American author, journalist, English professor and playwright Stewart H. Benedict, who edited the 1963 anthology Tales of Terror and Suspense, died on March 19, aged 89.
British children’s author John Rowe Townsend died on March 24, aged 91. He won an Edgar Award for Best Juvenile Mystery in 1971 for The Intruder, and his other titles include Widdershins Crescent, Forest of the Night, Noah’s Castle (filmed for TV in 1980), The Visitors, The Creatures and The Invaders.
Best-selling American non-fiction writer Jonathan Schell, whose 1982 book The Fate of the Earth was the primary inspiration for the nuclear holocaust TV film The Day After (1983), died of cancer on March 25, aged 70. Schell was also a staff writer on The New Yorker for two decades.
American screenwriter Lorenzo Semple, Jr. (Lorenzo Elliott Semple, III), who created the 1960s Batman TV series and scripted the 1966 spin-off movie, died on March 28, the day after his 91st birthday. He began his career in the early 1950s writing short stories for The Saturday Evening Post and Collier’s Weekly. Semple also scripted a two-part episode of The Green Hornet, along with the movies Thompson’s Ghost, Daddy’s Gone A-Hunting, King Kong (1976), Flash Gordon (1980), Never Say Never Again and Sheena.
British film and music journalist Phil Hardy (Philippe George Hardy) died of a heart attack on April 8, aged 69. He co-founded The Brighton Film Review and wrote for such magazines as Time Out and Variety. His many book projects include editing the seminal reference works The Aurum Film Encyclopedia: Science Fiction and The Aurum Film Encyclopedia: Horror.
Acclaimed Colombian-born author Gabriel [José de la Concordia] García Márquez, who won the Nobel Literature Prize for his works of magic realism, died at his home in Mexico City on April 17. He was 87 and had been hospitalised earlier in the month for an infection and dehydration. Márquez’s best-known novel is One Hundred Years of Solitude (1967), and his other books include The Autumn of the Patriarch, Chronicle of a Death Foretold, Of Love and Other Demons and the memoir, Living to Tell the Tale.
58-year-old British editor and writer Andy [W.] Robertson, who was the assistant editor of Interzone for almost twenty years from 1984, died in hospital of a heart attack and stroke the same day. He had been suffering from Parkinson’s disease. Robertson also published a number of works as part of The Night Land Project, based on the writings of William Hope Hodgson, including the British Fantasy Award-winning anthology William Hope Hodgson’s Night Lands, Volume 1: Eternal Love (2003).
William H. Patterson, Jr., one of the founders of the Heinlein Society and its first president, died on April 22, aged 62. His massive study Robert A. Heinlein: In Dialogue with His Century, was published by Tor Books in two volumes (2011 and 2014).
American SF writer and fan George C. (Clifford) Willick died on April 26, aged 76. He had been suffering from Alzheimer’s disease. In the 1950s Willick edited the fanzine Parsection, and during the following two decades he published a handful of short stories in Galaxy and elsewhere. In later years he maintained a number of online research sites, including the Spacelight website.
Legendary EC comics artist, writer and editor Al (Albert Bernard) Feldstein died on April 29, aged 88. Best known for his work on such horror and SF titles as Tales from the Crypt, Vault of Horror, Weird Fantasy and Weird Science, he was also editor of MAD Magazine from 1965-85. Feldstein later became a wildlife and landscape painter, and he received an HWA Bram Stoker Lifetime Achievement Award in 2011.
American comic book artist Dick Ayers (Richard Bache Ayers) died on May 4, aged 90. After studying art under Burne Hogarth in the late 1940s, he co-created (with Ray Krank) the horror-themed Western character Ghost Rider and began drawing strips for such Atlas Comics titles as Adventures Into Terror, Astonishing, Journey Into Mystery, Journey Into Unknown Worlds, Menace, Mystery Tales, Mystic, Strange Tales and Uncanny Tales, and Charlton’s The Thing. Teaming up with Jack Kirby as an inker, when Atlas became Marvel Comics Ayers found himself working on such titles as The Fantastic Four, Sgt. Fury and His Howling Commandos, The Incredible Hulk, Journey Into Mystery, Strange Tales (‘Fin Fang Foom!’), Tales of Suspense and Tales to Astonish. When writers Roy Thomas and Gary Friedrich revived a version of The Ghost Rider for Marvel in 1967, Ayers was chosen to illustrate it. The artist was inducted into the Will Eisner Comic Book Hall of Fame in 2007.
American scriptwriter Stanford Whitmore died on May 8, aged 88. His credits include The Eyes of Charles Sands, Hammersmith is Out and The Dark, along with episodes of TV’s The Wild Wild West, Night Gallery and The Hitchhiker.
British romantic historical author Mary Stewart (Mary Florence Elinor Rainbow, aka Lady Stewart), best known for her Arthurian “Merlin Chronicles” (The Crystal Cave, The Hollow Hills, The Last Enchantment, The Wicked Day and The Prince and the Pilgrim), died at her home in Scotland on May 9, aged 97. Her 1962 suspense novel The Moon-Spinners was filmed by Disney, and she also wrote a number of Gothic romances and children’s books.
British fantasy and surreal artist Patrick [James] Woodroffe died after a short illness on May 10, aged 73. During the 1970s he produced nearly 100 book covers for such authors as Michael Moorcock, Peter Valentine Timlett and Roger Zelazny. He also illustrated a number of record cover sleeves, including those for the Judas Priest album Sad Wings of Destiny (1976) and David Greenslade’s symphonic The Pentateuch (1979). The artist’s luminous, detailed work is collected in such volumes as the best-selling Mythopœikon: Fantasies Monsters Nightmares Daydreams (1976), A Closer Look at the Art Techniques of Patrick Woodroffe (1986), Pastures in the Sky, Patrick Woodroffe: Master of Fantasy and Benign Icons: Patrick Woodroffe’s World.