Thomas Cockcroft (1926-2013)

Thomas Cockcroft in 1975.

Thomas Cockcroft in 1975.

New Zealand fan Thomas George Cockcroft died April 12 at the age of 85, reports Ned Brooks.

He was noted for his Index To The Weird Fiction Magazines (1964) which covered Weird Tales; Strange Stories; Strange Tales; The Thrill Book; Oriental Stories; The Magic Carpet Magazine; Strange Tales (British); and Golden Fleece.

Cockroft had a career with IBM in process control with punched-card decks.

Brooks adds, “The last thing he sent me was a copy of the original Arkham House book The Outsider and Others. There was no note with it, and it may be all that survived the loss of his large collection – it must have been his ‘working copy’, as the dust jacket is worn and the flaps glued down, and there are comment slips (one of them an old IBM card) between the pages.”

[Thanks to Andrew Porter for the story.]