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Richard Gordon, astronaut, dies
Gemini and Apollo astronaut Richard “Dick” Gordon dies at the age of 88. A veteran of the record-setting Gemini 11 mission (during which he undertook a spacewalk at the unprecedented altitude of 850 miles above Earth’s surface) and the Apollo 12 mission (during which he manned the command module Yankee Clipper while crewmates Pete Conrad and Alan Bean walked on the moon), Gordon was a naval aviator who eventually graduated to test pilot duties, eventually specializing in the F4H Phantom II fighter and teaching other pilots how to fly it. After his Apollo flight and retirement from NASA, Gordon kept working in the technology and engineering industries, but also diversified, becoming Executive VP of the New Orleans Saints football team.
Ukrainian-born Space Shuttle astronaut Leonid Kadeniuk, who entered the Soviet-era cosmonaut corps in 1976 but didn’t fly in space until 1997, dies at the age of 67. The first Ukrainian national to fly in space, Kadeniuk was a member of the STS-87 crew, a microgravity science mission aboard Columbia during which he performed experiments on vegetation in zero gravity. Following his single flight into space, Kadeniuk spent a few years continuing to try to build Ukraine’s space program, before becoming involved in politics in the 21st century.
Widely regarded as one of the 20th and 21st centuries’ finest minds in the fields of theoretical physics and cosmology, Professor Stephen Hawking dies at the age of 76, having suffered from ALS (better known as Lou Gehrig’s Disease) for over 50 years. He far outlived the few years he was expected to live when he was diagnosed in 1963. In that time, he co-authored a 1970 paper which referred back to Einstein’s Theory of General Relativity to lend great credibility to the then-new (and not widely accepted) theory of the universe’s origins in a “big bang”. Later that same year he began working on research that would eventually lead to the theory that black holes would emit a signature radiation, dubbed Hawking radiation, though those emissions had yet to be observed directly at the time of Hawking’s death. His best-selling 1988 book, “A Brief History Of Time”, propelled Hawking (and his remarkable survival story) into the public eye, though by this time he was wheelchair-bound and reliant on a speech synthesizer to communicate with others.
Legendary television writer/producer Steven Bochco dies at the age of 74. Widely associated with TV police dramas, including the genre-changing shows Hill Street Blues and NYPD Blue, Bochco created numerous popular series, including L.A. Law and Doogie Howser M.D. He also had numerous genre credits, ranging from co-writing the 1972 sci-fi cult classic Silent Running (a very early entry in his career), to co-creating (with Harve Bennett) two 1970s TV iterations of H.G. Wells’ timeless story, 
Korean-born actor Soon-Teck Oh dies as a result of a chronic illness at the age of 85. Arriving in the United States in 1959 as a college graduate with a degree in international relations, he was drawn into show business, gaining high visibility in the 1974 James Bond film The Man With The Golden Gun. He guest starred on countless American TV series, including The Invaders, The Wild Wild West, 
Comedian and actor Chuck McCann, a familiar TV face from his start in children’s television in New York in the 1950s to his near-ubiquity in both television shows and commercials in the 1970s and 1980s, dies of congestive heart failure at the age of 83. He continued to be a fixture on children’s television nationally, including a stint on the Sid & Marty Krofft Saturday morning kids’ sci-fi comedy 
Bradford A. Smith, a research astronomer and former professor of planetary science and astronomy at the University of Arizona, dies at the age of 86 from complications arising from an autoimmune disorder. Smith became a public figure during the peak years of the uncrewed 
Gary Kurtz, producer of Star Wars and The Empire Strikes Back and George Lucas’ right-hand man during the making of both movies, dies at the age of 78 after a year-long battle with cancer. Kurtz was instrumental in the deal-making behind both Star Wars and its predecessor, Lucas’ American Graffiti, initially pitching both to Universal Studios. While Universal was eager to make American Graffiti, they passed on Star Wars, which was then pitched to 20th Century Fox. Kurtz was literally in the Death Star trenches helping Lucas complete the first film, directing many second-unit shots (including many of the X-Wing cockpit scenes from the movie’s climactic battle) and riding herd on the somewhat overburdened Industrial Light & Magic. Fundamental differences over the storytelling choices Lucas was making for Return Of The Jedi led Kurtz to distance himself from Lucasfilm, and he would go on to produce such films as The Dark Crystal, Return To Oz, and Slipstream.
