Obituaries

Author and editor Christopher Tolkien, 95, son and literary executor of J.R.R. Tolkien, died January 15, 2020 in Provence, France. Tolkien dedicated his life to his father’s work, editing and shepherding into print more than a score of the elder Tolkien’s books. He organized and edited the The Silmarillion (1977), Unfinished Tales (1980), and the 12 volumes of The History of Middle-earth (1983), along with The Children of Húrin (2007), ...Read More

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 ...Read More

Author and legendary Rush drummer and lyricist, Neil Peart, 67, died on January 7, 2020, after a long struggle with brain cancer.

Neil Ellwood Peart was born September 15, 1952 in Hamilton, Ontario and joined the band Rush in 1974. Peart played with lead singer and bassist Geddy Lee and guitarist Alex Lifeson for 45 years to sell-out audiences in the largest venues until the band’s retirement in 2015. Rush ...Read More

Author Mike Resnick, 77, died January 9, 2020 of lymphoma. Resnick was a prolific and acclaimed SF, nominated 27 times for Hugo Awards and winning five. His Hugo Award winners include his first nomination “Kirinyaga” (1988), “The Manamouki” (1990), “Seven Views of Olduval Gorge” (1994), “The 43 Antarean Dynasties” (1997), and “Travels with My Cats” (2004), and his most recent fiction nomination was for “The Homecoming” (2011). His winners and ...Read More

Visual futurist and artist Syd Mead, 86, died December 30, 2019 in Pasadena CA. Mead is most famous for his signature work in movies Blade Runner and Tron, as well as 2010, Star Trek, Short Circuit, Mission: Impossible III, and Aliens, most recently working on Blade Runner 2049. His artistic visions of the future were the platform for his career in both industry design ...Read More

Scottish author Alasdair Gray, 85, died December 29, 2019 at Queen Elizabeth University Hospital in Glasgow. Gray was famed as a playwright, poet, and novelist, and his literary fiction often included elements of the fantastic. His first work of SF interest was “The Star” (1951), an homage to H.G. Wells, and was collected with other speculative work in Unlikely Stories (1983). His most famous book is debut novel Lanark: A ...Read More

Longtime Locus contributor Ian Covell, 66, died December 11, 2019 in Middlesbrough, England. Born in 1953, Covell began compiling Locus‘s monthly British Books Received column in 1994, providing our readers with a view of UK publishing for 25 years. He wrote bibliographies J.T. McIntosh, Memoir and Bibliography (1987), An Index to DAW Books (1989), and A.E. van Vogt: Master of Null-A (1997, with Phil Stephenson-Payne), and co-edited issues of The ...Read More

Writer Andrew Weiner, 70, died December 3, 2019, in Toronto, after a short illness. He published over 40 SF stories and two SF novels. His first sale was “Empire of the Sun” to Harlan Ellison’s Again, Dangerous Visions (1972), and other work appeared in Asimov’s, F&SF (including the cover stories in August 1987 and September 1992), and Interzone. Two collections of his fiction were published: Distant Signals and Other Stories ...Read More

Gahan Allen Wilson, 89, died on November 21, 2019 from complications of dementia. A widely published cartoonist and artist, he was best known for his dark humor and macabre sensibilities.

Gahan Wilson’s work first appeared in Amazing Stories in 1954, but he became nationally known through art in slick magazines including Colliers, Playboy, and later The New Yorker. In 1964, he began a continuing association with F&SF, as cartoonist and ...Read More

Literary critic Harold Bloom, 89, died October 14, 2019 in a New Haven CT hospital. Bloom was one of the most famous and controversial critics in America, writing and editing bestselling, influential volumes like The Anxiety of Influence (1973), Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human (1998), The Western Canon: The Books and School of the Ages (1994), and How to Read and Why (2000). In all he wrote more than ...Read More

Author J.A. Pitts, 54, died October 3, 2019 in Bellevue WA. He is best known for the Sarah Beauhall urban fantasy series: Black Blade Blues (2010), Gaylactic Spectrum Award winner Honeyed Worlds (2011), Forged in Fire (2012), and Night Terrors (2016). He also published short fiction (including a collaboration with Ken Scholes), starting around 2006, sometimes as John A. Pitts. Some of his short work was collected in Bravado’s House ...Read More

SF writer Katherine MacLean, 94, died September 1, 2019.

