American publisher and comics historian Bill Baker died on February 20, aged 55. Along with conducting interviews with Neil Gaiman, Alan Moore, George Perez and others, Baker also wrote Icons: The DC Comics and WildStorm Art of Jim Lee.
Spanish author Juan José Plans [Martínez], whose novel El juego de los niños was made into the 1976 film Island of the Damned (aka Would You Kill a Child?) and the 2012 remake Come Out and Play, died of an aneurysm February 24, aged around 70. He also scripted six episodes of the TV series Crónicas fantásticas (1974).
American writer, editor, cartoonist, underground film-maker and fan Bhob Stewart, who is credited with originating the term “underground comics” during a convention panel in 1966, died in a nursing home of emphysema the same day, aged 76. In 1953 he published the early comics fanzine The EC Fan Bulletin, and from 1960-63 he was co-editor and art director for the Hugo Award-winning fanzine Xero. He edited Castle of Frankenstein from 1963 into the 1970s, and he wrote a column for Andrew I. Porter’s Algol/Starship on film and other visual media, as well as contributing to such magazines as Cinefantastique, Heavy Metal and TV Guide. Stewart co-authored The EC Horror Library of the 1950s (with Bill Gaines), Screen Queens: Heroines of the Horrors (with Calvin [T.] Beck), and he also wrote Against the Grain: MAD Artist Wally Wood and MAD Style Guide. His artwork appeared in Venture Science Fiction, Cavalier and the Village Voice, and he created a number of series of trading cards.
American Star Wars author and spin-off role-playing game designer Aaron [Dale] Allston suffered an apparent heart attack at a convention and died on February 27, aged 53. He wrote the computer game Savage Empire, and his books include Web of Danger, Galatea in 2-D, Doc Sidhe and its sequel Sidhe-Devil, and the “Bard’s Tale” novels, Thunder of the Captains and Wrath of the Princes, both written with Holly Lisle.
French-born Belgium SF writer Philippe Ebly (Jacques Gouzou) died on March 1, aged 93. His many novels include the “Fantastic Conquerors” series (more than nineteen titles) and the “Time Runaways” series (ten titles). Since 1971, his books sold more than two million copies and were translated into a several languages.
Austrian-born American author, editor and publisher Peter A. Ruber died on March 6, aged 73. He had been suffering from diabetes and congestive heart failure. Ruber knew and published Arkham House founder August Derleth from 1962 until Derleth’s death in 1971, often under his Candlelight Press imprint. After James Turner left to found Golden Gryphon Press, Ruber became the editor for Arkham House in 1997 until he suffered a stroke seven years later. He wrote the biographies The Last Bookman: A Journey Into the Life and Times of Vincent Starrett: Journalist, Bookman, Bibliophile (1968) and King of the Pulps: The Life & Writings of H. Bedford Jones (with Darrell C. Richardson and Victor A. Berch, 2003), compiled the collections Reunion at Dawn and Other Uncollected Ghost Stories by H. Russell Wakefield and Night Creatures by Seabury Quinn for Ash-Tree Press, and edited the controversial anthology Arkham’s Masters of Horror: The 60th Anniversary Anthology for Arkham House in 2000.
American screenwriter S. Lee Pogostin died on March 7, the day before his 88th birthday. He scripted the movies Golden Needles, Nightmare Honeymoon and The UFO Incident.
American author and editor Alan [Paul] Rodgers died on March 8, aged 54. He had spent more than two years in hospital following a series of strokes and other illnesses. Rodgers won a Bram Stoker Award in 1987 for his first story, ‘The Boy Who Came Back from the Dead’, while Blood of the Children (1990) was nominated for a Bram Stoker Award for Best First Novel. His other novels include Fire, Night, Pandora, the Stoker-nominated Bone Music, Her Misbegotten Son, The River of Our Destiny, Alien Love and Battlestar Galactica: Rebellion (with Richard Hatch), and his short fiction was collected in New Life for the Dead and Ghosts Who Cannot Sleep. Between 1984-87 Rodgers was Associate Editor at Rod Serling’s The Twilight Magazine, and he edited the companion title Night Cry from 1985-87. He was married to editor and author Amy Stout for fifteen years.
American television writer Don Ingalls (Donald G. Ingalls) died on March 10, aged 95. He scripted episodes of Star Trek, The Sixth Sense and Fantasy Island, the TV movies The Initiation of Sarah (1978) and Captain America (1979), and the disaster movie Airport 1975. Ingalls was also executive story consultant on the series The Sixth Sense (1972) and Fantasy Island (1977-84), producing the latter in the early 1980s as well as directing two episodes.
British commercial artist Sam Peffer (Samuel John Peffer), who signed his artwork “Peff”, died on March 14, aged 92. Through the 1950s and ‘60s he painted hundreds of paperback books covers (including the James Bond titles and the film tie-in to Midnight Lace for Pan Books) and moved on to film and video posters over the following two decades (the Creatures of Evil/Blood Devils double-bill, Prisoner of the Cannibal God, Flesh Gordon etc.). Peffer would often use himself and his wife Kitty as models, along with his movie stuntman brother-in-law, Jack Cooper.
British comics writer Steve Moore, who created the UK’s first comics fanzine, Orpheus, in 1971, died on March 16, aged 64. He worked for Marvel UK and such titles as 2000 AD, Doctor Who Weekly, Warrior and Sounds (in collaboration with Alan Moore, who he is credited with teaching how to write comics). Moore was also an editor at Fortean Times and Fortean Studies, and he novelised the 2006 movie V for Vendetta.
Acclaimed American fantasy, SF and magical realism author Lucius [Taylor] Shepard died after a short illness on March 18, aged 70. Recent health complications had included a stroke and a spinal infection. He made his genre debut in 1983 and his first novel, Green Eyes, was published the following year. It was followed by, amongst many other titles, Life During Wartime, The Scalehunter’s Beautiful Daughter, Kalimantan, The Golden, Floater, Louisiana Breakdown, Softspoken, Trujillo and Other Stories and the Arkham House collection The Jaguar Hunter. Shepard also wrote a long-running film review column for The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, and his many awards included the John W. Campbell Award, the Nebula Award, the Hugo Award, the World Fantasy Award, the International Horror Guild Award and the Shirley Jackson Award.