Obituaries

Book dealer and conrunner Larry Smith, 70, died January 20, 2017. Laurence C. Smith was born in 1946 and lived in Columbus OH. He co-chaired the Columbus in 1976 Worldcon bid, chaired Marcon for ten years, served as vice-chair of Chicon IV in 1982, and co-chaired the 2010 World Fantasy Convention. He acquired Dick Spelman’s book business in the early ’90s and became a regular fixture in the convention bookselling ...Read More

Literary critic Robert Scholes, 87, died December 9, 2016 in Rhode Island. He wrote numerous works of literary theory, including several of SF interest: The Fabulators (1967), Structural Fabulation: An Essay on Fiction of the Future (1975), Science Fiction: History — Science — Vision (1977, with Eric S. Rabkin), and Fabulation and Metafiction (1979). He co-edited essay anthologies Bridges to Fantasy (1982) and Co-Ordinates: Placing Science Fiction and Fantasy (1983) ...Read More

Writer William Peter Blatty, 89, died of cancer on January 12, 2017 in New York. Blatty is best known for horror classic The Exorcist (1971). He wrote the screenplay for the Academy Award-winning film adaptation (1973), as well as the sequel The Exorcist III (1990), which he also directed. Other books of genre interest include Legion (1983, the basis for The Exorcist III) and Demons Five, Exorcists Nothing: A Fable ...Read More

UK editor and fan Peter Weston, 73, died January 5, 2017, about three years after being diagnosed with cancer.

Born October 19, 1943 in Birmingham England, Weston published influential fanzine Zenith (later renamed Speculation) from 1963-73, during which time it was nominated for four Hugo Awards. His fanzine Prolapse published two issues, went on hiatus for 23 years, and relaunched in 2006. It was renamed Relapse in 2009 and ran ...Read More

Literary agent Linn Prentis, 72, died December 24, 2016.

Elise Linn Prentis was born in 1944 and spent 20 years as a literary agent, first at the Virginia Kidd Agency and later at her own Linn Prentis Agency. In 2011 she moved from New York City to Washington state, just outside Seattle, though she retained offices in New York run by assistant Trodayne Northern. During her career she represented authors ...Read More

Author Richard Adams, 96, died December 24, 2016. Adams is best known for his classic animal fantasy Watership Down (1972), about the secret (and magical) lives of rabbits. His other titles of genre interest include Shardik (1975), The Plague Dogs (1978), and collection Tales from Watership Down (1996).

Richard George Adams was born May 9, 1920 in Newbury, Berkshire, England. He studed at Worcester College, Oxford, graduating with a BA ...Read More

Author Sheri S. Tepper, 87, died October 22, 2016. Tepper was a prolific author of SF, best known for her feminist and ecological themes, with major titles including The Gate to Women’s Country (1988) and Grass (1989).

She was born Shirley Stewart Douglas on July 16, 1929 near Littleton CO. She married for the first time at 20 and had two children, but divorced in her late twenties, and spent ...Read More

Author and editor Ed Gorman, 74, died October 14, 2016. He was diagnosed with incurable cancer in 2002. Gorman was best known as a crime and horror writer and anthologist, and also wrote SF.

He published dozens of books, beginning with novel Rough Cut (1984). Most of his works of genre interest were published pseudonymously. As Daniel Ransom he wrote many horror and SF titles, including Daddy’s Little Girl (1985), ...Read More

Author, editor, publisher, and fan Robert E. Weinberg, 70, died September 25, 2016 in Oak Forest IL. Weinberg was an expert on pulp magazines, and devoted much of his life to promoting and reprinting material from the pulps. He was also a prolific anthologist, editing or co-editing more than 100 volumes.

Robert Edward Weinberg was born August 29, 1946 in New Jersey. His first publications of genre interest were bibliographical ...Read More

Author W.P. Kinsella, 81, died September 16, 2016 in Hope, British Columbia, Canada, reportedly of assisted suicide. Kinsella is best known for his debut novel, baseball fantasy Shoeless Joe (1982), adapted as film Field of Dreams (1989). Other works of genre interest include The Iowa Baseball Confederacy (1986), If Wishes Were Horses (1996), and Butterfly Winter (2011), and collections The Alligator Report (1985), Red Wolf, Red Wolf (1987), The Further ...Read More

Author, illustrator, and fan David A. Kyle, 97, died September 18, 2016 of complications from an endoscopy. Kyle was a member of First Fandom, active in SF since 1933, and a founding member of the Futurians. He chaired NYCon II, the 14th Worldcon in 1956, and was fan guest of honor ConStellation, the 41st Worldcon, in 1983. Kyle published countless essays and letters in fanzines, and illustrated covers and interiors ...Read More

Writer Katherine Dunn, 70, died May 11, 2016 in Portland OR of complications from lung cancer.

