Sad news via Greencine, the world’s best known and most beloved genre fan has passed on at age 92.

If you grew up a geek in Los Angeles — and, as the four semester president of the Venice High Science Club and, before that, the one term prexy of the Junior Count Dracula Society (an even odder story than it sounds), boy, did I ever — you could not avoid the man everyone knew as “Forry.” For those of you unfamiliar with Mr. Ackerman’s work, he was basically the ultimate fan — “Mr. Sci-Fi” he was dubbed, for he apparently coined the name that many an SF geek with literary pretentions refused to use but that everyone else has taken up ever since. (Even though I haven’t been anything resembling a rabid science fiction purist for decades, I still can’t bring myself to call it that.)

He started his career as a literary agent, whose clients included, among many others, Isaac Asimov, his longtime friend Ray Bradbury, and (I’m pretty sure) the great pulp writer and screenplay collaborator Leigh Brackett (Rio Bravo, The Long Goodbye, The Empire Strikes Back). At the other end of the scale, his Wikipedia entry reminds me that he was also the “illiterary” agent to, you read it here, Ed Wood.

Despite what appears to have been some definite financial success on that account, however, his greatest professional achievement was probably as the editor of Famous Monsters of Filmland, the backbone of Jim Warren’s crude publishing empire that later branched off into semi-adult black and white comic books — also led by another creation of Forry’s, Vampirella. He was also one of the primary founders of the LASFS – the Los Angeles Science Fantasy Society (as per its website “this world’s oldest continuously-meeting science-fiction and fantasy club”) which just had a convention over Thanksgiving weekend and which I hope he was able to attend.

Still, at least in these parts, he was best known and loved as the owner of the Ackermansion, his own home and the setting for easily the most impressive collection of horror and…okay…sci-fi related memorabilia and antiquities known to man. When, he moved to smaller quarters in 2002, a collective sigh was heard throughout L.A.’s Geek-American community.

I have two strong personal memories of Mr. Ackerman — who showed up at practically any sf/horror/genre film/comics event you could name for decades. One was when, prior to the first Westal Administration, he escorted my aforementioned high school science fiction club through the Ackermansion, showing off the original robot Maria from Metropolis and some of animator Willis O’Brien’s original models from the 1933 King Kong as well as the 1926 copy of Hugo Gernsback’s Amazing Stories that had started him on his life’s journey at the age of ten. I also remember seeing him when I was probably seventeen or so at Westercon, the largest West Coast science fiction convention that wasn’t focused on Star Trek and that upstart newbie, Star Wars. It was a late night, 16mm screening of a movie that remains a big favorite of mine, the 1973 The Wicker Man.

Just before it started, I turned around and saw the then-sixty-something Forry sprawling across several chairs for an 11:00 screening of a movie he’d probably already seen a few times. (True, it was before even VHS was all that common and it wasn’t exactly easy to see.) He smiled and gave me a wave though he could not possibly know who I was other than just another fellow enthusiast. He was just happy to be watching an obscure movie on a bad projector in a hotel ballroom. A fan through and through.

UPDATE: It’s absolutely no surprise that there’s been a great deal posted about this notable passing since I first wrote this yesterday morning. You can find most of it via good ol’ Dennis Cozzalio’s predictably remarkable post. Of course, Dennis is a true blue horror fan of the first order, and like Guillermo del Toro, accepted monsters into his heart at an early age, so he very much knows whereof…. Anyhow, along with his personal reminiscences on the importance of Famous Monsters to him and to the horror world in general, he’s also posted a three-part video epic documenting his own 1998 visit to the Ackermansion. I call that appointment online viewing if ever there was.

Dennis also links to some worthwhile posts, including one from Tim Lucas, which alludes to some controversies I was totally unaware of. The only criticisms I ever heard of Forry or his magazines had to do with his coinage of “sci-fi,” and the crude writing and bad puns in his magazines. (As a blogger with a love of borsht belt humor, I’m hardly in a position to criticize on either score). Otherwise, everyone seemed to love him personally and respect his work as the ultimate fan and his friendliness to true geeks of all levels was legendary. At least on the most public level, what was there not to like?

Admittedly, the current version of the Famous Monsters wikipedia entry (which I’m not linking to because I’m somewhat suspicious of some of what’s in it right now) seems if not perhaps one-sided, more than a little strange, in its discussion of a lawsuit that, along with our barbaric health care system, reportedly had a lot to do with so tragically draining Ackerman’s resources and forcing him to sell off large chunks of his collection. But, hey, it’s Mr. Sci-Fi/Monsters, we’re talking about, so a little strangeness seems apt.

On a much more positive note, Dennis also links to Glenn Kenny and some extremely worthwhile comments. And it was via Kenny, I stumbled upon this really poignant 2003 Los Angeles Times article by Hillary MacGregor, who apparently tolerated a bit of flirtation from the late octogenarian with very good humor, reposted on their Daily Mirror blog. I was especially taken by a section discussing one of Forry’s lesser known passions…. the long-ago attempt at a one-world language designed to bring on world peace.

….In a mishmash of what sounds like French, Spanish and Italian that is somehow comprehensible to any liberal arts graduate, he tells a visitor her eyes are beautiful, her height striking. He is speaking Esperanto. “In the 20s and 30s, some science fiction stories of the future mentioned that everyone would one day speak Esperanto,” he says. “For me it was like time travel. It was like going 100 years into the future. And if I could bring back a bottle of something, I would be thrilled. At least I could bring back the language everyone would be speaking.”

