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Philip Jose Farmer Dies at Age 91
 Science fiction legend Philip Jose Farmer has passed away at age 91. The following message was left on his official website.
Philip José Farmer passed away peacefully in his sleep this morning.
He will be missed greatly by his wife Bette, his children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren, friends and countless fans around the world.
January 26, 1918 - February 25, 2009. R.I.P.
We love you Phil.
The official website also contains a great roundup of obits and reactions to Farmer's passing from around the Web including Locus, SFScope and The Stranger. Author Neil Gaiman also tweeted the following message: "Was just told that Philip Jose Farmer died. He was 91, wrote many wonderful things. A worldbuilder, of influence and some real magic. Sigh."
The AP, Guardian, New York Times and CNN have posted obits.
RIP, Philip Joes Farmer.
Posted on February 26, 2009
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Illustrator Edward D. Cartier Dies
Illustrator Edward D. Cartier has died at age 94 reports the Chicago Tribune. Some of Cartier's extensive illustration credits include hundreds The Shadow magazine (see here) and illustrations for novels by Robert A. Heinlein and Theodore Sturgeon.
Mr. Cartier, whose nickname was "Edd," is considered the definitive illustrator of The Shadow and Unknown magazines, and illustrated extensively for numerous publications, including Astounding Science Fiction, Doc Savage, Other Worlds and Red Dragon Comics.
His pulp fiction illustrations of the 1930s through the 1950s and his art appeared in works by authors Robert A. Heinlein and Theodore Sturgeon.
Cartier was also an infantryman and heavy machine gunner in World War II and earned a earned a Purple Heart and Bronze Star. You can read more obits here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here.
Posted on January 5, 2009
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Don S. Davis is Dead at 65
Don Davis, who played Major General George Hammond on Stargate SG-1, has died
of a heart attack. He was 65. Don's representative and his wife, Ruby Fleming-Davis sent this message to fans:
Dear Fans and Friends of Don S. Davis,
So many of you have been touched by not only the work and art of Don S. Davis, but by the man himself, who always took the time to be with you at the appearances he loved, that it is with a tremendous sense of loss I must share with you that Don passed away from a massive heart attack on Sunday morning, June 29th.
On behalf of his family and wife, Ruby, we thank you for your prayers and condolences. A family memorial where Don's ashes will be scattered in the ocean will take place in a few weeks, and should you wish to, please make a donation to the American Heart Association in Don's memory.
Our condolences to his family and friends.
Posted on July 1, 2008
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Special Effects Master Stan Winston Dead at 62
Special effects and makeup wizard Stan Winston has died.
From The Terminator movies to Iron Man, Stan Winston made the magic that make movies magic.
The Oscar-winning visual-effects and makeup guru died Sunday of multiple myeloma at his Malibu home. He was 62, and had been battling the plasma cancer for seven years.
Long Hollywood's go-to creator of creatures great and occasionally frightening, Winston won four Oscars for his wizardry on Jurassic Park, Aliens and Terminator 2: Judgment Day, which earned him two statuettes, one for makeup and one for visual effects. He was nominated a total of 10 times.
His handiwork can be seen in the current summer hits Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, You Don't Mess With the Zohan and Iron Man, for which Winston's namesake studio built the hero's high-tech armored suits.
Stan Winston Studio is also set to work on the upcoming Terminator 4, the big-screen, live-action G.I. Joe and James Cameron's Avatar.
Although Winston tended to work on films that were heavy on special effects, he maintained his life's work was about building characters, not gadgets.
"I don't do special effects. I create characters, and I use the tools of special effects necessary to do it," Winston told the BBC in 2003.
He will be missed. We send our heartfelt condolences to his family and friends.
Posted on June 16, 2008
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Sir Arthur Clarke Has Died
Science fiction author Sir Arthur C. Clarke has died. He was 90.
Arthur C. Clarke, a visionary science fiction writer who co-wrote "2001: A Space Odyssey" and won worldwide acclaim with more than 100 books on space, science and the future, died Wednesday, an aide said. He was 90.