Dunn is best known for Geek Love (1989), her influential literary horror novel about a family of circus sideshow performers (with touches of the paranormal). The novel was a bestseller and is an enduring cult classic, and was a finalist for both the National Book Award and the Bram Stoker Award. Earlier novels Attic ...Read More

SF writer and philosopher Justin Leiber, 77, died March 22, 2016 in Tallahassee FL. He had prostate cancer. The son of writer Fritz Leiber, Justin Leiber’s debut SF novel was Beyond Rejection (1980), beginning the Beyond sequence, which continued with Beyond Humanity (1987) and Beyond Gravity (1988). He also wrote fantasy novels The Sword and the Eye (1985) and The Sword and the Tower (1986).

Justin Fritz Leiber was born ...Read More

Writer Bud Webster, 63, died February 13, 2015.

Clarence Howard Webster was born July 27, 1952 in Roanoke VA. Webster was the author of many poems and short stories, notably the Bubba Pritchert series, but was best known as a SF scholar and historian. His books included Anthopology 101: Reflections, Inspections and Dissections of SF Anthologies (2010), The Joy of Booking (2011), and Past Masters & Other Bookish Natterings (2013). ...Read More

Editor David G. Hartwell, 74, died January 20, 2016. He suffered head trauma in a fall, was hospitalized, and did not recover from a massive brain bleed. Hartwell was one of the genre’s most accomplished editors, and was equally known for his encyclopedic knowledge of the field and his memorable personal style.

David Geddes Hartwell was born July 10, 1941 in Salem MA. He attended Williams College, graduating with ...Read More

Pioneering musician David Bowie, 69, died January 10, 2016. For the previous 18 months he was being treated for cancer. Bowie was one of the most well-known and successful pop stars of the 1970s and beyond, and was both famously influenced by science fiction and an influence on SF writers himself.

Bowie was born David Robert Jones on January 8, 1947 in London. His earliest success was 1969 single “Space ...Read More

Author A.R. Morlan, 58, was found dead at home in Ladysmith WI on January 6, 2016 in an apparent suicide.

Morlan began publishing with a quiz in Twilight Zone Magazine (1983). Her first story was “Four Days Before the Snow” (1985), beginning her Ewerton series of horror stories set in an imaginary small town in Wisconsin, which also includes novels The Amulet (1991) and Dark Journey (1991). Her short fiction ...Read More

Writer George Clayton Johnson, 86, died December 25, 2015. Johnson is best known in the genre for co-writing Logan’s Run (1967) with William F. Nolan, and for his work as a screenwriter. He wrote several episodes of The Twilight Zone as well as the debut episode of Star Trek, “The Man Trap” (1966).

Johnson was born July 10, 1929 in Cheyenne WY. He served the Army before enrolling at the ...Read More

Author Peter Dickinson, 88, died December 16, 2015 in Winchester, Hampshire on his birthday.

Peter Malcolm de Brissac Dickinson was born December 16, 1927 in Livingstone, Northern Rhodesia (now Zambia). He is best known for his numerous works for children and young adults, and is one of only seven authors to win two Carnegie Medals (he was the first); no one has three. His debut YA The Weathermonger (1968) began ...Read More

Author David Rain, 54, who wrote SF as Tom Arden, died December 15, 2015 of cancer.

Arden is best known for the five-book Orokon epic fantasy series, beginning with The Harlequin’s Dance (1997). He also wrote standalone novels Shadow Black (2002) and The Translation of Bastian Test (2005), as well as Doctor Who novella Nightdreamers (2002), and numerous stories, reviews, and critical articles. As David Rains he published The ...Read More

Author T.M. Wright, 68, died October 31, 2015 in Corning NY.

Terrance Michael Wright was born September 9, 1947 in Syracuse NY. His first book was non-fiction, The Intelligent Man’s Guide to Flying Saucers (1968). Debut novel Strange Seed (1978) was followed by sequels Nursery Tale (1982), The Children of the Island (1983), The People of the Dark (1985), and Erthmun (1995; as Laughing Man, 2003). A Manhattan Ghost Story ...Read More

Director and writer WES CRAVEN, 76, died August 30, 2015 of brain cancer at home in Los Angeles.

