Obituaries

Artist JAEL, 83, died November 17, 2020. Jael’s artistic career spanned six decades, during which she published hundreds of SF book and magazine cover illustrations, in addition to fine arts work and other commissions. Some of her art was collected in Perceptualistics (2002). She was nominated for eight Chesley Awards from 1985-2002.

Jael Ashton was born October 31, 1937, and grew up in Utah. She worked as a professional ...Read More

Writer Anton Strout, 50, died unexpected on December 30, 2020. Strout was an author of urban fantasy, best known for his Simon Canderous series. He was also the host of the Once and Future Podcast, where he interviewed authors beginning in 2014, producing more than 200 episodes. He worked in publishing as well, as a longtime sales rep for Penguin Random House.

Anton Strout was born January 24, 1970 in ...Read More

Grand Master James Gunn, 97, died December 23, 2020. Gunn was one of the field’s true polymaths, excelling as an SF author, editor, and scholar. Gunn served as President of Science Fiction Writers of America in 1971-1972 and the organization honored him with a Damon Knight Grand Master Award in 2006. He was inducted into the SF Hall of Fame in 2015.

James Edwin Gunn was born July 12, 1923 ...Read More

Author Phyllis Eisenstein, 74, died December 7, 2020. She suffered a stroke in January 2020 and entered hospice care not long after.

Her first SF story was “The Trouble with the Past” (1971), co-written with husband Alex Eisenstein, who collaborated with her on many other works as well. Her debut Born to Exile (1978) collects her stories about Alaric the Minstrel, who also appeared in novel In the Red Lord’s ...Read More

Artist Richard Corben, 80, died December 2, 2020 after heart surgery.

Though best known for his comics work and album art (most famously for Meat Loaf’s Bat Out of Hell, 1977), Corben also created numerous SF book covers, including for titles by Edgar Rice Burroughs, L. Sprague de Camp, Philip K. Dick, Harlan Ellison, Harry Harrison, Damon Knight, and more. He produced interior art for magazines, and for fanzines devoted ...Read More

SF writer Dean Ing, 89, died July 21, 2020 at home in Ashland OR. He was best known for his technothrillers and near-future survivalist novels.

Ing was born June 17, 1931 in Austin TX. He served in the US Air Force from 1951-55, graduated from Fresno State University in 1956, earned a master’s at San Jose State University in 1970, and got his doctorate at the University of Oregon in ...Read More

SF writer and editor Ben Bova, 88, died November 29, 2020 after contracting COVID-19, developing pneumonia, and suffering a stroke. Bova was known both for his hard SF fiction and for editing major genre magazines Analog and Omni. In all, he produced more than 120 books.

Bova began his career in SF as a novelist with YA The Star Conquerors (1959), first in the Watchmen series, which also includes Star ...Read More

SF writer Debra Doyle, 67, died October 31 of a sudden cardiac event at home in Colebrook NH. She was best known for work written in collaboration with her husband, James D. Macdonald, including Mythopoeic Award winner Knight’s Wyrd (1992) and the Mageworlds space opera series.

Doyle was born November 30, 1952 in Florida, and grew up mostly in Texas. She married Macdonald in 1978. She was a frequent instructor ...Read More

Author Roxanne Longstreet Conrad, 58, who wrote as Rachel Caine, died November 1, 2020 of cancer shortly after entering hospice care. Caine was a prolific author of more than 50 books, best known for the Morganville Vampires series and the Weather Warden universe.

Roxanne Longstreet was born April 27, 1962 and grew up in West Texas. She went to Texas Tech University, graduating with an accounting degree and a minor ...Read More

Writer and fan Richard A. Lupoff, 85, died October 22, 2020. Lupoff wrote numerous works of SF, and was best known in fandom for co-editing fanzine Xero with his wife Pat Lupoff and Bhob Stewart; the ‘zine won a Hugo Award in 1963.

Richard Allen Lupoff was born February 21, 1935 in New York. He met Pat on a blind date in 1957, and they were married the following year. ...Read More

Author Terry Goodkind, 72, died September 17, 2020. Goodkind was a bestselling writer of epic fantasy.

