Tuesday, December 09, 2008

Forest J Ackerman remembered

Forest J Ackerman, the man widely credited with coining the term 'sci-fi', has died at the age of 92. As Bruce Weber writes in The New York Times, though Ackerman wrote short stories, his primary role was as an enthusiast and publisher.
Mr. Ackerman said he came up with “sci-fi” in 1954. He was driving in a car with his wife when he heard a radio announcer say “hi-fi.” The term sci-fi just came reflexively and unbidden out of his mouth, he said...

“He was an appreciator, a collector, not a creator,” Mr. [Stephen] King said. “Well, he was a creator in the sense that with the magazine [Famous Monsters of Filmland] he gave us a window into a world we really wanted to see. He was our Hubble telescope.”
The LA Times has a series of links and YouTube videos.

One original creation Ackerman can take credit for is Vampirella. As Martin Anderson writes on Den Of Geek, she seems a prime candidate for a Hollywood makeover.

Vampirella #1 (Sept. 1969). Cover art by Frank Frazetta.

2 comments:

  1. A few short years ago I had one of those "life is cool" moments when I got to intro Forry and his lifelong friend Ray Harryhausen onstage. It was in a restored Art Deco cinema in Stockport and the occasion was a screening of the original KING KONG, a movie that had played a key part in both men's early lives. Forry was gentle and courteous and known to just about everyone there -- true SF fandom is a decades-old global subculture and Forry was right at its heart from the very beginning.

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  2. Anonymous9:16 pm

    Great story.

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