Though best known for the horror films he wrote and directed, he published one novel, SF thriller Fountain Society (1999), about a scientist who has his brain transplanted into a cloned body. Craven’s directorial debut was The Last House on the Left (1972), and he wrote or directed other horror films including ...Read More

Author Robert Conquest, 98, died August 3, 2015 in Stanford CA of pneumonia. Though best known as a historian and one of the foremost experts on Russia and the Soviet Union, he was also a dedicated SF fan, writer, editor, critic, and poet. From 1961-66 he edited five volumes of the Spectrum anthology series with Kingsley Amis. He wrote memorable verse, including this famous couplet:

“SF’s no good,” they bellow ...Read More

Adrienne Martine-Barnes, 73, died July 20, 2015 in a Portland OR hospital.

Born January 19, 1942 in Los Angeles CA, Barnes began publishing with “Di Catenas” (1982) in Marion Zimmer Bradley’s Darkover anthology Swords of Chaos. Her debut novel The Dragon Rises appeared in 1983, and her series Chronique D’Avebury includes The Fire Sword (1984), The Crystal Sword (1988), The Rainbow Sword (1988), and The Sea Sword (1989). She collaborated ...Read More

Writer Tom Piccirilli, 50, died July 11, 2015.

Thomas Edward Piccirilli was born May 27, 1965. He published over a dozen ambitious and accomplished crime and horror novels, notably Stoker Award winner The Night Class (2003) and The Cold Spot (2008), a finalist for the Edgar Award for best paperback original mystery. He was an accomplished author of bleak and quirky short fiction as well, with many collections, including World ...Read More

Editor and author Wolfgang Jeschke, 78, died June 10, 2015 in Munich, Germany. Jeschke was an award-winning editor of SF novels and anthologies, as well as an author. He is credited with leading German SF publisher Heyne Verlag to great success beginning in the late ’70s.

Jeschke was born November 19, 1936 in Tetschen, Czechoslovakia (now Děčín, Czech Republic) and grew up in Asperg near Ludwigsburg, West Germany. He studied ...Read More

French-Canadian SF writer and editor Joël Champetier, 57, died May 30, 2015 after a long struggle with leukemia. Champetier was a renowned and award-winning SF author, and longtime editor of Solaris, one of the most prestigious French-language SF magazines in the world.

Champetier was born in 1957 in La Corne, Quebec. He worked in electrochemistry before becoming a full-time writer in 1981, and lived in Montréal, Ville-Marie, and Gallix before ...Read More

Author Tanith Lee, 67, died peacefully in her sleep May 24, 2015 after a long illness.

Lee was born September 19, 1947 in London and studied at Prendergast Grammar School, Catford, London, and at an art college in the city. After working for a while as a library assistant in London, she became a freelance writer in 1975. Her first published books were children’s fantasies The Dragon Hoard (1971) and ...Read More

Author Günter Grass, 87, died April 13, 2015 in a hospital in Lübeck, Germany, where he’d lived for many years. Grass was a Nobel Prize-winning author of novels and poetry who occasionally made use of the fantastic in his work, an approach he called “broadened reality.” Notable examples include The Tin Drum (1959) and The Rat (1986).

Günter Wilhelm Grass was born October 16, 1927 in Danzig (now Gdańsk, in ...Read More

Fan and convention organizer Peggy Rae Sapienza, 70, died March 22, 2015, of complications from recent heart surgery.

Sapienza was an important figure in convention fandom. She chaired Bucconeer, the 1998 Baltimore Worldcon, and was the North American Agent for Nippon, the Japanese Worldcon in 2007. She also chaired the Nebula Awards Weekends in 2011 and 2012 and co-chaired the 2014 World Fantasy Convention. She was a vital committee member ...Read More

Bestselling fantasy author Terry Pratchett, 66, died March 12, 2015 in his home. Pratchett is best known for his 40-volume Discworld series, which started with The Colour of Magic in 1983. He has sold over 85 million books in 37 languages. According to Larry Finlay, managing director at Transworld Publishers, “Terry passed away in his home, with his cat sleeping on his bed surrounded by his family on 12th March ...Read More

Actor, director, author, and photographer Leonard Nimoy, 83, died February 27, 2014 at home in Bel Air CA of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.

Nimoy is best known for playing the half-Vulcan science officer Spock in both the TV and film incarnations of Star Trek, beginning in 1966 and making a final appearance as the character in the 2013 film Star Trek Into Darkness. Nimoy wrote two autobiographies that ...Read More