Something about Ackerman’s snippet of Esperanto seems to capture the soul of science fiction, and of Ackerman himself. It speaks to a utopian vision cherished by people who fantasize about a world where Martians and Klingons and humans can all speak the same language and get along. It is the view of an optimist, the view of a man whose slogan is “Save humanity with science and sanity.”"

Again, what’s not to like?

In honor of Jeff Ignatius (a.k.a. Culture Snob) and his gloriously self-celebrating Self Involvement Blogathon, I’m calling his self-involvement and raising with laziness by “contributing” the first of two repostings of FtY classics of self-involvement — and by classic, I mean a post from nine months back that people actually went to the trouble of posting comments and attracted, like, scores of visitors — scores, I tell you. (You can see the original post. originally written as an addendum to Rob Humanick’s 31 Days of Zombie blogathon, here.) 

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So just what was I, a grown-up person of usually quite moderate habits, doing bombed out of my skull watching (or sort of watching) George Romero’s legendary zombie spectacular, Dawn of the Dead?

I suffer from an ailment that can be most embarrassing for a putatively with-it, genre-loving cinephile like myself: gore-phobia. I like classical horror quite a bit, but have always been slow to see the strongest stuff. It took me decades to get over the hype and finally see The Exorcist — technically not gory, just throw-uppy and weird-makeupy — though I was glad that I did. (And I swear it was just a coincidence that I was in the bathroom during the spinal tap sequence.)

But my problem has always been gore more than horror. I’ve never been one to think that something not shown is more disturbing than something that is shown; I’d much rather imagine a zombie eating a brain than actually see a zombie eating a brain. I’m not like most people.

So, everytime an interesting horror film comes out that also seems like it might have a fairly high gore factor, I’m in a movie quandary. I’ve skipped a lot films I might have otherwise enjoyed, starting with Stuart Gordon’s Re-Animator, a few odd earlier David Cronenberg films, almost the entire oeuvre of Takashi Miike (I dug his musical black comedy, Happiness of the Katakuris, however.) There are also several non-genre “serious” films , like Irreversible and Man Bites Dog, that I’ve wound up avoiding not because I expect them to be Hershel Gordon Lewis-style gorestravaganzas, but because, after reading scads of reviews, I’m not sure just how far they go and it’s not like having my faith in humanity destroyed is my idea of a fun night at the movies. Well, not usually.

As for so-called “torture porn,” forget it. To me, there’s something inherently wrong with any torture scene that goes longer than a few seconds or minutes. (Anyone remember when the now-somewhat quaint and brief little torture scene in Reservoir Dogs was causing some people to flee screenings?) I even skipped The Passion of the Christ, which I really should see for political reasons — though that’s a special case because, among other issues, its approach sounds about as edifying as spending ninety minutes watching Socrates gag on hemlock.

On the other hand, I’ve seen my share of films that raised hackles over their bloody violence only to be surprised at how un-bothered I was by any of it. Eastern Promises only got a wince or two out of me, and I’m still wondering what all the fuss was about the Turkish bath scene, but that may be because I’ve been working on my gorephobia for years.

During those efforts, I’ve found that alcohol can be an effective tool. That started when I sneaked an airplane bottle of vodka into a (morning) showing of Kill Bill, Vol. 1. The booze helped me get over my initial nerves caused by all the ink its bloody violence had generated. I wound up a fan, give or take a nether-regions impalement and a super-fast black and white plucked eyeball. (Damage to eyes is especially disturbing to me, which I learned at age 14 via The Andalusian Dog.)

More recently, I found I had no problem with the mostly silly-gross parts of Grindhouse after just one of those same airplane bottles. (I had meant to take in three bottles…it’s a long movie!) And, well before that, I had even begun to put my big toe into the deep red waters of the Italian giallo masters Dario Argento and Mario Bava. Lately, I’ve taken to bringing those little bottles into movies even when there was no fear factor at all. It’s not a bad start to watching a movie.

But cannibalism in particular is an issue for me and I wondered whether enough alcohol has been manufactured to get me through the zombie classics. Like Dennis Hopper in the Land of the Dead trailer, those guys really do freak me out. I had to practically be tied into a chair and force-fed beer to watch a mid-eighties MTV broadcast of Romero’s relatively mild (but truly frightening) zombie original, Night of the Living Dead.

But lately this has made me feel increasingly silly. When Manohla Dargis can call 2004’s Dawn of the Dead remake “good zombie fun,” and with cannibal zombies becoming such frequent sources of humor in all types of media, being too scared to watch anything dreamed up by a nice guy like George Romero, even if its pretty graphic, seems a little wrong. And it’s not like I’m all that squeamish even when cannibals are involved — sure, I wimped out on Hannibal (Ray Liotta’s brains served up like it’s Babette’s Feast…that may still be a problem for me), but Silence of the Lambs is almost movie comfort food for me.

Besides, parts of the original Dawn of the Dead did sound like my kind of entertainment — combining western tropes, sci-fi, and social satire is very much my idea of a good time at the movies. How different is that, really, from Serenity? Okay, pretty gorram different, but it’s not like Romero makes truly dire video nasties along the lines of Cannibal Ferox or Bloodsucking Freaks. From what I understand, Romero is a master of restraint compared to reputed gore-wallower supremo Lucio Fulci, so how bad it could be?

All this, plus 31 Days of Zombies, added up to a kind of a dare. Now was the time. I had to watch Dawn of the Dead or risk losing all self-respect.

Still, one thing about having a movie as your personal mountain to climb — unlike an actual mountain, there was no reason I couldn’t scale it with the aid of some well administered cocktail courage. Heck, I thought, a couple of martinis — three max — and the thing should be a breeze, I told lied to myself.

How did it all work out? I’ll tell you right after a word from our sponsor.

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