Stephen Jones - Best New Horror #26

Best-selling, but often controversial, British Western author J.(John) T.(Thomas) Edsondied after a long illness on July 17, aged 86. He had 137 books published, selling more than 27 million copies around the world. Between 1975-90 he published four novels in the Tarzan-related “Bunduki” series (a fifth title remains unpublished), along with four short stories. The first three books were issued with permission of both the Edgar Rice Burroughs Estate and Philip José Farmer due to connections with those authors’ work.

Nancy Carriganwho, with her husband Richard, collaborated on the 1971 SF novel The Siren Stars and had a story in a 1976 issue of Analog , died on July 18, aged 81.

American horror author, actor, director and podcast host Lawrence P. Santorodied of cancer of the duodenum on July 25, aged 71. His 2000 novella God Screamed and Screamed, and Then I Ate Him was nominated for a Bram Stoker Award, as was his audio-drama version of Gene Wolfe’s The Tree is My Hat (2002) starring Neil Gaiman, P.D. Cacek and Gahan Wilson. He also published the novel Just North of Nowhere in 2007 and Drink for the Thirst to Come , a collection of short fiction, appeared four years later. Santoro was known as the “Vincent Price of Podcasts” for his award-winning Tales to Terrify series, and during the 1990s he wrote a Weekender section on film for the Chicago Sun-Times .

American author, radio journalist and Wiccan high priestess Margot Adler, whose books include the non-fiction study Vampires Are Us: Understanding Our Love Affair with the Immortal Dark Side (2014), died of cancer on July 28, aged 68. In 1972, Adler founded the Hour of the Wolf radio show, devoted to SF, fantasy and related fields. As a correspondent for National Public Radio she interviewed J.K. Rowling for the first time on American radio, and her best known book is the neo-paganism study Drawing Down the Moon: Witches, Druids, Goddess-Worshippers, and Other Pagans in America Today (1979).

Italian film composer Giorgio Gaslinidied on July 29, aged 84. His credits include Night of the Devils , So Sweet So Dead (aka The Slasher ), Five Women for the Killer , Dario Argento’s Deep Red and the TV series La porta sul buio (Door Into Darkness).

Indian-born British journalist and espionage author [Harry] Chapman Pincherdied on August 5, aged 100. He had suffered a small stroke seven weeks earlier. He joined the Daily Express in 1946, and worked for the newspaper for thirty years reporting on science and defence. His books include the SF novel Not With a Bang (1965), while The Giantkiller , The Penthouse Conspiracy , The Eye of the Tornado and One Dog and Her Man by Dido contain genre elements.

American literary agent and anthologist Kirby McCauleydied of renal failure on August 30, aged 72. He had been suffering from diabetes. In the 1980s he famously represented such soon-to-be-Big Names as Stephen King, Peter Straub, George R.R. Martin, Roger Zelazny and others, including many of the older pulp authors. He edited the horror anthologies Night Chills and the World Fantasy Award-winning Frights and Dark Forces . McCauley helped found, and chaired, the first World Fantasy Convention in 1975 in Providence, Rhode Island. He received the Special Convention Award at World Fantasy in 1979.

American comics artist Stan Goldbergwho, in the 1960s, created the original colour designs for Spider-Man, the Hulk and the Fantastic Four, died on August 31, aged 82.

Frederic Mullally, British author, journalist and publicist (clients included Frank Sinatra and Audrey Hepburn), died on September 7, aged 96. Amongst his books is the 1975 alternate-history novel Hitler Has Won . Mullally was married to actress Rosemary Nicols (TV’s Department S ).

British scriptwriter Jane Bakerdied on September 8. With her husband Pip she scripted the movie Captain Nemo and the Underwater City , along with additional scenes and dialogue for Night of the Big Heat (aka Island of the Burning Damned , starring Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing). For TV the couple also worked on Doctor Who , creating the character of renegade female Time Lord “The Rani” (memorably portrayed by Kate O’Mara), as well as an episode of Space: 1999 . The pair also co-wrote the Doctor Who novelisations Mark of the Rani , Ultimate Foe , Time and the Rani and Terror of the Vervoids , along with the Doctor Who “find your fate” book, Race Against Time .

British author Graham[William] Joycedied of aggressive lymphoma on September 9, aged 59. He made his debut in 1991 with the novel Dreamside , and followed it up with the British Fantasy Award-winning Dark Sister , Requiem , The Tooth Fairy , The Stormwatcher , Memoirs of a Master Builder (as by “William Heaney”), Some Kind of Fairy Tale and the World Fantasy Award-winning The Limits of Enchantment , along with House of Lost Dreams , Spiderbite , Indigo , Smoking Poppy , How to Make Friends with Demons, The Silent Land and The Year of the Ladybird (aka The Ghost in the Electric Blue Suit ). Joyce’s books for teens include TWOC , Do the Creepy Thing (aka The Exchange ), Three Way to Snog an Alien and The Devil’s Ladder . His short fiction was collected in Partial Eclipse and Other Stories and the retrospective 25 Years in the Word Mines from PS Publishing, and he had stories in The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror #4, #12, #13 and #14.

American screenwriter [Allison] Sam(uel) Halldied on September 26, aged 93. He was a head writer on the daily Gothic soap opera Dark Shadows (1967-71) and also wrote the spin-off movies House of Dark Shadows and Night of Dark Shadows . Hall co-scripted (with producer Dan Curtis) the pilot for Dead of Night: A Darkness in Blaisedon (1969), which starred Kerwin Mathews as psychic investigator “Jonathan Fletcher”, and he wrote the TV movies Frankenstein (1973) and The Two Deaths of Sean Doolittle . He was married to Dark Shadows star Grayson Hall (who died in 1985) and was a creative consultant during the show’s brief revival in the early 1990s.

Nebula Award-winning American short story writer Eugie Fosterdied of respiratory failure on September 27, aged 42. She had been diagnosed with a cancer in her sinuses a year earlier. A director of Dragon*Con and editor of their newsletter, The Daily Dragon , her stories appeared in numerous magazines and anthologies, including A Vampire Quintet: Five Sinister and Seductive Vampire Stories , and her short fiction was collected in Returning My Sister’s Face (2009).

Claire Walsh(Claire Churchill), the long-time companion of author J.G. Ballard, died on October 6, aged 73. A well-known figure in the London literary and artistic world during the 1960s and ‘70s, she was introduced to Ballard in 1967 by Michael Moorcock and acted as a sounding-board for the writer’s ideas long before he started writing them down. Walsh worked as a publicity manager for Studio Vista, Michael Joseph, Gollancz, Allen Lane and other publishers.