Curt Siodmak, author of Donovan's Brain and screenwriter of numerous Golden Age science fiction films, died recently of heart failure.
Siodmak died September 2, a few weeks after celebrating his 98th birthday. At the time of his death, he was the oldest major science fiction author on Earth.
| Curt Siodmak on Science Fiction |
| "Everything is science fiction, and I'll tell you why: If you have an idea and you go to a laboratory, work on it for 10 years, and prove that your idea works, you drop the 'fiction' from science. If you cannot solve the problem, you still have science fiction. " |
"When I wrote the book Skyport, they were frantic. 'Space?! Whogoes to space?' Then Sputnik came along, and now it's commonplace. You see, thehuman mind does not want changes. Change is the enemy. Change is pain. And writing is pain." |
Quotes from Patrick Sierchio's 1999 interview with Curt Siodmak. |
Born in Dresden, Germany, the deceased was trained as an engineer but gravitated to writing -- first journalism and then screenwriting -- at a relatively early age. In order to get a story on the filming of Fritz Lang's pioneering Metropolis (1926), he appeared as an extra in the film.
The rise of National Socialism in Germany forced Siodmak to emigrate, first to London and then to the United States, where he would eventually make his home in Hollywood as a screenwriter and director.
Film credits include such genre standbys as Earth Versus the Flying Saucers (1956), based on the seminal Donald E. Keyhoe book, I Walked with a Zombie (1943) and Riders to the Stars (1953).
Of his dozens of novels, only two -- Donovan's Brain (1943), the source material for the 1953 film, and sequel Hauser's Memory (1968) -- have remained in print. Other genre titles included Skyport (1959) and City in the Sky (1974).
His autobiography, Wolf Man's Maker, will be published by Scarecrow Press in December.
With Siodmak's passing, L. Sprague de Camp, born in 1907, takes the mantle of oldest living major SF author.
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