Classically trained Canadian actor Douglas Rain, best known to science fiction fans as the voice of the HAL-9000 computer in 2001: a space odyssey and 2010: The Year We Make Contact, dies at the age of 90. A veteran of the Canadian stage, Mr. Rain was a founding member of the Stratford Festival, and played a variety of parts over 45 years in Stratford, Ontario, some of which led to him reprising those performances on film. It was his narration of a 1960 documentary that got the attention of 2001 director Stanley Kubrick, who hired him to provide narration, an element that was eventually jettisoned before the movie’s release. Kubrick had, in fact, initially hired American actor Martin Balsam to voice HAL, but felt that Balsam’s performance was perhaps too emotional for the ship’s computer. Mr. Rain was enlisted to replace all of HAL’s lines in ten hours of marathon recording sessions in late 1967, long after shooting had wrapped; he claimed never to have seen the final result.
Marvel Comics’ most famous editor (and arguably its most famous creator, to the chagrin of some of the artists with whom he worked), Stan Lee, dies at the age of 95, several months after announcing that his days of attending conventions and making public appearances were over. Born in 1922, he began working at Timely Publications mere months after the company’s formation, thanks to a family connection with the company’s publisher, and became interim editor of Timely’s comics output in 1941. Timely had already seen success with artist/writer Jack Kirby’s Captain America, and Lee would not really make his mark until after a three-year sabbatical during which he enlisted in the U.S. Army and turned his talents to writing material supporting the war effort. It was during the early 1960s that Lee’s real influence on the company begin to be known, collaborating with Kirby on The Fantastic Four, Iron Man, The Incredible Hulk, Thor, X-Men, and others, and co-creating The Amazing Spider-Man and Doctor Strange with artist Steve Ditko. Under Lee’s editorship, Marvel led a revolution in interpreting comic book superheroes as complex, multifaceted, and flawed individuals, many of which remained bankable enough properties to lead to Disney’s 2009 acquisition of the company and rapid expansion of movie and TV adaptations of numerous characters and titles.
British-born actor Donald Moffat, who left England for the United States in 1956, dies at the age of 87 due to complications from a stroke he had recently suffered. A frequent face on American TV and film for decades, Moffat was a regular on the short-lived TV adaptation of 
British-born actor William Morgan Sheppard, a genre casting favorite ever since his 1985 appearance as Blank Reg in the original 
Actor Luke Perry, at the time a current regular on the CW’s Riverdale series and a former teen heartthrob from his years as one of the stars of Fox’s Beverly Hills 90210 throughout the 1990s, dies at the age of 52 several days after suffering from a major stroke. Among his many high-profile series roles were HBO’s acclaimed prison drama Oz, and the starring role in Jeremiah, Showtime’s early 21st century adaptation of a popular post-apocalyptic comic book, adapted by Babylon 5 creator J. Michael Straczynski. He also had a minor part in the 1997 genre cult classic The Fifth Element, and was one of the stars of the 1992 movie Buffy The Vampire Slayer, upon which the later TV series was based. His first TV role – albeit uncredited – was in an episode of 1982’s short-lived time travel series Voyagers!.
