Stephen (ed.) - The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror 18

French screenwriter and director Gérard Brachdied of cancer on September 9th, aged 79. Best known for his many collaborations with director Roman Polanski (including Repulsion, Cul-de-sac, Dance of the Vampires, What? and The Tenant ), he also scripted Bye Bye Monkey, Quest for Fire, The Name of the Rose and Renegade .

American horror author and editor Charles L.(Lewis) Grantdied of a heart attack in front of the television on September 15th, aged 64. He had been suffering from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and emphysema from some years, and had returned from a care facility ten days earlier to his home in New Jersey to celebrate his birthday (and that of his wife of almost twenty-five years, editor and novelist Kathryn Ptacek) on September 12th. A prolific short story writer and novelist, Grant’s career spanned more than thirty-five years. During that time he cultivated his unique style of “quiet horror” in many novels and collections, including The Curse, The Hour of the Oxrun Dead, The Sound of Midnight, The Grave, The Bloodwind, The Soft Whisper of the Dead, The Nestling, The Tea Party, The Orchard, The Pet, For Fear of the Night, In a Dark Dream, Dialing the Wind, Stunts, Something Stirs, Jackals, The Black Carousel, Tales from the Nightside, A Glow of Candles and Nightmare Seasons . More recent titles include the first two X Files novelisations, Goblin and Whirlwind , the “Millennium Quartet” inspired by the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, and the “Black Oak” series about a security team of paranormal investigators. Grant also published a variety of books under the pseudonyms “Felicia Andrews”, “Deborah Lewis”, “Geoffrey Marsh”, “Lionel Fenn”, “Steven Charles” and “Simon Lake”. As an editor he was responsible for two dozen anthologies, including the influential Shadows series (twelve volumes) along with Nightmares, Midnight, After Midnight, Greystone Bay, Doom City, The Dodd Mead Gallery of Horror, Night Visions: Dead Image and Gothic Ghosts (with Wendy Webb). He won three World Fantasy Awards and two Nebulas for his fiction. A recipient of the of the British Fantasy Society’s Special Award, the International Horror Guild Living Legend Award and the Horror Writers Association’s Lifetime Achievement Award, he was also named a Grand Master at the 2002 World Horror Convention.

British TV scriptwriter Peter[George Derek] Ling,best-known as the co-creator of the soap opera Crossroads , died of a heart attack on September 14th, aged 80. He wrote for Eagle comic at an early age, and his other TV credits include the children’s puppet series Whirligig and episodes of The Avengers, Sexton Blake and Doctor Who (“The Mind Robber”).

American socialite Patricia Kennedy Lawford,the sister of John and Robert Kennedy and the widow of actor Peter Lawford, died of complications from pneumonia on September 17th, aged 82. She was believed to be the last person alive to know the truth behind the mysterious suicide of Marilyn Monroe in 1962.

Author and fan Darrell C.(Coleman) Richardson(aka “D. Coleman Rich”) died after a long illness on September 19th, aged 88. He wrote more than forty books, several about the pulps that include J. Allen St. John: An Illustrated Bibliography, “King of the Pulps”: The Life and Writings of H. Bedford-Jones (with Victor A. Berch and Peter Ruber) and Those Macabre Pulps . Richardson was a co-founder of the FAX small press imprint in the 1970s and was a winner of the Big Heart Award and the Lamont Award.

British sculptor Allister Bowtelldied of cancer on September 20th, aged 66 . As well as creating the original Cybermen for Doctor Who , he also designed Rod Hull’s “Emu” and created props for Monty Python’s Flying Circus, The Goodies , Jonathan Miller’s Alice and Sir Henry at Rawlinson’s End .

Sir Malcolm[Henry] Arnolddied of a chest infection on September 23rd, aged 84. Best known as the first British composer to win an Academy Award, for his score for The Bridge Over the River Kwai , his other credits include several of the St Trinian’s movies, Hammer’s Stolen Face and Four Sided Triangle, The Sound Barrier, 1984 (1956) and Suddenly Last Summer . When the classical music establishment ignored his symphonies, he suffered a number of violent episodes and was sanctioned in a mental asylum.

American science fiction and fantasy writer and poet John M.(Milo) “Mike” Ford(aka “Michael J. Dodge”/“Milo Dennison”) died on September 25th, aged 49. He was diabetic and had undergone a kidney transplant in 2000. The winner of two World Fantasy Awards for his 1983 novel The Dragon Waiting and his narrative poem “Winter Solstice, Camelot Station”, Ford’s other books include Web of Angels, The Princes of the Air, The Scholars of Night and the Star Trek novels The Final Reflection and How Much for Just the Planet? . He was also an award-winning writer of role-playing games. Reportedly, the headline in the St. Paul Pioneer newspaper for his memorial event read: “Crafters of Sci-Fi Attend Obscure Writer’s Eulogy”.

French writer, editor and translator Michel Demuthdied of liver failure on September 30th, aged 67. He translated the French editions of Arthur C. Clarke’s 2001: A Space Odyssey and Frank Herbert’s Dune , and was the editor of Galaxie (the French edition of Galaxy ).

American biographer and book collector Virgil S. (Starbuck) Utter, Jrdied of congestive heart failure on October 3rd, aged 81. His published biographies of C. L. Moore and Henry Kuttner, Raymond King Cummings, Grant Allen and George Allen England, often in collaboration with Phil Stephensen-Payne and others.

Multiple Award-winning American SF author and fanzine writer [Arthur] Wilson“Bob” Tucker,credited with coining the term “space opera”, died after a short illness on October 6th, aged 91. His most famous fanzine was Le Zombie (1938–2001), and he was Fan Guest of Honor at the 1948 and 1967 World Science Fiction Conventions. The author of sixty short stories (in Super Science Stories, The Best of Wilson Tucker etc.) and novels ( The City in the Sea, The Long Loud Silence, The Time Masters, The Year of the Quiet Sun etc.), Tucker’s many honours include three Hugo Awards (two retro), the First Fandom Hall of Fame Award, E. E. Smith Memorial Award and SFWA Author Emeritus. He was a 2003 inductee in the Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame.

British film critic Philip Strick,a regular contributor to the BFI’s Sight & Sound magazine, died on October 7th, aged 67. He also taught Britain’s first adult SF evening class, edited the humorous SF anthology Antigrav and was the author of the 1976 study Science Fiction Movies .

Emmy Award-winning scriptwriter, producer and director Jerry Belson,co-creator of TV’s The Odd Couple (1970–75) with Garry Marshall, died of prostate cancer on October 10th, aged 68. His film credits include Student Bodies, Jekyll and Hyde . . . Together Again (which he also directed), Close Encounters of the Third Kind (un-credited) and Always .

Belgium writer Jacques Sternbergdied of lung cancer on October 11th, aged 83. He is credited with publishing the first French SF Fanzine, Le Petit Silence illustre , edited many anthologies and wrote several hundred short stories, many of them fantastic. Sternberg also scripted Alain Resnais’ 1968 film Je t’aime, je t’aime .