Tim Sullivan, a novelist and book reviewer who also wrote, directed and/or starred in several microbudget horror and science-fiction films, has died. He was 76.
Sullivan died Sunday of congestive heart failure in hospice in Newport News, Virginia, John R. Ellis, a friend of his for 50 years, told The Hollywood Reporter.
Sullivan starred as a military pilot who survives a worldwide plague and battles giant mutant spiders in the Ellis-directed sci-fi thriller Twilight of the Dogs (1995). He and Ellis teamed on the screenplay as well.
He also wrote and directed Vampyre Femmes (1999) and appeared in such straight-to-video releases as The Laughing Dead (1989), Eyes of the Werewolf (1999), The Mark of Dracula (2000), Hollywood Mortuary (2000) and Deadly Scavengers (2001), working often with writer-director Ron Ford.
Sullivan wrote at least seven sci-fi novels during his career, three of them based on Kenneth Johnson’s V NBC miniseries and series in the mid-1980s about an alien invasion of Earth.
One of two sons of a U.S. Postal Service worker, Timothy Robert Sullivan was born on June 9, 1948, in Bangor, Maine. One of his neighbors was Richard Tozier, who would later be featured in three Stephen King novels.
Sullivan attended John Bapst Memorial High School, earned a degree in literature from Florida Atlantic University and lived in Philadelphia and Washington before settling in Southern California in 1988.
He wrote dozens of short stories, including 1981’s “Zeke,” a tragedy about an extraterrestrial stranded on Earth that was nominated for a Nebula Award. His novels included 1988’s Destiny’s End, 1989’s The Parasite War, 1991’s The Martian Viking and The Dinosaur Trackers and 1992’s Lords of Creation.
He also edited horror anthologies and handled book reviews for The Washington Post.
Ellis said he and Sullivan had been working on a restoration of Twilight of the Dogs, and it will be available in the U.S. for the first time.
Sullivan has no survivors, though his friends Aprille Canniff and Christina Pichlmaier were with him when he died.
