The Freedom to Remember-Ackerman 2009

By Brad Linaweaver

Forrest J Ackerman was the best friend science fiction ever had. The man who loved Frankenstein movies would appreciate the observation that he was more than the sum of his parts. He was an agent. He was an editor. He was a writer. He was an actor. He was a splendid raconteur. He was the supreme collector.

But more than any of that was the importance of his love affair with what he called Sci-Fi. Some of us throw up artificial barriers between science fiction, fantasy and horror. Forry knew better. We may wonder if that strange creature trampling us is an alien or a monster, but Mr. Ackerman would run the same picture in his seminal film magazines, Famous Monsters of Filmland and Spacemen. The same picture.

Is that giant robot on the horizon a tool, a friend or an enemy? It all depends on the point of view. As children we learned empathy and how to make distinctions from a number of unlikely sources. Perhaps FJA was the best.

Our kindly uncle was that rarest of aliens, a welcome teacher. He was the Walt Disney of science fiction! He took us on a time machine, borrowed from H. G. Wells, and showed us that the past still lived in his favorite city, the Gothic futurama of Fritz Lang's Metropolis. Forry invited us into the lair of Rotwang, the mad scientist's house; but here was an old house haunted not by ghosts, but by dreams of the future.

The Ackermonster built his own magical castle on several occasions at different locations. The most famous was the mansion on Glendower with its Lovecraftian basement for the kids, Grislyland. Wherever he lived, he made it Hollyweird, Karloffornia, surrounded by loved ones and loved objects. He departed the world at the age of 92 in his own Mad Lab.

His lifelong friend, Ray Bradbury, was in contact with him in his final days. Along with another friend, Ray Harryhausen, these men made an indelible mark on the imagination of the world.

They were members of LASFS, America's oldest science fiction club. Robert A. Heinlein was a member back then, as well. Those were golden days in Los Angeles before World War II.

The battle for freedom never ends. Appropriately, as a close friend of the author of Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury, Forry was a lifelong opponent of censorship. In common with J. R. R. Tolkien, Forry knew that those who condemn escapist literature are actually jailers. Young minds should be free citizens of the Imagi-Nation.

Forry often said if he ever wrote an autobiography the title would be I Never Met Jules Verne. Think about that. Whether writing a script for a Boris Karloff record album or befriending Bela Lugosi, he who was known as the poor man's Vincent Price always found time to blast off in a private rocket ship and attend The World Science Fiction Convention. He wore the first Worldcon costume (inspired by Things To Come) in 1939 and received the first Hugo from the hands of Isaac Asimov in 1953. He was the premiere science fiction fan, enjoying the highlights of the 20th Century on his journey to the 21st.

How appropriate that he would be the literary agent of A. E. van Vogt for many of those decades—a grandmaster of science fiction who came up with so many memorable aliens that influenced generations of movie monsters.

A unique gift that Forry offered to young fans of several generations was a long road to the future that went gently winding through the past. Apprentice barbarians were civilized to the point of being able to sit through silent movies. Unlike their contemporaries they developed an attention span. Because of Uncle Forry they even managed to read the long sentences and absorb the vocabulary of 19th Century writers. On a journey to the center of the Earth we encounter Dracula and the Frankenstein Monster, both of whom complain that they have been prematurely interred.

An encyclopedia could be produced listing all those who received inspiration from Forry to pursue careers in the entertainment field. The famous, the not so famous, the infamous, the obscure, we all have our stories. Here's mine, starting with a fan letter in the original Famous Monsters of Filmland and going all the way to my participation in his last film, The Boneyard Collection.

(To be continued).

Brad Linaweaver is a Nebula Award nominee for the novella “Moon of Ice,” and Prometheus Award winner for the novel, Moon of Ice. His novelizations of Doom (co-authored with Daffyd ab Hugh) appeared on the New York Times bestseller lists. This is a non-commercial work made available to the field in hopes that others will donate their Ackermemories to an ongoing love letter for our departed friend.