MacLean was best known for her short fiction, beginning with “Defense Mechanism” (1949), and published more than 40 stories, most in the ’50s, but continuing intermittently throughout her life. “Second Game” (1958, with Charles V. De Vet) was a Hugo Award finalist, while novella “The Missing Man” (1971) won a Nebula Award, and the novel expansion Missing Man (1975) was a ...Read More

SF writer Terrance Dicks, 84, died August 29, 2019.

Dicks was a prolific and celebrated writer for the British TV program Doctor Who, serving as script editor from 1968-74 and writing various episodes. He also produced more than 50 tie-in novels and non-fiction books about the series, beginning with Doctor Who and the Auton Invasion (1974) and ending with Revenge of the Judoon (2008). His final story, “Save Yourself”, ...Read More

SF writer Brad Linaweaver, 66, died August 29, 2019 of cancer at home in Apopka FL.

Bradford Swain Linaweaver was born September 1, 1952 in Washington NC. He attended Florida State University, and got his MFA at Rollins College. He began publishing SF with “The Competitor” (1980), and alternate history novella “Moon of Ice” (1982) was a Nebula Awards finalist. In all he published more than 50 stories, some of ...Read More

Writer Barry Hughart, 85, died August 1, 2019. Hughart was best known for his Master Li series, set in a mythical version of China, beginning with World Fantasy and Mythopoeic Award winner Bridge of Birds (1984) and continuing with The Story of the Stone (1988) and Eight Skilled Gentlemen (1991), all later collected as The Chronicles of Master Li and Number Ten Ox (1998).

Hughart was born March 13, 1934 ...Read More

Editor and author Robert N. Stephenson, 57, died August 14, 2019. Stephenson wrote SF and mystery, edited magazine Altair, and was publisher of Altair Publishing/Altair Australia Books.

Stephenson was born September 17, 1961 in Adelaide, South Australia. His first book, poetry collection Garments of Rainbow, appeared in 1992, and his first story, “Who’ll Stop the Rain”, in 1998. He went on to publish around 50 stories, notably Aurora Award ...Read More

Author J. Neil Schulman, 66, died August 10, 2019 in Colorado Springs CO. He suffered a pulmonary embolism three days earlier and never regained consciousness. Schulman’s work was particularly influential in the field of Libertarian SF. His first novel Alongside Night (1979) was a finalist for the Libertarian Futurist Society’s Prometheus Award, and in 1989 it won their Hall of Fame Award. The Rainbow Cadenza: A Novel in Logosata Form ...Read More

Nobel laureate Toni Morrison, 88, died August 5, 2019 in the Bronx, of complications from pneumonia. Morrison was celebrated for her complex and emotionally rich novels about womanhood and the black experience in America. She often used supernatural and magical realist elements in her work, notably in National Book Critics Circle Award winner Song of Solomon (1976), Pulitzer Prize winner Beloved (1987; adapted as a feature film in 1998), and ...Read More

Translator, editor, and fan Yoshio Kobayashi, 67, died June 13, 2019 of an ischemic heart attack. Under his pen name Takashi Ogawa he was one of the leading SF translators in Japan, tirelessly promoting SF and bringing works by Greg Bear, Bruce Sterling, Lucius Shepherd, Lewis Shiner, Michael Swanwick, and other major writers to the Japanese audience. He translated for Japanese publishers including Shueisha and Hayakawa, and for magazine Hayakawa ...Read More

Dennis Etchison, 76, died May 29, 2019. Etchison was a major writer and editor of horror fiction, especially in the ’80s and ’90s, and received a Bram Stoker Award for lifetime achievement in 2017.

He began publishing short fiction in the 1960s, and notable stories include British Fantasy Award winners “The Olympic Runner” (1986) and “The Dog Park” (1993), and BFA and World Fantasy Award winner “The Dark Country” (1981). ...Read More

Grand Master Gene Wolfe, 87, died April 14, 2019 after a long struggle with heart disease. Wolfe was famed for his ambitious, challenging, and enthralling novels and stories, most famously the Book of the New Sun series.

Gene Rodman Wolfe was born May 7, 1931 in Brooklyn NY and grew up in Texas, where he attended Texas A&M and the University of Houston, graduating from the latter in 1956 with ...Read More

Author Vonda N. McIntyre, 70, died April 1, 2019 of cancer. She is best known for her groundbreaking feminist SF.

