Writer Rob Grant, best known for creating the sci-fi sitcom Red Dwarf with his former writing partner Doug Naylor, dies at the age of 70. Embarking on a career writing comedy first for radio and then for TV in 1979, Grant and Naylor found an easy working rapport and, after a series of rejections, broke into radio comedy with the sketch series Son Of Cliche, which included a recurring comedic sci-fi storyline about a spaceman stranded with his talking computer. That idea, expanded greatly, became the unlikely pitch for Red Dwarf. Rejected at first by the BBC, Red Dwarf emerged as a fast favorite with audiences upon its premiere in 1988, by which time Grant and his collaborator were also the head writers on the puppet-based sketch satire Spitting Image. Grant remained with the show for its first six seasons, co-writing every episode with Naylor, until the working relationship deteriorated and Grant left the show. Grant had enough clout as co-creator of Red Dwarf to launch a few ventures of his own, including the 2000 sci-fi comedy The Strangerers, though his post-Red-Dwarf projects remained somewhat obscure. At the time of his death, he had completed a Red Dwarf prequel novel with Andrew Marshall, which was mere months away from being published.