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Today Steve Jobs' death has us all reflecting on how a technology entrepreneur could have changed our lives so much, leaving us a world where we can't imagine daily life without Apple products. Partly that was because Jobs was never just a technologist. He always seemed to start with a social or cultural question, and tried to answer it with technology. That's why we have to remember Jobs not just as a technology innovator, but as a culture producer who, among other things, ran the innovative movie studio Pixar. More »
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Actor Cliff Robertson passed away yesterday at the age of 88. Robertson was famous for his roles as Uncle Ben in Sam Raimi's Spider-Man trilogy and as the titular character in Charly, the film adaptation of Flowers for Algernon. Robertson won the 1968 Best Actor Academy Award for this latter performance. More »
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Prolific comic book illustrator Gene Colan — who was best known for his work on Tomb of Dracula and Howard the Duck and co-creating the vampire hunter Blade — died late Thursday after complications from cancer and liver ailments. More »
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Joel Rosenberg, who died yesterday, was a civil libertarian who wrote about liberty in his fantasy novels. For example, in his first novel The Sleeping Dragon, a group of students travel to a magical world and work to end slavery. More »
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Actor Jeff Conaway, who was best known among scifi fans for his role as the affable Babylon 5 security officer Zack Allan (and the star of the 1983 fantasy series Wizards and Warriors), died yesterday at the age of 60. More »
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One of the twentieth century's greatest science fiction authors, Joanna Russ, died peacefully this morning after suffering a series of strokes. Controversial, political, poetic, and full of crazy action, Russ' work has seduced and troubled readers for decades. More »
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Prolific fantasy author Diana Wynne Jones has passed away at the age of 76. She had been battling lung cancer for the past two years. More »
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Dwayne McDuffie's work is a huge reason why many of us still care about superheroes, and comics generally. He reportedly died today, of unknown causes. More »
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Tura Satana, the shapely actress, exotic dancer, and martial artist known for her roles in Russ Meyers' cult classic Faster Pussycat! Kill! Kill! and the grindhouse science fiction flick Astro Zombies, died last Friday of heart failure. Satana was famous for her burlesque-ready frame (link NSFW) — which won her many an admirer, including one-time paramour Elvis Presley — and her penchant for playing deadly femme fatales onscreen. According to Ms. Satana's manager Siouxzan Perry, she died at 72. More »
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Germ Books, the Philadelphia store specializing in science fiction, UFO books and "theories science doesn't like," is going under at the end of the month. The good news: They're having a 50 percent sale until then. [via Wred Fright] More »
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Leslie Nielsen, who died last night, helped to pioneer the science fiction genre on screen when he starred in Forbidden Planet. And then he helped lampoon that genre in countless spoof movies, including 2001: A Space Travesty. More »
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Irvin Kershner, director of the best Star Wars film, has died at 87 in LA. Kershner also directed such genre hits as the Bond flick Never Say Never Again and Robocop 2, and the cult favorite TV series Seaquest DSV. More »
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Ingrid Pitt survived a Nazi Concentration Camp and evaded the Communist police to become one of Britain's most beloved horror stars, reigning over Hammer films like The Vampire Lovers. She also rocked Doctor Who. She died last night, aged 73. More »
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Dino De Laurentiis, producer of Barbarella, Army of Darkness, Dune and many other classics, passed away in Los Angeles Thursday morning. He was 91. More »
]]> http://io9.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5687656&view=rss&microfeed=true Yoshinobu Nishizaki, the 75-year-old producer of the Space Battleship Yamato animated series, marketed in the United States as Star Blazers, has died. The producer, whose real name was Hirofumi Nishizaki, reportedly fell from the steamship Yamato, which was anchored off the coast of Tokyo's Chichijima Island before its trial voyage. He was wearing a wetsuit, and police believe he was attempting to get off the 485-ton vessel to swim. Nishizaki will be missed. [Mainichi Daily] More »
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Bob Guccione, best known as the publisher of Penthouse, died last week at 79. To scifi fans, Guccione will always be known as the guy who bankrolled Kathy Keeton's Omni magazine. More »
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Troubled Battlestar Galactica spinoff Caprica has been nuked by Syfy. Not only will the show not be getting a second season, the remaining episodes of this season won't be aired until next year. More »
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Benoit Mandelbrot, who died last week at 85, was to math what Carl Sagan was to astrophysics. He wasn't just a researcher; he popularized scientific thought. And he's best known for bringing fractal mathematics to the masses. More »
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Television lost one of its heroes last night, with the death of Stephen J. Cannell. Among his many creations was The Greatest American Hero, the story of a flawed superhero making it up as he goes along. He'll be missed. More »
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British novelist Edwin Charles Tubb died aged 91 in England last Friday, on the same day that his final novel, the dystopian epic To Dream Again, was accepted for publication in 2011. His contributions to the genre were immense. More »
