Betty Ballantine (b. Elizabeth Jones, 1919) died on February 12. Ballantine introduced paperbacks to the United States and co-founded Bantam Books in 1945 with her husband Ian. Later on, the publishing company launched the Ballantine Adult Fantasy line and then started the imprint, Del Rey for science fiction and fantasy in 1977. In 1953, Ballantine […]
Author Carol Emshwiller (b.Carol Fries, April 12, 1921) died on February 2nd, 2019. Ms. Emshwiller began publishing science fiction in 1954, with the story “Built for Pleasure.” Emshwiller built a reputation as a short fiction author and Ursula Le Guin said that she had “one of the strongest, most complex, most consistently feminist voices in fiction.” […]
K.C. Ball suffered a fatal heart attack on August 26. Ball attended the Clarion West Writers Workshop in 2010 and Launch Pad in 2011. She served as the publisher and editor of 10Flash Quarterly, an on-line flash fiction magazine. She also won the Speculative Literature Foundation Older Writer Award. In 2012, her short fiction appeared in the collection […]
Grand Master Harlan Ellison (b.1934) died on June 28, 2018. Ellison began his professional career in 1956 with the publication of the short story “Glowworm” in Infinity Science Fiction. Prior to that time, he was active in science fiction fandom. During the mid 1950s, Ellison lived in New York and produced a prodigious amount of short fiction […]
Gardner Dozois (b. 1947) died on May 27, 2018. Dozois won fifteen Hugo Awards for his editing and back-to-back Nebula Awards for his short stories “The Peacemaker” and “Morning Child.” He had a long career as an author and was one of the most influential editors the field has seen, publishing Year’s Best anthologies for more […]
Mary Rosenblum (b.1952) was killed on March 11 when the small plane she was piloting crashed near Battle Ground, Washington. Rosenblum’s debut novel, The Drylands, received the Compton Crook Award and was followed up by novels Chimera, The Stone Garden, Water Rites, and Horizons. Beginning in 1999, she also began publishing mysteries under her maiden […]
Kate Wilhelm (b.1928) died on March 8. Wilhelm was one of the founders of SFWA. Two years ago, SFWA named the Kate Wilhelm Solstice Award in her honor. Wilhelm began publishing science fiction in 1956 with her short story “The Pint-Sized Genie” and published her first science fiction novel, The Clone, co-written with Theodore L. Thomas, in […]
Ursula K. Le Guin (b.1929) died on January 22. Le Guin was named a Damon Knight Grand Master by the SFWA in 2003. Le Guin’s wrote for all ages and her Earthsea cycle, beginning with The Wizard of Earthsea, introduced many readers to fantasy and the wizard Ged. She wrote novels such as The Left […]
Author Julian May (b.1931) died on October 17. May entered fandom in her late teens and published the fanzine Interim Newsletter. Her first professional sale, “Dune Roller,” appeared in Astounding in 1951, including original illustrations by May. In 1952, she chaired the TASFIC in Chicago, becoming the first woman to chair a Worldcon.
Dr. Yoji Kondo, known to science fiction readers as Eric Kotani, passed away yesterday at the age of 84. Yoji Kondo was an astrophysicist at NASA/GSFC, where he served as Director of the NASA International Ultraviolet Explorer (IUE) satellite observatory, among other prestigious appointments, and had formerly served as the head of the astrophysics laboratory […]
When a masked swordswoman appears out of thin air, demanding “the Crystal Key,” a trail of dark secrets leads Will, Case, and Fader to a mysterious world.
Ash Bishop is a lifetime reader and a lifetime nerd, loving all things science fiction and fantasy. He has been a high school English teacher, and worked in the video game industry, as well as in educational app development. He lives in Southern CA.
