Jean Giraud, AKA Moebius
(1938-2012)
Legendary French artist Jean Henri Gaston Giraud, AKA Moebius, 73, died on March 10, 2012, reportedly after a long bout with cancer.
Giraud’s work can be found in films, comics, books, and more. Over his 50-plus year career, he won a large number of awards, and in 2011 was inducted into the SF Hall of Fame. His most well-known comic creation was the Western anti-hero Blueberry, first appearing in 1963 in France. He and Stan Lee scripted a two-part miniseries Silver Surfer, winning an Eisner Award in 1989. Giraud was also instrumental in concept art and design for multiple SF films, including Alien, Tron, The Abyss, and The Fifth Element. He was one of the creaters of film Time Masters.
Giraud was born in the Paris suburb of Nogent-sur-Marne in 1938.
Ralph McQuarrie (1929-2012)
Artist Ralph McQuarrie, 82, died March 3, 2012 in Berkeley CA of complications from Parkinson’s disease.
McQuarrie was best known as the conceptual designer and illustrator who created the look of the original Star Wars trilogy; he also worked on the first Battlestar Galactica TV show and the films E.T. and Cocoon, winning an Academy Award for best visual effects for the latter.
Ralph Angus McQuarrie was born June 13, 1929 in Gary IN, and grew up on a farm near Billings MT. He served in the Army during the Korean War. In the ’60s he moved to California, where he worked as an illustrator for a dentistry company and for Boeing while he illustrated movie posters on the side.
Director George Lucas liked McQuarrie’s work, and in 1975 commissioned McQuarrie to illustrate numerous scenes from the Star Wars script. McQuarrie designed the look of numerous iconic figures like Darth Vader, Chewbacca, the droids, and many of the film’s locations. He also worked onThe Empire Strikes Back (where he acted in a small, uncredited role) andReturn of the Jedi. He illustrated numerous Star Wars-related books, including The Illustrated Star Wars Universe, written by Kevin J. Anderson (1995).
McQuarrie is survived by Joan, his wife of 29 years.
John Christopher (1922-2012)
Christopher Samuel Youd, 89, better known by his pseudonym John Christopher, died February 3, 2012 in Bath England. As Christopher he wrote the classic SF catastrophe novel The Death of Grass (1956; in the US as No Blade of Grass, 1957), and the YA trilogy Tripods, which began in 1967.
His first publication of genre interest was poem “Dreamer” in Weird Tales(1949) as C.S. Youd, with first SF story “Christmas Tree” appearing as Christopher Youd in 1949. His story “A Few Kindred Spirits” (1965), as John Christopher, was a Nebula finalist.
First novel The Winter Swan (1949), as Christopher Youd, was fantasy, and he produced a number of non-SF works in the following years under various names.
The Twenty-Second Century (1954) collected some of his SF stories, and his first true SF novel was The Year of the Comet (1955; in the US as Planet in Peril, 1959), all as John Christopher. Other adult SF work includesThe Long Winter (1962; as The World in Winter), Sweeney’s Island(1964; as Cloud and Silver in the UK), The Possessors (1965), A Wrinkle in the Skin (1965; as The Ragged Edge in the US, 1966), The Little People (1966), Pendulum (1968), and Bad Dream (2003).
He turned to children’s SF and fantasy with The White Mountains (1967), beginning the Tripods series, which also includes The City of Gold and Lead (1967), The Pool of Fire (1968), and prequel When the Tripods Came (1988). The television version of The Tripods was jointly produced by the BBC in the United Kingdom and the Seven Network in Australia. The music soundtrack was written by Ken Freeman. Series one of The Tripods, broadcast in 1984, which had 13 half-hour episodes written by the well-known author of many radio plays Alick Rowe, covers the first book, The White Mountains; the 12-episode second series (1985) covers The City of Gold and Lead. Although a television script had been written for the third series, it never went into production.
The first series was released on both VHS and DVD. The BBC released Tripods - The Complete Series 1 & 2 on DVD in March 2009.
The series was adapted for TV by the BBC Christopher also wrote The Prince in Waiting series, the Fireball series, and numerous standalones for children.
Born April 16, 1922 in Huyton, Lancaster, Lancashire, Youd attended Peter Symonds’ School in Winchester, Hampshire before serving in the Royal Corps of Signals from 1941-46. He became a full-time writer in 1958.
Author Mark Bourne, 50, died Saturday February 25, 2012 at home from what appears to have been a cardiac event.
Born in July 10, 1961, Bourne published short fiction in Asimov’s Science Fiction, The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Realms of Fantasy, and several anthologies. He worked with Ray Bradbury to create adaptations of Bradbury’s stories for planetarium performance.
He is survived by his wife, Elizabeth Lawhead Bourne.
Literary agent, Jack Scovil, died February 23, 2012 after a brief illness.
An agent for over 40 years, Scovil began his career at the Scott Meredith Agency, where he worked for more than 20 years. In 1992, he formed the Scovil Chichak Galen Literary Agency (now the Scovil Galen Ghosh Agency) with two other Scott Meredith veterans. He worked with such authors as Norman Mailer, Carl Sagan, Arthur C. Clarke, Walter Anderson, Edward Klein, Larry Smith, Margaret Truman, James Brady, and many others. He was also a founding Advisory Board member of the M.F.A. low-residency writing program at Wilkes University.