]]> http://io9.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5639404&view=rss&microfeed=true Former book editor Larry Ashmead died aged 78 on Friday. During his 43-year career in publishing, he edited more than 40 books by Isaac Asimov. According to AFP, he also rescued Simon Winchester's account of the creation of the Oxford English Dictionary, The Professor and the Madman from the "garbage bin" after everyone else had turned it down. He also published a book of his own in 2007, Bertha Venation And Hundreds of Other Funny Names of Real People, which included names like Ida Slaptor. He died in a Hudson, NY hospital after a brief illness. [AFP] More »
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Japanese animation has lost one of its giants. Satoshi Kon, director of Paprika and creator of Paranoia Agent, has apparently died at age 47. Gainax employee Takeda Yasuhiro tweeted the news a short time ago, and it was confirmed by Madhouse's Masao Maruyama via the Otakon committee. Paprika, Kon's lush exploration of dreams, was clearly an inspiration for Christopher Nolan's Inception. Check out this trailer mashup that came out a while ago: More »
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Jack Horkheimer, the vivacious host of the PBS astronomy program Star Gazer/Star Hustler and the director of the Miami Museum of Science, died of respiratory disease last Friday. He was 72. Here, AD Jameson of Big Other remembers Horkheimer. More »
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James P. Hogan, author of Inherit The Stars and 30 other hard science fiction novels, passed away yesterday. He talked in a 2004 interview about how 2001: A Space Odyssey made him a science fiction author... because it frustrated him. More »
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The illustrator who made his bones illustrating classic titles like Creepy and Eerie before continuing Alex Raymond's genre-defining work on Flash Gordon and bringing Star Wars to comics has died at 79, leaving a vibrant legacy. More »
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Frank Frazetta passed away earlier today. The creator of many of the genre's most iconic barbarians, warriors and monsters, not to mention Battlestar Galactica and Buck Rogers art, Frazetta's influence will go on forever. More »
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Sad, sad news. Child star and vampire hunter Corey Haim has died from an apparent drug overdose last night in California. We'll never forget our favorite of "The Coreys," from his multiple Lost Boys moments to his Crank 2 cameo. More »
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This past Sunday, Kage Baker lost her year-long battle with cancer. We science-fiction readers have lost a brilliant author and a dear friend. More »
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Beloved movie psychic, Zelda Rubinstein, passed away Wednesday Jan. 27th. Best known for her work as Tangina Barrons from the Poltergeist movies, Zelda was the spark that made that franchise eternal. Hope to see you on the other side. More »
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Strike first, ask questions later: that's what happened to this little white creature in Panama. A pack of children beat this mysterious creature to death, then tossed it into a river. Now we'll never know where the ring is. More »
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Phyllis Gotlieb was a struggling poet, battling writers block in the 1950s, when her husband suggested she try her hand at science fiction. The results led to a series of novels about telepathic societies and star-cats, winning Canada's highest award. More »
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With Michael Jackson dead, we're at the end of an era. But even though we have to hustle into the future without him, nobody will ever forget Jackson's strangely brilliant contributions to science fiction and fantasy. More »
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Now that J.G. Ballard is gone, people are realizing just what a breathtaking storytelling mind we've lost. Luckily, two Ballard short stories are online, and one of them is his autobiography. Sort of. More »
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In honor of the great Bea Arthur, who passed this weekend, we thought it only right to post a Star Wars Cantina singalong from the Star Wars Holiday Special. You will be missed, Bea. More »
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One of science fiction's most original voices passed away today. Philip José Farmer, author of the Riverworld and World Of Tiers series, is also known for writing as Kurt Vonnegut's fictional author Kilgore Trout. More »
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It's the third anniversary of Octavia Butler's death, and blogger ZeroAtTheBone is linking to some writing about her, as well as her own essays. My favorite is Butler's essay about a world of pure empathy. More »
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Actor Pat Hingle died this weekend, aged 84. As many news reports have pointed out, his career included a four-movie run as Commissioner Gordon, from 1989's Batman to 1997's Batman And Robin, but he also starred in many other SF projects, including episodes of Amazing Stories, Six Million Dollar Man, The Twilight Zone and, my personal favorite, the movie Muppets In Space. He died at home on Saturday evening. [Associated Press] More »
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Eartha Kitt, who may be the greatest Catwoman of them all, died today aged 81. Even competing with Julie Newmar, she managed to make the role her own and captivate a generation. She'll be missed. More »
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It's the news that we've been hoping we'd never have to share - even though we saw it coming for weeks. Sadly, ABC has canceled Pushing Daisies. The network has made no official announcement about the series' end, relying instead on boilerplate comments that no final decision has been made. But show creator Bryan Fuller has come clean about the show's lack of future... and where we may see Ned, Chuck and everyone else from the Pie Hole next. More »
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Best known for five-minutes-into-the-future science thrillers like Jurassic Park and Andromeda Strain, biogeek author Michael Crichton has died. The 66-year-old, who was also behind major media hits like medico-drama ER, authored several works of science fiction such as Congo, Sphere, Next, and underrated cyborg revolt movie Westworld. He had been struggling privately with cancer for several years, his family revealed. More »
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