Sci-Fi's "Forry" Ackerman Is Dead

http://www.scifi.com/scifiwire/index.php?category=3&id=62610

05-DECEMBER-08
Sci-Fi's "Forry" Ackerman Is Dead

Forrest J. Ackerman, the sometime actor, literary agent, magazine editor and full-time bon vivant who discovered author Ray Bradbury and was widely credited with coining the term "sci-fi," has died, the Associated Press reported. He was 92.

Ackerman died Dec. 4 of heart failure at his Los Angeles home, Kevin Burns, head of Prometheus Entertainment and a trustee of Ackerman's estate, told the AP.

Ackerman was legendary in science fiction circles as the founding editor of the pulp magazine Famous Monsters of Filmland. He was also the owner of a huge private collection of science fiction movie and literary memorabilia that for years filled every nook and cranny of a hillside mansion overlooking Los Angeles, nicknamed the "Ackermansion."

Every Saturday morning that he was home, Ackerman would open up the house to anyone who wanted to view his treasures; everyone knew him as "Forry." He sold some pieces and gave away others when he moved to a smaller house in 2002, but he continued to let people visit him every Saturday for as long as his health permitted.

Forrest J. Ackerman in his memorabilia-crammed "Ackermansion" home in Los Angeles in 1990. (Alan Light)

Ackerman's collection once included more than 50,000 books, thousands of science fiction magazines and such items as Bela Lugosi's cape from the 1931 film Dracula.

His greatest achievement, however, was likely discovering Bradbury, author of the literary classics Fahrenheit 451 and The Martian Chronicles. Ackerman had placed a flyer in a Los Angeles bookstore for a science fiction club he was founding, and a teenage Bradbury showed up.

Later, Ackerman gave Bradbury the money to start his own science fiction magazine, Futuria Fantasia, and paid the author's way to New York for an authors' meeting that Bradbury said helped launch his career.

As a literary agent, Ackerman represented Bradbury, Isaac Asimov and numerous other science fiction writers.

He said the term "sci-fi" came to him in 1954 when he was listening to a car radio and heard an announcer mention the word "hi-fi."

Forrest James Ackerman was born in Los Angeles on Nov. 24, 1916. He fell in love with science fiction, he once said, when he was 9 years old and saw a magazine called Amazing Stories. He would hold onto that publication for the rest of his life. Ackerman, who had no children, was preceded in death by his wife, Wendayne.