Author and screenwriter Russell L. Bates (b.1941) died on April 9, 2018.  Bates attended Clarion in 1973, by which time he had already published the short stories “Legion,” “Get with the Program,” and “A Modest Proposal.” Bates also sold the story “ Search Cycle: Beginning and Ending 1. The Last Quest; 2. Fifth and Last Horseman” to The Last Dangerous Visions. Following his time at Clarion, Bates only published a handful of short stories, but he began writing for television.  Bates’s genre credits include “How Sharper Than a Serpent’s Tooth,” a Mayan-influenced episode of Star Trek: The Animated Series and “The Lights of Mystery Mountain,” a UFO-themed episode of The Secret of Isis. Bates also worked on treatments for Kolchak: The Night Stalker, Fantasy Island, The Six Million Dollar Man, and Battlestar Galactica. Bates also published non-genre fiction. In 2017, he received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Miami International Science Fiction Film Festival. Bates was a member of the Kiowa Tribe of Oklahoma.