RIP, Forry

I was standing in Bronson cave with David Schow yesterday afternoon when he told me Forry had died the night before. One of my regrets in life is never meeting him despite many opportunities. Whenever in LA I was always on a tight schedule and kept telling myself, “Next time.” (Another regret is never meeting John Campbell when I had the chance.) I know nothing about his personal life, and not much about his professional life beyond his editorship of Famous Monsters of Filmland. But that's enough.

FMoF was a huge influence on me. It made me into a scifi/horror movie geek. I'd see a still of a cool-looking monster, jot down the name of the film, and hunt theater and TV listings until I found it. Sometimes it took years.

As a kid I wrote him a fan letter asking a question about some film mentioned in the mag…AND HE WROTE BACK! Signed it “4SJ.” It made a teen fan boy's year. I have that letter somewhere still (I think). Now I'll have to go look for it.

For obvious reasons, I dedicated Nightworld to him.

RIP, Forry.

F. Paul Wilson has received the Prometheus Award twice for Best Novel (Wheels Within Wheels and Sims), and twice for the Hall of Fame (An Enemy of the State and Healer), and received numerous nominations for other novels. Wilson is perhaps best known for his Repairman Jack novels, as well as horror novel The Keep, and his World War II novel, Black Wind. Wilson is the 2009 recipient of Horror Writers of America's Lifetime Achievement Award.