RIP, Uncle Forry...
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Sci-fi legend Forrest J Ackerman dies
By David Colton
USA TODAY
Forrest J Ackerman, a writer, editor and collector who helped popularize science fiction and brought horror films into the mainstream with his magazine,
Famous Monsters of Filmland, died Thursday at his home in Los Angeles after a long illness, said his friend and caregiver Joe Moe. He was 92.
He was affectionately known as "Uncle Forry" by a generation of Hollywood creators such as Steven Spielberg, John Landis, Peter Jackson, Tim Burton and Stephen King, who credited Ackerman's pun-filled Famous Monsters magazine with sparking their careers.
"Ackerman's impact on American popular culture through his influence on major filmmakers like Spielberg, (John) Landis, Joe Dante and others is inestimable," said author and horror historian David J. Skal.
The kid-oriented magazine, co-founded in 1958 with publisher Jim Warren, helped launch a monster craze in the 1960s as classic horror films such as Frankenstein, Dracula and King Kong were shown on television. Ackerman introduced his young readers to Boris Karloff, Bela Lugosi and Vincent Price, as well as behind-the-scenes talents such as makeup artist Jack Pierce and stop-motion pioneers Willis O'Brien and Ray Harryhausen.
Ackerman's collection of science fiction magazines, artwork, posters and monster movie props such as Bela Lugosi's Dracula ring once numbered more than 300,000 items, which he displayed in an 18-room home he called the "Ackermansion." Open houses were common on Saturdays, where he'd offer anyone who showed up a tour of artifacts such as a replica of the female robot from the silent film Metropolis, the brontosaurus model used in King Kong or original covers of Amazing Stories by artist Frank R. Paul.
He created the comic book heroine Vampirella, and also is credited with inventing the term "sci-fi." In 1953 he won a Hugo Award, science fiction's Oscar, as #1 Fan Personality.
Ackerman was awarded damages in 2002 after winning a lawsuit he filed against the publisher of a new version of Famous Monsters of Filmland but in his final years had to auction off much of his collection to pay bills.
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Legend, oh legend, the third wheel legend...always in the way.