Born January 11, 1948 in Omaha NE, Goodkind lived in Maine with his wife, Jeri, before they settled near Lake Las Vegas NV. He began publishing his popular Sword of Truth series with novel Wizard’s First Rule (1994) and continued with Stone of Tears (1995), Blood of the Fold (1996), Temple of the Winds ...Read More

Pioneering Black SF writer Charles R. Saunders, 73, reportedly died in May 2020, though his passing only became widely known in September. Saunders is best known for his fantasy Imaro (1981) and as the founder of the “sword and soul” subgenre, combining African history, culture, and mythology with sword-and-sorcery tropes.

Charles Robert Saunders was born July 12, 1946 in Elizabeth PA. He graduated from Lincoln University in 1968 with a ...Read More

Australian editor and fan John Bangsund, 81, died August 22, 2020 of complications from COVID-19. He lived in Preston, Victoria, Australia.

Born 1939 in Melbourne, Bangsund was active in Australian fandom beginning in 1963, and was a driving force in the scene through the 1980s. He was crucial in organizing the 1975 Worldcon in Melbourne, and served as toastmaster there. He was a charter member of the Nova Mob, a ...Read More

Author P.M. Griffin, 73, died August 10, 2020 in Brooklyn NY after an illness.

Pauline Margaret Griffin was born July 5, 1947 in Brooklyn. She began publishing SF with Star Commandos in 1986; the 12th volume in the series, War Prince, appeared in 2004. She collaborated with Andre Norton on Redline the Stars (1993) and Firehand (1994), and her novels Seakeep (1991) and Falcon Hope (1992) were set in ...Read More

Susan Ellison, 60, died August 1, 2020 at home, in the “Lost Aztec Temple of Mars,” in Sherman Oaks CA.

Susan Toth was born in 1960 in the British Midlands. She met Harlan Ellison at a convention in Scotland in 1985 and they married in 1986. She was his fifth wife and the love of his life: the two were inseparable for the next 32 years, until his death in ...Read More

Writer Rudolfo Anaya, 82, died June 28, 2020 at home in Albuquerque NM after a long illness. Anaya was a major Chicano writer, best known for his debut Bless Me, Ultima (1972), adapted as a film in 2013. His work occasionally had genre elements, notably in his Sonny Baca mystery series: Zia Summer (1995), Rio Grande Fall (1996), Shaman Winter (1999), and Jemez Spring (2005). Mystery Curse of the ChupaCabra ...Read More

Spanish author Carlos Ruiz Zafón, 55, died June 19, 2020 of cancer in Los Angeles CA. Zafón wrote literary novels that often included speculative elements. His debut, YA The Prince of Mist, appeared in Spanish in 1993 and in English in 2010. He wrote three other novels for young adults, but his breakout book was adult debut The Shadow of the Wind (2001), an international bestseller that appeared in ...Read More

Critic and editor Colin Manlove, 78, died June 1, 2020 following a long illness.

He wrote extensive criticism, mostly on fantasy, beginning with Modern Fantasy: Five Studies (1975). Other books include The Impulse of Fantasy Literature (1983), Science Fiction: Ten Explorations (1986), C.S. Lewis: His Literary Achievement (1987), Christian Fantasy: From 1200 to the Present (1992), The Chronicles of Narnia: The Patterning of a Fantastic World: A Reader’s Companion (1993),  ...Read More

SF Scholar Marshall B. Tymn, 82, died May 24, 2020 of pneumonia. Tymn was an essential figure in the field in the ’70s and ’80s, and did much to further the study of SF in academia. He won a Pilgrim Award for lifetime contributions from the Science Fiction Research Association in 1990, and the Robert A. Collins Service Award from the International Association for the Fantastic in the Arts in ...Read More

Chinese SF writer Ye Yonglie, 79, died May 15, 2020 in Shanghai. He published over 50 books, including SF, children’s books, mysteries, and popular science. He was often called the “Chinese Isaac Asimov” for his prolific output of fiction and non-fiction.

