Ettinger, who wrote a number of non-fiction books about extending life through cryonic freezing, died the same day, aged ninety-two. He also published some SF stories, beginning with “The Penultimate Trump” in Startling Stories (1948). Not surprisingly, his body was cryopreserved at the Cryonics Institute, which he founded in 1976.
Eighty-year-old Japanese SF writer Sakyo Komatsu (Minoru Komatsu), best known for his 1973 disaster novel Nippon Chinbotsu (Japan Sinks, filmed in 1974 and 2006), died of pneumonia on 26 July. He was also a prolific writer of short stories, articles and anime scripts.
Best-selling urban fantasy and paranormal romance writer L. A. Banks (Leslie Esdaile Banks) died of a rare form of adrenal cancer on 2 August, aged fifty-one. The author of more than forty books since her debut in 1996, her popular “Vampire Huntress Legends” series began in 2003 with Minion and continued with The Awakening, The Hunted, The Bitten, The Forbidden, The Damned, The Forsaken, The Wicked, The Cursed, The Darkness, The Shadows and The Thirteenth. She also wrote the “Crimson Moon” werewolf series, comprising Bad Blood (2008), Bite the Bullet, Undead on Arrival, Cursed to Death, Never Cry Werewolf and Left for Dead. Surrender the Dark and Conquer the Dark were the first two books in a new series about angels. Banks also wrote romance, crime and media tie-ins under various pseudonyms.
American children’s and young adult author William Sleator (William Warner Sleator III) died in Thailand the same day, aged sixty-six. His more than thirty books include The Angry Moon, Blackbriar, House of Stairs, Fingers, Interstellar Pig, Singularity, The Duplicate, The Boy Who Reversed Himself, Rewind, The Boy Who Couldn’t Die and The Phantom Limb. Sleator was also an accomplished pianist, playing for a number of ballet schools.
American comics writer and editor Del Connell died of complications from Alzheimer’s disease on 12 August, aged ninety-three. He started out as a character sculptor for the Walt Disney Studio in 1939, where he worked on the stories for The Three Caballeros and Alice in Wonderland (1951). After moving to Western Publishing’s Dell Comics in 1954, he wrote thousands of comics (usually uncredited), including Space Family Robinson (which was turned into the TV series Lost in Space) and numerous Disney titles. For more than twenty years Connell also wrote the daily and Sunday Mickey Mouse newspaper strip.
Fifty-year-old British fantasy and SF author Colin Harvey died on 15 August, having suffered a massive stroke the day before. His novels include Vengeance, Lightning Days, The Silk Palace, Blind Faith, Winter Song and Damage Time, and his stories appeared in such magazines and anthologies as Albedo One, Interzone, Apex, Daily Science Fiction, Fearology and Gothic.net. His short fiction was collected in Displacement, and he also edited the anthologies Killers, Future Bristol, Dark Spires and Transtories. While working for Unilever, Harvey helped launch Ben & Jerry’s Ice Cream in Iceland.
British artist John Holmes, best known for his iconic cover for Germaine Greer’s The Female Eunuch (1970), died on 17 August, aged seventy-six. His other credits include the cover of Peter Benchley’s Jaws, the Ballentine editions of H. P. Lovecraft, the Peter Haining anthologies The Evil People and The Midnight People, plus reissues of Pan’s two volumes of The Hammer Horror Omnibus and various editions of The Fontana Book of Horror edited by Mary Danby.