Clarke, who had battled debilitating post-polio syndrome since the 1960s, died at 1:30 a.m. in his adopted home of Sri Lanka after suffering breathing problems, aide Rohan De Silva said.
Co-author with Stanley Kubrick of Kubrick's film "2001: A Space Odyssey," Clarke was regarded as far more than a science fiction writer.
He was credited with the concept of communications satellites in 1945, decades before they became a reality. Geosynchronous orbits, which keep satellites in a fixed position relative to the ground, are called Clarke orbits.
He joined American broadcaster Walter Cronkite as commentator on the U.S. Apollo moonshots in the late 1960s.
*****
But it was his writing that shot him to his greatest fame and that gave him the greatest fulfillment.
"Sometimes I am asked how I would like to be remembered," Clarke said recently. "I have had a diverse career as a writer, underwater explorer and space promoter. Of all these I would like to be remembered as a writer."
From 1950, he began a prolific output of both fiction and non-fiction, sometimes publishing three books in a year. He published his best-selling "3001: The Final Odyssey" when he was 79.
Some of his best-known books are "Childhood's End," 1953; "The City and The Stars," 1956, "The Nine Billion Names of God," 1967; "Rendezvous with Rama," 1973; "Imperial Earth," 1975; and "The Songs of Distant Earth," 1986.
Clarke was so much more than a brilliant author. So many great scientists and astronauts have said they pursued their careers because of Clarke's work. It is a great loss.
Posted on March 18, 2008
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Co-Creator of Dungeons and Dragons Gary Gygax Dead At 69
Gary Gygax the c0-creator of Dungeons and Dragons has died at the age of 69. Wired reports:
Gary Gygax, one of the co-creators of the Dungeons & Dragons role-playing game, died Tuesday morning at his home in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, according to Stephen Chenault, CEO of Troll Lord Games.
Gygax designed the original D&D game with Dave Arneson in 1974, and went on to create the Dangerous Journeys and Lejendary Adventure RPGs, as well as a number of board games. He also wrote several fantasy novels.
"I don't think I've really grokked it yet," said Mike Mearls, the lead developer of the upcoming 4th edition of Dungeons and Dragons. "He was like the cool uncle that every gamer had. He shaped an entire generation of gamers."
Gygax was not directly involved with Dungeons & Dragons after 1985, and his relationship with his former company, TSR Inc., was not friendly at first. The company sued him over his competing game Dangerous Journeys, and in a 2004 interview with GameSpy he stated that he was "pleased to say" that he thought the cost of the suit and settlement drove TSR to sell the rights to the game.
While reportedly unimpressed with the current edition of the Dungeons and Dragons game, he created adventures and settings that could be used with it, which were published by Troll Lord Games.
Gygax went well beyond the role of game developer and became an icon to gamers, appearing as himself in episodes of Futurama and Code Monkeys and participating in discussions on roleplaying-related message boards.
Fans can post remembrances and and thoughts about
Gygax on the Troll Lords
message boards. Fans are planning a massive day of D&D in his honor, so check the boards for more details.
Posted on March 4, 2008
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Dark Knight's Heath Ledger is Dead at 28
Actor Heath Ledger who is playing the Joker in the upcoming Batman film was found dead today in his New York apartment, apparently from an overdose of both prescription and nonprescription sleeping pills. Various media reports say he has battled substance abuse for some time.
In this interview
from The New York Times two months ago, there are some clues as to his mental state. He is discussing his roles in the Bob Dylan biopic and in The Dark Knight and the stress the roles caused him.
It all tied him in knots. "I stressed out a little too much," Mr. Ledger said.
He tends to do that. He is here in London filming the latest episode of the Batman franchise, The Dark Knight. (Mr. Bale, as it happens, plays Batman; Mr. Ledger plays the Joker.) It is a physically and mentally draining role - his Joker is a "psychopathic, mass-murdering, schizophrenic clown with zero empathy" he said cheerfully - and, as often happens when he throws himself into a part, he is not sleeping much.
