Steve Stiles (1943-2020)

Artist Steve Stiles, 76, died January 12, 2020 shortly after announcing a diagnosis of terminal cancer. He lived in Maryland. Stiles was one of fandom’s best-known artists, first nominated for a Best Fan Artist Hugo in 1967, and winning in 2016; he received 17 nominations in all. He won 15 FAAn Awards for his fanzine work (the first in 2001, the last in 2016), and in 1998 won the first ever Rotsler Award for lifetime achievement in fan art. He also did professional artwork, including in comics.

Stephen Stiles was born July 16, 1943, and studied at the High School of Music & Art and the School of Visual Arts in New York. He was active as a fan from childhood, creating his long-running (if intermittent) fanzine Sam as a pre-teen. In 1968, he was the Trans-Atlantic Fan Fund Winner, attending the 1968 Eastercon; his writings and art about the trip were collected as Harrison Country in 2007.

Stiles got his start as a professional artist with a cartoon in The Realist in 1961, and his first cartoon for a fanzine was in Cry of the Nameless (1962). He produced cover and interior artwork for Fantastic, many Worldcon publications, and magazines and fanzines including Algol, Ansible, File 770, Locus, SF Commentary, and Xero. He regularly published underground comics starting in the late ’60s, and produced his own Hyper Comics in 1979. He did work as a penciller for Marvel Comics. He was an illustrator for the military and in advertising before going freelance in 1975.

His many books covers include Harry Warner, Jr.’s A Wealth of Fable (1992) and the 2002 edition of his All Our Yesterdays. With Dick Lupoff he created graphic novel The Adventures of Professor Thintwhistle and His Incredible Aether Flyer (serialized 1980 in Heavy Metal; as a book in 1991), based on Lupoff’s Into the Aether (1974).

Stiles was diagnosed with lung cancer in 2017. Though the tumor was successfully removed, the cancer returned late last year. He is survived by wife Elaine (née Mandel), married 1981.