McIntyre began publishing SF with “Breaking Point” in 1970, the same year she attended the Clarion Workshop. Her novelette “Of Mist, and Grass, and Sand” (1973) won a Nebula Award, and formed part of her classic novel Dreamsnake (1978), winner of Hugo, Locus, and Nebula Awards. Other notable stories include ...Read More

Writer W.H. Pugmire, 67, died March 26, 2019 in Seattle WA. Pugmire was best known for his Lovecraftian fiction, and was a beloved figure in horror fandom.

Wilum Hopfrog Pugmire was born Wiliam Harry Pugmire on May 3, 1951, and grew up in Seattle, where he became locally famous for his vampire character “Count Pugsly” while employed at the Jones Fantastic Museum. Pugmire was raised Mormon and did his mission ...Read More

Author Janet Asimov, 92, died February 25, 2019.

Her first book was SF novel The Second Experiment (1974, as by Janet Jeppson). Other works under the Jeppson name include The Last Immortal (1980) and collection The Mysterious Cure, and Other Stories of Pshrinks Anonymous (1985). SF novel Mind Transfer (1988) was bylined Janet Jeppson Asimov, and Murder at the Galactic Writers’ Society (1994), an installment of the Isaac’s Universe series, ...Read More

 Legendary editor and publisher Betty Ballantine, 99, died February 12, 2019 at home in Bearsville NY. Her career in publishing began in the 1930s, and she was instrumental in the rise of mass-market paperbacks and helped found both Bantam Books and Ballantine Books.

Elizabeth Norah Jones was born September 25, 1919 in India to a colonial family. At 12 she moved with her family to Jersey in the Channel Islands, ...Read More

Writer Carrie Richerson, 66, died February 2, 2019 in an Austin TX rehabilitation center following years of poor health. Richerson began publishing short fiction in the early ’90s, with work appearing in Amazing Stories, Asimov’s, F&SF, Pulphouse, Realms of Fantasy, and other magazines and anthologies. Some of her work was collected in Something Rich and Strange (2001). She was a finalist for the John W. Campbell Award for Best New ...Read More

Author Carol Emshwiller, 97, died February 2, 2019 in Durham NC, where she was living with her daughter.

She began her long career with “This Thing Called Love” in Future (1955), and was known for her experimental and feminist fiction. Many early stories appeared in F&SF and the Orbit anthologies, and some of her most striking early work is collected in Joy in Our Cause (1974). Other collections include Verging ...Read More

Larry Eisenberg, 99, died December 25, 2018 in a Lincoln MA hospice of complications from leukemia. Eisenberg published dozens of SF stories in the ’60s, ’70s and ’80s, beginning with “The Mynah Matter” (1962), and is best known for his sequence of humorous SF stories about Emmett Duckworth, many collected in The Best Laid Schemes (1971).  Story “What Happened to Auguste Claro?” appeared in Dangerous Visions (1967).

Lawrence Eisenberg was ...Read More

Writer Jane Langton, 95, died December 22, 2018. Best known for her mystery novels for adults, her SF/F work includes the Grace Jones, Hall Family, and Homer Kelly series for young readers, and novel Paper Chains (1977). Langton was named a Grand Master by the Mystery Writers of America (MWA) in 2017. Her work was nominated for several Edgar awards and won a Nero Wolfe award in 1984. The Fledgling ...Read More

Novelist, playwright, and screenwriter William Goldman, 87, died November 16, 2018 of colon cancer in Manhattan. Goldman is best known in SF circles for his novel The Princess Bride (1973), and for writing the script for the classic 1979 film adaptation. Other novels of genre interest include Control (1982) and The Silent Gondoliers (1983). He is widely famous for his Academy Award-winning screenplays like Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid ...Read More

Legendary comics writer and editor Stan Lee, 95, died November 12, 2018 at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles CA.

During his long tenure at Marvel Comics, Lee helped create iconic characters like the Fantastic Four, the Incredible Hulk, and Spider-Man. His groundbreaking collaborations with artist Jack Kirby include the Avengers and Thor. Lee popularized the “Marvel Method” of comic writing, which emphasized close collaboration between writers and artists. Under ...Read More