Skylab and Space Shuttle astronaut Owen K. Garriott dies at the age of 88. Born in Oklahoma, former U.S. Navy electronics officer Garriott went on to Stanford University to pursue a doctorate, and returned to Stanford to teach physics and electronics until 
Actor Peter Mayhew, who went from a job as a hospital orderly to co-starring in the 
Terrance Dicks, script editor of 
Actor Robert Forster, a fixture in films and TV since the 1960s, dies at the age of 78 following a brief battle with brain cancer. Cult sci-fi fans may know him best as Captain Dan Holland in 
Actor Stephen Moore, who originated the woeful voice of Marvin the Android in the original 
Dorothy Catherine Fontana, better known by her “indeterminate gender” pen name D.C. Fontana, dies at the age of 80. Originally setting out to be a novelist, she found herself drawn to the business of writing for the then-new medium of television, working her way from secretarial jobs to production assistant and script editor. Some of her earliest work, for TV westerns such as The Tall Man and Ben Casey, went out under her full name; by the time she sold scripts to The Wild Wild West, she found it easier to use a pseudonym (often “Michael Edwards” or “Michael Richards”). As the production secretary for a new series launched in 1963 called The Lieutenant, she was nominally working for executive producer Del Reisman, but often worked alongside the show’s creator, a junior producer named Gene Roddenberry. When The Lieutenant was cancelled after a single season, Roddenberry hired her to work on his next project, a sci-fi series called 
Actor Robert Walker Jr., perhaps best known as the troubled Charlie Evans from the classic 
L.A. session musician Michael Lamper, who had worked with groups as diverse as The Allman Brothers, Quiet Riot, and Los Lobos, dies at the age of 61. He had also played on solo albums by Tommy Shaw of Styx, Kevin Cronin of REO Speedwagon, Jack Blades of Night Ranger and Damn Yankees, and numerous others. He was also married (since 1992) to 
Actor Rene Auberjonois, best known in genre circles for playing security chief Odo on 
The chief designer of the 6502 microprocessor (a device credited with breaking Intel’s near-monopoly on the market and kick-starting the personal computer revolution), Chuck Peddle dies at the age of 82. Having already gained experience as part of the team that developed Motorola’s 6800 chip, Peddle realized that there was a need for a cheaper alternative. (At over $300 upon its introduction in 1973, the 6800 was still prohibitively expensive.) Motorola showed no interested in developing an inexpensive alternative, so Peddle defected to rival chip maker MOS, where he brought the 6502 chip to market. Within a few years of its introduction, the 6502 was already the heart of the 
Songwriter and occasional actor Neil Innes, best known for his association with Monty Python, The Rutles, and the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band, dies unexpectedly at the age of 75. The Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band’s hit “I’m The Urban Spaceman” brought him into the orbit of the Beatles, and he contributed a background track to their 1967 film Magical Mystery Tour. His participation in a later parody of the Beatles, the Rutles, led to TV specials and well-received albums, which counted among their fans and participants the former members of the Beatles themselves. Innes contributed material to the shortened final season of Monty Python’s Flying Circus, which made him one of only two members outside of the Python troupe to write material for the show (the other was future Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy creator Douglas Adams); his work with the Pythons continued into their feature films in the 1970s and early ’80s; he was also a cast member in the Pythons’ live performances during this period.
Actor Max Von Sydow, a frequent flyer in the science fiction and fantasy genre (among a legendary and very storied history of work in film and TV), dies at the age of 90. Rising to prominence in Ingmar Bergman’s influential 
Apollo 15 astronaut Al Worden dies at the age of 88. As the mission’s command module pilot, he was the only member of Apollo 15’s crew to not walk on the moon, though he does still hold the distinction of performing the furthest spacewalk from Earth, when he retrieved film cannisters from the body of the service module, requiring him to suit up and venture outside the vehicle while it was roughly halfway on its journey from the moon back to Earth. With the other members of the crew, he was embroiled in a seemingly minor scandal involving space-flown postal covers that turned out to almost be a career-ender once the astronauts were back on Earth; he made the jump to NASA’s Ames Research Center rather than returning to the Air Force, where he had been a past instructor at the Aerospace Research Pilot School, reporting directly to Colonel Chuck Yeager. After retiring from NASA, he made an unsuccessful run for Congress in 1982, and continued promoting the space program and science education.
Honor Blackman, who rose to fame portraying Cathy Gale in the second and third seasons of 
Legendary Italian film composer Ennio Morricone dies at the age of 91. With over 500 film and TV credits to his name, he was one of the most prolific composers by either Hollywood or European standards, and his early partnership with director and college classmate Sergio Leone led to his first international success, the score from the 1966 spaghetti western The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly. That brought Morricone to Hollywood’s attention, and he went on to score such films as Once Upon A Time In The West, Two Mules For Sister Sara, Guns For San Sebastian, Duck You Sucker, Exorcist II, La Cage aux Folles, Orca, The Thing, Once Upon A Time In America, Red Sonja, The Untouchables, Bugsy, In The Line Of Fire, Mission To Mars, The Hateful Eight, and many others.
Grant Imahara, who played Lt. Sulu in the fan-made series 
Actor John Saxon, a frequent guest star in American TV and movies from the 1960s through the ’90s (and still actively working well into the 2010s), dies at the age of 83. He began appearing in movies in his late teens in the early 1950s, but became a frequent flyer on the small screen, with guest roles in such genre fare as The Time Tunnel, The Sixth Sense, Night Gallery,