Darwyn Cooke, the Eisner-winning writer and artist of comics, is dead at 53. Cooke is best-remembered for his work with DC, including the brilliant retro-series, The New Frontier.
Donations may be made to the Canadian Cancer Society and the Hero Initiative.
Visual Effects genius and the man behind the effects of Star Trek: The Next Generation and Deep Space Nine, Gary Hutzel, has passed away at age 60. Mr. Hutzel, who was nominated for 20 Emmy awards and won four, was also the FX lead for the Battlestar Galactica reboot, Caprica, and Defiance.
In other news, the man who built R2-D2, Tony Dyson has also died. After his work on Star Wars, Mr. Dyson set up two clubs in the UK to allow people to build their own R2 units. Builders from those clubs were the ones that built the R2-D2 prop used in last year’s The Force Awakens.
The literary world lost two significant figures today, Nelle Harper Lee, 89 and Umberto Eco, 84. While neither were authors of SF or fantasy per se, both influenced writers in all fields, and Eco’s fiction crossed boundaries of reality and his non-fiction examined (among many other topics) the cultural implications of superheroes.
For the second time this week, a significant artist falls to cancer at age 69. This time, it was Alan Rickman, costar in the Harry Potter franchise, the Metatron from Dogma, Alexander Dane in Galaxy Quest, and classic villain Hans Gruber from the greatest Christmas movie ever made, Die Hard.
The influential British musician and pop-icon fell to cancer. His music often contained SF themes and references, “Space Oddity” was performed by astronaut Chris Hadfield from the ISS, and Bowie himself played an alien in The Man Who Fell to Earth (and many times on stage, as Ziggy Stardust).
George Barris has died at the age of 89. The car designer created the Munsters Koach (sort of), The Car, and many others, but was most famous for the 1966 Batmobile. He remained active until his death, often appearing at conventions and car shows.
One of the most influential people in horror is now gone. Director and writer Wes Craven died on August 30, 2015 from brain cancer.
The genesis of many a sleepless night, Craven was the man behind the original Nightmare on Elm Street and the Scream series.
Rest in Peace, Wes.
No really, I mean that.
James Horner, one of the most prolific film composers died in a plane crash yesterday at the age of 61. His credits are too numerous to list here, but he has been a major fixture in genre films for decades. He scored two Star Trek films (II and III), was a frequent collaborator with James Cameron (Aliens, Titanic, Avatar), and scored many of the Don Bluth animated films (An American Tale, The Land Before Time, etc).
Horner was nominated for ten Academy Awards and won twice (both for Titanic, Best Score and Best Song). How influential is he? He was the 35th person added to the IMDB database back in the 90’s and his score for Titanic is the best selling orchestral film soundtrack of all time.
Some of James Horner’s work sampled below.
The Hollywood Reporter, among other sites, is reporting that actor, WWII veteran, and musician Sir Christopher Lee has passed away at the age of 94.
It is, frankly, hard to tell what he’ll be best known for playing. Maybe it’ll be as Count Dracula in Hammer’s horror films. Maybe it’ll be as Saruman in the Lord of the Rings and Hobbit trilogies. Maybe it will be for his performance in the original The Wicker Man. No matter what particular roles he’ll be remembered for – he was one of film’s most iconic actors, and like other horror legends like Boris Karloff and Vincent Price, his work will stand the test of time long after his passing.
Grace Lee Whitney, best known for her role as Yeoman Rand in the original Star Trek series, died of natural causes on Friday, May 1 at her home in Coarsegold, California.