Recent Losses

A correspondent has let me know about two recent losses in the worlds of science and science fiction:

Radio astronomer Frank Drake died on September 2, 2022. He was ninety-two years old. Born on May 28, 1930, in Chicago, Illinois, Dr. Drake studied at Cornell University and Harvard University. From 1958 to 1963, he worked at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO) in Green Bank, West Virginia. In 1960, he began Project Ozma, a search for extraterrestrial intelligence by way of radio waves. Frank Drake followed Otto Struve (1897-1963) and was followed by Carl Sagan (1934-1996) in a line of scientists who have speculated on the existence of extraterrestrial intelligence and who carried out a Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence or SETI. Science fiction author James E. Gunn (1923-2020) fictionalized their efforts to some degree in The Listeners (1968-1972, 1985).

Horace Chandler Davis, known as Chan Davis, died on September 24, 2022, at age ninety-six. Dr. Davis was born on August 12, 1926, in Ithaca, New York. He received his doctorate at Harvard University and taught mathematics at the University of Michigan and the University of Toronto. Science fiction fans know him better as an author of a-dozen-plus-one short stories that appeared in Astounding Science Fiction, Planet Stories, Star Science Fiction, and other titles from 1946 to 1994. His first was "The Nightmare," published in Astounding Science Fiction in May 1946. That credit surely made him one of the last living authors of the Golden Age of Science Fiction, calculated to have run from 1938 to 1950. Dr. Davis' widow is the historian Natalie Zemon Davis.

We send condolences to the families of both men.

An early example of the destruction of the Statue of Liberty in science fiction, William Timmins' cover for Astounding Science Fiction, May 1946, illustrating Chan Davis' story "The Nightmare." I was going to make a catalog of such images but someone has done it before me and has done it well. Look for Joachim Boaz's blog Science Fiction and Other Suspect Ruminations: Reviews of Vintage Science Fiction (1945-1985) and an entry called "Adventures in Science Fiction Cover Art: The Statue of Liberty on Pre-1968 Magazine and Novel Covers" from October 1, 2012, here.

Thanks to my correspondent.

Text copyright 2022 Terence E. Hanley