The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror. Volume 23

Prolific British crime writer and critic H. R. F. Keating (Henry Reymond Fitzwalter Keating) died on 27 March, aged eighty-four. Best known for his books featuring Detective Inspector Ghote, he also wrote the SF novels The Strong Man and A Long Walk to Wimbledon.

Welsh author Craig Thomas (aka “David Grant”), whose eighteen novels include the techno-thrillers Firefox (filmed by Clint Eastwood in 1982) and Firefox Down, died of leukemia on 4 April, aged sixty-nine.

American writer Larry [Eugene] Tritten died after a long illness on 6 April, aged seventy-two. His first SF story appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction in 1974, and he went on to contribute fiction to numerous magazines and anthologies over the next three decades. Tritten also wrote more than 1,500 reviews, columns and travel articles for newspapers and non-genre periodicals.

American TV scriptwriter and producer Sol Saks, who created the pilot episode of Bewitched (1964–72), died on 16 April, aged 100.

British TV, radio and film scriptwriter Ken Taylor (Kenneth Heywood Taylor) died 17 April, aged eighty-eight. In 1983 he scripted three episodes of the Granada TV series Shades of Darkness based on stories by Edith Wharton (“The Lady’s Maid’s Bell”), C. H. B. Kitchin (“The Maze”) and Walter De La Mare (“Seaton’s Aunt”).

British TV and radio comedy writer Bob Block (Timothy Robert William Block) died the same day, aged eighty-ine. He created and scripted such children’s TV series as Pardon My Genie (1972–73), Robert’s Robots (1973–74), Rentaghost (1976–80) and Galloping Galaxies! (1985–86). A Rentaghost: The Musical was produced on stage in 2006 starring Joe Pasquale, and a movie version of the series is currently in development.

American artist Doug (Douglas) Chaffee died on 26 April, aged seventy-five. After leaving his job as head of IBM’s Art Department, he became a freelance illustrator, working for NASA and contributing to such TSR role-playing games as Dungeons & Dragons and Magic: The Gathering.

Wiescka Masterton (Wiescka Walach), the Polish-German wife and literary agent of horror writer Graham Masterton, died on 27 April, aged sixty-five. She had been suffering from a long illness and died of complications from a fall. The couple met when they were both working at Penthouse magazine in the early 1970s, and Masterson’s first horror novel, The Manitou, was inspired by his wife’s pregnancy. In 1988 she sold the book to Poland, before the collapse of the Communist regime, and it became the first Western horror novel to be published in the country since World War II.

American feminist SF writer and ground-breaking critic Joanna [Ruth] Russ died on 29 April, following a series of strokes. She was seventy-four. Russ’ first story appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction in 1959, and her short fiction is collected in Alyx (aka The Adventures of Alyx), The Zanzibar Cat, Extraordinary People and The Hidden Side of the Moon. Best known for her influential 1975 novel The Female Man, her other novels include Picnic on Paradise, And Chaos Died, We Who Are About To. , and The Two of Them. Her essays and criticism are collected in a number of volumes, and during her career she won the Hugo, Nebula, Tiptree and Pilgrim Awards.

British scriptwriter Jeremy Paul [Roche] died of pancreatic cancer on 3 May, aged seventy-one. His credits include Hammer’s Countess Dracula and episodes of TV’s Out of the Unknown, Journey to the Unknown, Tales of the Unexpected, Play for Today (“The Flipside of Dominick Hide” and “Another Flick for Dominick”), The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, The Return of Sherlock Holmes, The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes (“The Last Vampyre”) and The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes. Paul also scripted the 1988 stage production The Secret of Sherlock Holmes starring Jeremy Brett.

British SF author and organic chemist Martin Sherwood, who published two novels with New English Library in the mid-1970s, Survival and Maxwell’s Demon, died on 10 May, aged sixty-nine.

Simon Heneage (Simon Anthony Helyar Walker-Heneage), co-founder of London’s Cartoon Museum and an expert on artist W. Heath Robinson, died on 14 May, aged eighty.

British psychologist, novelist, scriptwriter, engineer and artificial intelligence researcher Martin [Charlton] Woodhouse died on 15 May, aged seventy-eight. Credited with creating the first ebooks, his novels include the “Giles Yeoman” series of techno-thrillers: Tree Frog, Bush Baby, Mama Doll, Blue Bone and Moon Hill. In the 1960s Woodhouse scripted six early episodes of The Avengers featuring Honor Blackman and a later show featuring Diana Rigg. He also wrote twenty-two episodes of Supercar with his younger brother Hugh, and the children’s SF serial Emerald Soup.

Iconic fantasy artist Jeffrey [“Catherine”] Jones, who was once praised by Frank Frazetta as “the greatest living painter”, died of complications from emphysema, bronchitis and heart problems on 18 May, aged sixty-seven. He was reportedly severely underweight. A member of the legendary 1970s artists’ group The Studio (which also included Michael William Kaluta, Barry Windsor-Smith and Bernie Wrightson), Jones was one of the most prolific genre artists of the 1960s and ’70s, producing more than 150 covers for books by Fritz Leiber (notably the “Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser” series), Jack Vance, Andre Norton, Robert E. Howard, Karl Edward Wagner, Dean Koontz and many others, along with magazine and comics work. In 1998 Jones began hormone replacement therapy, and subsequently suffered an apparent nervous breakdown before returning to painting in the early 2000s. The World Fantasy Award-winning artist’s work is collected in The Studio, Age of Innocence: The Romantic Art of Jeffrey Jones, The Art of Jeffrey Jones, Jeffrey Jones Sketchbook and Jeffrey Jones: A Life in Art.

American author and music composer [Robert] Mark Shepherd committed suicide by a self-inflicted gunshot wound on 25 May. He was forty-nine. Shepherd was best known for his collaborations with Mercedes Lackey (whose personal secretary he was during the 1990s) on such fantasy novels as Wheels of Fire and Prison of Souls. His solo books set in the same worlds include Elvendude, Spiritride, Lazerwarz and Escape from Roksamur, while Blackrose Avenue was a dystopian SF novel.

British fan artist, writer and publisher [Byron] Terry Jeeves died on 29 May, aged eighty- eight. A founder of the British Science Fiction Association in 1958, he edited the group’s journal Vector from 1958–59. Jeeves also edited the fanzines Triode and ERG, and his articles and artwork appeared in numerous publications, winning him the Rotsler Award in 2007. He was also a recipient of the Doc Weir Award for services to British fandom, and he was inducted into the First Fandom Hall of Fame in 2010. Jeeves’ story “Upon Reflection” appeared in The 25th Pan Book of Horror Stories, and much of his fanzine writing was collected in the tribute magazine Wartime Days (2010).

Fifty-seven-year-old Canadian-born fantasy and SF author Joel Rosenberg, an outspoken gun advocate, died in Minneapolis on 2 June after suffering respiratory problems that resulted in a heart attack, brain damage and major organ failure. He made his writing debut in Asimov’s magazine in 1982, and his novels include The Sleeping Dragon (and nine sequels in his “Guardians of the Flame” series), Ties of Blood and Silver, D’Shai, The Fire Duke, The Silver Stone, The Crimson Sky, Home Front, the “Riftwar” novel Murder in LaMut (with Raymond E. Feist), Paladins and Knight Moves. In November 2010, Rosenberg, who also wrote Everything You Need to Know About (Legally) Carrying a Handgun in Minnesota, was arrested for carrying a holstered semi-automatic handgun into a meeting at City Hall.

American writer, editor, journalist and book critic Alan [Peter] Ryan