We lost two others last week.

[Archae]

Harry Harrison, who wrote a series of novels about the interstellar con artist and thief Jim DiGriz, "The Stainless Steel Rat," and William Windom, who played "Commodore Decker" in the original Trek episode "The Doomsday Machine" have died.


"Incompetent, unlettered, unskilled writers sell to unexacting editors. All of this is going completely unnoticed by an incompetent readership."

So wrote Harry Harrison in a 1990 essay that described science fiction, the genre in which he wrote more than 60 novels, as "rubbish." Some critics thought his work helped prove the point. Charles Platt, writing in The Washington Post in 1984, said that Harrison was better at "evoking the personalities of lizards than of people."

After long success in the field he questioned, Harrison died in southern England on Wednesday at 87, according to an announcement on his website.

Read more: http://www.timesunion.com/news/article/Harry-Harrison-sci-fi-writer-3798562.php#ixzz243NOXaNk

William Windom, TV Everyman, Dies at 88

By ERIC GRODE

Published: August 19, 2012

William Windom, who won an Emmy Award playing an Everyman drawn from the pages of James Thurber but who may be best remembered for his roles on "Star Trek" and "Murder, She Wrote," died on Thursday at his home in Woodacre, Calif., north of San Francisco. He was 88.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/20/arts/television/william-windom-everyman-actor-is-dead-at-88.html

[csziggy]

1. I'll always remember William Windom in "My World and Welcome to It"

A sitcom based on the writings of James Thurber, it was probably a little too odd for most Americans while it was on TV. I've never seen re-runs of the series but the memory of it has stuck with me for forty years.

&feature=relmfu

&feature=relmfu

RIP William Windom

[blogslut]

2. I loved William Windom

He played the prosecuting attorney in "To Kill a Mockingbird".

He came to my college to give advice to the students in my theater department. He was wonderfully blunt:

"Know your lines and don't bump into the furniture."