Actress Dimitra Arliss (b.1932) died on January 26. Arliss provided voice work for both the Iron Man and Spider-Man animated television series in the 1990s. She also appeared in the science fiction film Firefox and the fantasy film Xanadu. She may have been best know for her brief role as Salino, the hired killer, in The Sting.
Costume designer Eiko Ishioka (b.1939) died on January 21 from pancreatic cancer. Ishioka won an Academy Award for her work on Bram Stoker’s Dracula and also designed costumes for The Cell, The Fall, Immortals, and the upcoming Mirror, Mirror. She recently helped design costumes for teh Broadway show Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark. Ishioka also won a Grammy Award for the cover design of the Miles Davis album, Tutu.
Actor Nicol Williamson (b.1938) died on December 16. Williamson, who hasn’t appeared on film since 1997, is best known for his role as Merlin in John Boorman’s 1981 film Excalibur, has appeared in numerous genre films over the years, including Venom, Spawn, Return to Oz, and The Exorcist III. Williamson also took great pride in a recording of J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit. He also played Little John in Robin and Marion and Sherlock Holmes in The Seven-Per-Cent Solution.
Actor James Farentino (b.1938) died on January 24. Farentino appeared in two episodes of Rod Serling’s Night Gallery, the film The Final Countdown, and horror films Dead & Buried, The Possessed.
Norman Edmund (b.1916) died on January 16. Following World War II, Edmund began a catalog company as a reseller of military lenses rendered obsolete by the invention of radar. The company grew into Edmund Scientific, which sold telescopes, microscopes, chemistry kits, robot parts, gyroscopes, and the famous drinking bird among other scientific equipment and supplies.
Voice actor Dick Tufeld (b.1926) died on January 22. Tufeld may be best known as the voice of the robot on Lost in Space, a role he reprised for the film and in various homages to the series, such as an episode of The Simpsons. He had numerous other voice over roles, often uncredited, on shows including Space Patrol, The Amazing Spider-Man and His Friends, The Fantastic Four, The Time Tunnel, Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, and many more.
Lister Matheson (b.1949) died on January 19. Matheson served as director for Clarion East and worked at Michigan State University as a professor of English and Medieval Studies. Matheson’s works include Popular and Practical Science of Medieval England, Icons of the Middle Ages: Rulers, Writers, Rebels, and Saints, and Robin Hood: The Early Poems, 1465-1560, Texts, Contexts, and Ideology.
Author Phyllis MacLennan (b.1920) died on January 8. MacLennan worked in Military Intelligence during World War II and began publishing science fiction in 1963 with the story “A Contract in Karasthan” in Fantastic. Her only science fiction novel, Turned Loose on Irdra, was published in 1970 and she published six more stories by 1980, including “Thus Love Betrays Us ,” which was reprinted in three different “Best of” collections.
Actress Jenny Tomasin (b.1936) died the week of January 8. Although best known for portraying Ruby on Upstairs, Downstairs, Tomasin also appeared in the 1985 Doctor Who serial “Revelations of the Daleks” as Tasambeker and in 2000 appeared in a made-for-television adaptation of Cinderella.
Fan Robert Lovell (b.1947) died on January 15. Lovell was involved in Baltimore-Washington fandom from the late 1970s until 1983 and was involved with the bid that landed the 1983 Worldcon, Constellation, for Baltimore. Lovell supported the bids by offering “Backrubs for Baltimore.”