43-year-old author James H. Hatfield, whose book Fortunate Son: George W. Bush and the Making of an American President was recalled and pulped by St. Martin’s Press in 1999 after it was discovered that he had lied about his credentials, was found dead of a drug overdose on July 18th. His earlier books include a number of unauthorized trivia challenges, biographies and encyclopedias (many co-written with George Burt) based around such movies and TV shows as Star Wars, Deep Space Nine, Lost in Space, The X Files and Star Trek The Next Generation. Hatfield had been found guilty in 1988 of plotting to kill his bosses at a Dallas real-estate firm in a failed car bombing and in 1992 of forging a signature to cash $22,000 in Federal cheques.
Norman Hall Wright, the last surviving writer of Walt Disney’s Fantasia (‘The Nutcracker Suite’ sequence), died on July 21st, aged 91. He also worked on various cartoon shorts and was a — sequence director on Bambi.
Lynrd Sknyrd bassist Leon Wilkeson died on July 27th, aged 49. The cause of death was under investigation.
Children’s author Elizabeth Yates died on July 29th, aged 95. In 1949 she ghost-edited the anthologySpooks and Spirits and Shadowy Shapes and included one of her own stories.
Science fiction and fantasy author Poul [William] Anderson died of prostate cancer around midnight on July 31st, aged 74. He had returned home that day after a month in hospital to await the end with his close family. After making his debut in Astounding in 1947, he wrote more than 100 books, including Vault of the Ages (1952), Three Hearts and Three Lions, The High Crusade, A Midsummer Tempest, A Knight of Ghosts and Shadows, Tau Zero and two collaborations with Gordon R. Dickson (who died in January), Star Prince Charlie and Hokas Hokas Hokas. A winner of three Nebula and seven Hugo awards, his penultimate novel, Genesis, won the 2000 John W. Campbell Memorial Award.
Robert H. (Henry) Rimmer, author of the 1966 free-love novel The Harrad Experiment (filmed in 1973) and several volumes of The X-Rated Videotape Guide, died on August 1st, aged 84. His other books include The Zolotov Affair, Love Me Tomorrow and The Resurrection of Ann Hutchinson.
68-year-old Ron Townsend, co-founder and one of the lead singers of 1960s group 5th Dimension, died of renal failure on August 2nd after a four-year battle with kidney disease. The Grammy-winning group’s greatest hits include ‘Up Up and Away’ and ‘Aquarius/Let the Sun Shine In’.
Author Frederick A. Raborg, Jr., who was a regular contributor to Marvin Kaye’s anthologies under the pseudonym ‘Dick Baldwin’, died on August 13th, aged 67. His stories appeared in Brother Theodore’s Chamber of Horrors, Ghosts, Masterpieces of Terror and the Supernatural and Devils & Demons, amongst other titles.
HarperCollins editor Robert S. Jones, whose authors included Clive Barker, died of cancer in New York on the same day, aged 47.
American composer Jack Elliott, who wrote the music for Starsky and Hutch, Charlie’s Angels, The Love Boat and other 1970s TV shows, died of a brain tumour on August 18th, aged 74. His film credits include Oh, God! and the series The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air was loosely based on Elliott’s family.
Controversial British astrophysicist and SF author Sir Fred Hoyle, who coined the term ‘Big Bang’ to describe the creation of the Universe (a theory he always personally disputed), died on August 20th after suffering a severe stroke in July. He was 86. Founder of the Institute for Astronomy at Cambridge University and fellow of the Royal Society, Hoyle’s novels include The Black Cloud and Ossian’s Ride, and he co-wrote the BBC TV series A for Andromeda and its sequel,Andromeda Breakthrough, with John Elliott.
Comics artist Chuck Cuidera, who created Blackhawk at Quality Comics in 1941, died on August 25th, aged 86. He also created Blue Beetle and continued to ink Blackhawk after the title was sold to DC Comics until 1967. He worked on several other DC titles before leaving the field in 1970.
Philanthropist and publisher Paul Hamlyn (Paul Bertrand Hamburger), who became a multi-millionaire with his eponymous mass-market imprint, died on August 31st, aged 75. Among the books he published are Supernatural Stories for Boys, The Best Ghost Stories, The Best Horror Stories and Spinechilling Tales for the Dead of Night. He reissued Algernon Blackwood’s Tales of the Uncanny and the Supernatural and Tales of the Mysterious and Macabre under his Spring Books imprint, and was also chairman of the Octopus Publishing Group from 1971–97.
Pauline Kael, the influential film critic of the New Yorker magazine, died of Parkinson’s disease on September 2nd, aged 82. Her collected essays were published as I Lost It at the Movies, Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, Going Steady, Deeper Into Movies (winner of the National Book Award), Reeling and For Keeps.
54-year-old Douglas J. Stone, vice-president of Odyssey Press, which prints and mails The New York Review of Science Fiction, was aboard the doomed American Airlines Flight 11, which was crashed by terrorists into New York’s World Trade Center on September 11th.
Long-time fan and former president and co-founder of the Southern Fandom Confederation, Meade Frierson, III died of cancer on September 24th, aged 61. With his wife Penny he edited the influential H. P. Lovecraft fanzine HPL in the early 1970s.
George Gately [Gallagher], creator of the Heathcliff newspaper comic strip, died of a heart attack on September 30th, aged 72. From 1973 until he retired in the late 1990s, he drew the eponymous cartoon cat, before which he created the Hapless Harry strip.
E.C. comics artist Johnny Craig also died in September, aged 75. After entering the industry in the late 1930s, he joined E.C. in 1950 where he contributed to Tales from the Crypt, Vault of Horror, Haunt of Pear, Two-Fisted Tales and other titles. His other credits include Warren Publishing’s Creepy and Eerie and various titles for Marvel and DC.
69-year-old Gregory [Hancock] Hemingway, the youngest son of Ernest, died of hypertension and cardiovascular disease on October 1st while being held at a women’s detention centre in Florida (he had apparently had a sex-change operation late in life and called himself ‘Gloria’). Hemingway had been arrested five days earlier for being naked in public and was charged with indecent exposure and resisting arrest. His book about his father, Papa: A Personal Memoir, was published in 1976.