Ye Yonglie was born August 30, 1940 in Wenzhou, China. He began writing from a young age, with his first poem published at age 11, and attended Beijing University, ...Read More

French SF writer G.-J. Arnaud, 91, died April 26, 2020 at home in the Var in France. George-Camille Arnaud, who wrote as G.-J. Arnaud and Georges-Jean Arnaud, was born July 3, 1928 in Saint-Gilles-du-Gard, Camargue, France. Arnaud began his career writing mystery and thriller novels, producing at least 200 under his own name and various pseudonyms before turning to science fiction. He began publishing SF with Les Croisés de Mara ...Read More

Simon & Schuster CEO Carolyn Reidy, 71, died May 12, 2020 of a heart attack. She began her career in publishing in 1974, working in the subsidiary rights department at Random House, and rose to became associate publisher of the Random House imprint. In her long career she also served as publisher of Vintage Books, and was president and publisher of Avon. She joined S&S in 1992 as president of ...Read More

Author and editor JOSEPH S. PULVER, SR., 64, died April 24, 2020 in Germany after being hospitalized for COPD and other issues. He was best known for his work on Mythos fiction. Anthology The Grimscribe’s Puppets (2013) was a Bram Stoker Award finalist and won a Shirley Jackson Award, while Cassilda’s Song: Tales Inspired by Robert W. Chambers’ King in Yellow Mythos (2015) was a World Fantasy Award finalist.   ...Read More

SF scholar Paul K. Alkon, 84, died January 13, 2020. His non-fiction works of genre interest include Defoe and Fictional Time (1979), Eaton Award winner Origins of Futuristic Fiction (1987), Science Fiction Before 1900: Imagination Discovers Technology (1994), Transformations of Utopia: Changing Views of the Perfect Society (1999, with Danièle Chatelain, Roger Gaillard, and George E. Slusser), and Winston Churchill’s Imagination (2006). He also wrote many critical and scholarly articles, ...Read More

Editor and author Keith Ferrell, 66, died April 11, 2020 of heart failure. He was editor-in-chief of Omni from 1990-96, and also wrote SF. His debut novel Passing Judgment appeared in 1996, and he published short fiction in the 2000s, including “River” (2006), a collaboration with Jack Dann. With Orson Scott Card he co-edited Black Mist and Other Japanese Futures (1997). He also published numerous essays and some non-fiction books ...Read More

Australian fan and bookstore owner Merv Binns, 85, died April 7, 2020, at the Kingston Centre of Monash Health in Melbourne. He suffered serious heart problems for several decades, and was admitted to the hospital following a seizure on April 2, 2020. Binns was a founder of the Melbourne Science Fiction Club (MSFC) in 1952, published fanzine Australian SF News, and ran Space Age Books, Australia’s first specialist science fiction ...Read More

Fan Tom Barber, 70, died April 4, 2020, reportedly of complications from COVID-19. Barber  was active in fandom, running conventions in Michigan starting in the 1970s: he was founding chair of ConClave I (1976), co-chaired ConClave II (1977) and ConClave VIII (1983), and chaired Perpetual ConFusion (1986), ConClave XX (1995), and ConClave XXV (2000). He was part of the NASFiC bid committee for Detroit in ’85.

Thomas Ross Barber was ...Read More

Artist Tim White, 68, died April 6, 2020 after a long period of poor health. White was a prolific SF cover artist from the ‘70s through the ‘90s.

Timothy Thomas Anthony white was born April 4, 1952 in Erith, Kent, England. He studied art at the Medway college of Design, and subsequently worked in advertising for two years. He began doing cover paintings for New English Library and Science Fiction ...Read More

Editor, publisher, and fan Earl Kemp, 90, died February 6, 2020 after a fall at home.

Kemp was a major figure in fandom beginning in the 1950s, and was a founder of Advent:Publishers in 1956. He edited Who Killed Science Fiction?: An Affectionate Autopsy: The First SaFari Annual (1960, revised in 2006 and 2011) and Why Is a Fan?: The Second SaFari Annual (1961), both with Nancy Kemp, his wife ...Read More

Writer, fan, and organizer Aly Parsons, 67, died February 9, 2020 of a heart attack and complications of kidney failure. Parsons was a catalyst for the Washington DC science fiction writing community, founding and organizing a writers’ group that, in its 40-year history, included many prominent SF writers in the area, including Catherine Asaro, John Hemry (AKA Jack Campbell), Edward M. Lerner, Bud Sparhawk, Carolyn Ives Gilman, Robert Chase, Annette ...Read More

Scottish author and editor Paul Barnett, 70, who wrote SF mostly as John Grant, died February 3, 2020. In addition to his extensive writing career, he worked in publishing, serving as a commissioning editor at art book publisher Paper Tiger from 1997-2004; for his work there, he won a Chesley Award for best art director in 2002, and received a World Fantasy Award nomination the following year. He edited The ...Read More

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