"Last week I probably slept an average of two hours a night," he said. "I couldn't stop thinking. My body was exhausted, and my mind was still going." One night he took an Ambien, which failed to work. He took a second one and fell into a stupor, only to wake up an hour later, his mind still racing.
Even as he spoke, Mr. Ledger was hard-pressed to keep still. He got up and poured more coffee. He stepped outside into the courtyard and smoked a cigarette. He shook his hair out from under its hood, put a rubber band around it, took out the rubber band, put on a hat, took off the hat, put the hood back up. He went outside and had another cigarette. Polite and charming, he nonetheless gave off the sense that the last thing he wanted to do was delve deep into himself for public consumption. "It can be a little distressing to have to overintellectualize yourself," is how he put it, a little apologetically.
Conducting a tour of the house, which he is renting for a few months, he made wry remarks about the art. One painting depicts a crowd of creatures who appear to be in hell, but who seem determined to extract as much sexual pleasure as they can from their eternity of free time; Mr. Ledger has turned another one around and hung it upside down, to no apparent ill advantage.
Heath was only 28 years old; he has a two year-old little girl named Matilda. Matilda's mother is actress Michelle Williams, with whom Heath was involved with for three years. The couple broke up in September, 2007. What a terrible tragedy for his family.
Posted on January 22, 2008
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Robert Jordan Dead at 58
 James Oliver Rigney Jr.,who wrote the bestselling Wheel of Time epic fantasy series under the name Robert Jordan, has died
at the age of 58. He was suffering from a rare blood disorder, primary amyloidosis with cardiomyopathy. The disease eventually caused his heart to fail.
"Few people have managed to imagine a world the way that Robert Jordan did," Wendy Bradley, editor of the science-fiction magazine Farthing told The Times. "That was a great strength of his writing. He was trying to tell a story on a heroic scale, and he was good -- he had the same grip on storytelling that J.K. Rowling has."
More than 30 million copies of the books have been sold and the series has been translated into about two dozen languages, according to Tor, his New York publisher. By the 1990s, Rigney had come to dominate the fantasy genre spawned by J.R.R. Tolkien and "The Lord of the Rings."
The "Wheel" novels tell the story of Rand al'Thor, who heroically battles evil in a mythical land and was modeled on the Norse god of justice. The increasing popularity of the fantasy genre was reflected in reader fascination with the escapist tale, and fans at book signings could range in age from their early teens to their 80s.
When asked to describe what fueled the series' incredibly complicated plot lines, Rigney often replied by saying, "What if somebody came up to this average person on the street and said, 'You are the savior of humanity.' What do you do with that?"
He had a secretary whose main job was to keep the facts straight in the elaborate world he created that spanned 11 books and almost 7,420 pages. Some critics questioned his wordiness, yet he could sum up the series' driving force in three words: "Life changes. Deal."
The series has inspired a thriving online community with hundreds of Internet sites devoted to it. Among the largest is TarValon.net, which has several thousand members, said Melissa Craib, chief executive officer of the Los Angeles-based site.
"An amazing community has been built around what he has created," Craib told The Times. "His thoughts and his ideas about honor and service and making it through difficult times are exceptionally inspiring to many people. It draws together people who want to embody these qualities."
On his personal blog at www.dragonmount.com, Rigney updated fans on his health and reassured them that he was working on "A Memory of Light," the 12th and last novel in the "Wheel" series. He reportedly left behind detailed notes on the novel and had shared the end of the story with his wife, Harriet, who was his editor, and a cousin.
"I am quite confident that the series will be finished," Craib said. "This is important to his legacy."
His loss will be felt greatly in the fantasy and sf communities: he will be greatly missed.
You can visit Jim's blog page here. You can see his website, maintained by his publisher Tor,
here.
Posted on September 19, 2007
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