Sci-Fi’s No. 1 Fanboy, Forrest J Ackerman, Dies at 92

Fanboy love is an industry now. Film studios and comix publishers court their young, mostly male base and count on it to help turn cult items into mass phenomena. Once, though, fantasy magazines and no-budget horror movies had just one prominent proselytizer: Forry Ackerman, who died in Los Angeles at 92. For more than 80 years, from the day in 1926 when he read his first issue of Amazing Stories, Ackerman was the genre’s chief enthusiast. Even that’s too mild a word: say enthusi-woozy-ast.

He formed fantasy chat groups (bringing his young pal Ray Bradbury along). At the first science-fiction convention, in 1939, he arrived in a homemade space suit, prefiguring Trekkie costumes by decades. He served as literary agent to Bradbury, Isaac Asimov and L. Ron Hubbard. In 1954 he established sci-fi as the form’s handle. For about 30 years he edited Famous Monsters of Filmland, the Cahiers du Cinéma of schlock cinema.

A genial Pied Piper, Forry led generations of kids on tours of his “Acker-mansion” and its superb collection of fantasy-film memorabilia. No more, alas. The sky gods have claimed him. They’ve beamed up sci-fi’s No. 1 Fanman.