Veteran Hammer scriptwriter, producer and director Jimmy Sangster (James Henry Kimmel Sangster, aka “John Sansom”) died on 19 August, aged eighty-three. He began his career at the studio as an assistant director on Man in Black, Dick Barton Strikes Back, Room to Let, Stolen Face and Spaceways. However, starting as a scriptwriter with X: The Unknown in 1956, Sangster was responsible (with director Terrence Fisher and others) for ushering the Hammer House of Horror era with The Curse of Frankenstein, Dracula (aka Horror of Dracula), The Revenge of Frankenstein, The Snorkel, The Man Who Could Cheat Death, The Mummy (1959), The Brides of Dracula, The Terror of the Tongs, Taste of Fear, Paranoiac, Maniac, Nightmare, Hysteria, The Nanny, Dracula Prince of Darkness, The Anniversary and Crescendo. For Hammer he also directed The Horror of Frankenstein, Lust for a Vampire and Fear in the Night, and he novelised a number of his screenplays. Sangster worked for other production companies, and his film credits also include Blood of the Vampire, The Trollenberg Terror (aka The Crawling Eye), Jack the Ripper (1959), The Hellfire Club, Deadlier Than the Male, A Taste of Evil, Whoever Slew Auntie Roo? Scream Pretty Peggy, Maneater, Good Against Evil, The Legacy, The Billion Dollar Threat, Phobia, Once Upon a Spy, Disney’s The Devil and Max Devlin and Flashback — Morderisc Ferien. During the 1970s he wrote numerous scripts for American TV shows, including Ghost Story, The Six Million Dollar Man, Kolchak: The Night Stalker and Wonder Woman. His autobiography, Do You Want it Good or Tuesday? was published in 1997.
Sixty-three-year-old American bookseller Bill Trojan (William T. Trojan) died of a massive heart attack in his hotel room on 21 August, the final day of Renovation, the 2011 World Science Fiction Convention in Reno, Nevada. He had been suffering with health problems for several years. Trojan was one of the chairs of the 1996 World Horror Convention in Eugene, Oregon, and was a major financial supporter of Pulphouse Publishing in the late 1980s.
Fifty-nine-year-old American SF fan Dan Hoey, who chaired the 1995 Disclave convention in Washington DC, committed suicide on 31 August.
American journalist and cartoonist Bill Kunkel (William Henry Patrick Kunkel), who co- created Electronic Games, the first video and computer game magazine, died of an apparent heart attack on 4 September, aged sixty-one. He also wrote comic books for Marvel and DC Comics and created video games.
Digital publishing pioneer Michael S. (Stern) Heart, the founder of Project Gutenberg, the world’s oldest digital library, died of a heart attack on 6 September, aged sixty-four. He is often credited as the “creator” of the ebook, having made an electronic copy of the American Declaration of Independence available for download at the University of Illinois in Urbana in 1971.
Former US Army soldier and shipyard worker Charles E. Hickson died of a heart attack on 9 September, aged eighty. On 11 October, 1973, Hickson and another man were fishing off the west bank of the Pascagoula River, Mississippi, when they claimed they were abducted by aliens. This became known as the “Pascagoula Abduction”. Hickson appeared in the 1978 feature documentary, The Force Beyond, and in 1983 he wrote a book about his experience, UFO Contact in Pascagoula.
American comics artist Jack Adler died on 18 September, aged ninety-four. He was a staff member of DC Comics’ production department from 1946 to 1981, working as a cover artist and colourist on such titles as Sea Devils, Green Lantern and G.I. Combat.
American horror short fiction writer and editor Mark W. (Whitney) Worthen died on 19 September, aged forty-nine. He created the online magazine Blood Rose (1998–2005) and co-edited Desolate Souls, the souvenir anthology of the 2008 World Horror Convention, with his second wife, Jeannie Eddy (aka “J. P. Edwards”). Worthen was closely involved with the Horror Writers Association, as both a webmaster and co-chair of the awards committee. He received the HWA’s Richard Laymon President’s Award for Services in 2007.
Eighty-nine-year-old British author John [Frederick] Burke died on 21 September following a fall in his home. He became a SF fan in the 1930s, writing letters to Weird Tales and founding the early UK fanzine The Satellite with David McIlwain (aka “Charles Eric Maine”). Sam Youd (aka “John Christopher”) was also a regular contributor to the magazine. Burke’s short stories appeared in Authentic Science Fiction, Science Fantasy, Nebula, New Worlds, the
