Forrest J. Ackerman (1916-2008)

[collisionwork]

Forry Ackerman died late Thursday night.

I wrote about what this man and his magazine, Famous Monsters of Filmland, meant to me when I was growing up a couple of years ago, on the occasion of a Blog-a-Thon celebrating his 90th birthday, HERE.

There are already many tributes online already, and here are some of the better ones I've seen:

L.A. Times obituary.

Science Fiction Writers of American obituary.

Various salutes at Ain't It Cool News.

The farewell thread from the Monster Kid Classic Horror Forum.

I wouldn't be doing what I'm doing today, and be who I am, without Forry and FM. He had a hard time the past two decades, and had been preparing to leave after a very long and full life for a couple of months now, and quite publicly, but it still hits hard tonight. I'll miss a world that had 4SJ in it.

Comments

[revme.livejournal.com]

Oh, that's sad. I'm sorry to hear that; Forry was awesome. I like how it seems for about 20 years people have been all "Oh noes, he's going to die soon!" and he never did. So, good on him for stickin' around for 92 years. Too bad it wasn't 92 more. I bet Mark Evanier has a good piece on him, too.

[collisionwork]

Yup, Evanier has one up now. As do Kim Morgan and Arbogast and Glenn Kenny and Tom Sutpen and . . . well, you get the picture.

I just got more and more moved this morning as it seemed that EVERY film-related writer I like online felt the need to pass on a bit of what FJA had meant to them. And the stories are all much the same. Stephen King may have said it best, "He was an appreciator, a collector, not a creator. Well, he was a creator in the sense that with the magazine he gave us a window into a world we really wanted to see. He was our Hubble telescope.”

[revme.livejournal.com]

Yes -- it's really amazing... the good thing is, I'm betting most if not all these people told Forry what he meant to thim when he was alive, too.

BTW -- if you haven't seen it already, Evanier's got a cool video interview with Al Jaffee on the top of today's page. It's pretty amazing how YOUNG Al looks too. LIke, if I didn't know anything about him, I'd probably peg him for being late 60s early 70s. not 87.