The Mist and Stuart Gordon’s unproduced adaptation of H.P Lovecraft’s The Shadow Over Innsmouth.
American-born Cana
dian TV scriptwriter and producer Denis McGrath died of cancer in Toronto on March 23, aged 48. He worked on such series as Spacebar, Starhunter, Blood Ties, SGU Stargate Universe, Bitten, Continuum, Aftermath and Creeped Out.
Award-winning Canadian novelist Marie Jakober died on March 26, aged 75. Her books include the 1976 SF novel The Mind Gods: A Novel of the Future and such historical fantasies as The Black Chalice, Even the Stones and The Demon Left Behind.
Italian musician and composer Alessandro Alessandroni, best known for his distinctive whistle on Ennio Morricone’s theme for Fistful of Dollars and other Westerns, died the same day, aged 92. His composing credits include the movies The Devil’s Nightmare, The Mad Butcher, Lady Frankenstein, Very Close Encounters of the Fourth Kind and Killer Nun. Alessandroni and his wife, singer Giulia De Mutiis, also provided the vocals for the song ‘Mah Nà Mah Nà’, which was heard on The Muppet Show and elsewhere.
American academic and SF critic Mike Levy (Michael M. Levy) died of cancer on April 3, aged 66. His reviews appeared in Publishing Weekly, The New York Review of Science Fiction and elsewhere, and he edited Extrapolation from 2006 onwards. Levy was also an editorial board member of The Journal of the Fantastic in the Arts, and he co-wrote the 2016 study Children’s Fantasy Literature: An Introduction with Farah Mendlesohn.
Reclusive American horror fan Persephone Longueuiel, aged 50, died in a San Diego house fire with her 68-year-old bedridden mother, Elizabeth, on April 4. A former manager of the Comic Kingdom store in Hillcrest, she co-wrote stories and designed puzzles with Jay Allen Sanford for various magazines and comic books. Longueuiel also owned an extensive horror memorabilia collection that included signed and collectible books and original TV scripts. Fire officials described the inside of the burned-out home as “semi-hoarder conditions”.
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