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Forry Ackerman Dead At 92
rrohbeck was one of several readers to note the passing of Forrest J. Ackerman at the age of 92. Ackerman, who coined the term sci-fi in 1954, has been called the 'world's biggest fan.' Over a long career he acted as literary agent for Isaac Asimov, A.E. van Vogt, Hugo Gernsback, and L. Ron Hubbard; he published Ray Bradbury's first short story in a fan magazine in 1938. Ackerman wrote over 2,000 articles and short stories, including, oddly enough, lesbian fiction in the 1940s. In recent years, mounting health bills forced him to sell his home, the 'Ackermansion,' and most of the 300,000 items of memorabilia it stored.
to what is thoughts were on the evolution of scifi?
if anyone has a perspective on that, this man certainly does
RIP
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
So we can blame him for giving Hubbard his start? Not something I'd brag about. ;)
jX [ Make everything as simple as possible, but no simpler. - Einstein ]
lesbian fiction in the 1940s.
Um, link?
"Anyone who [rips a CD] is probably engaging in copyright infringement." - David O. Carson
("Its value grows rapidly, even for small inputs. For example A(4,2) contains 19,729 decimal digits.")
The World Wide Web is dying. Soon, we shall have only the Internet.
He wrote lesbian porn in the 40s. Thats gotta be major points right there.
...Ackerman wrote over 2,000 articles and short stories, including, oddly enough, lesbian fiction in the 1940s...
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
Not very surprising to the Slashdot crowd.
Our fond attachment to lesbians is very well known.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
He also wrote what has been reported to have been the first lesbian science-fiction story ever published, âoeWorld of Loneliness.â And under the pen name Laurajean Ermayne, he wrote lesbian romances in the late 1940s for the lesbian magazine Vice Versa. via http://larryfire.wordpress.com/2008/12/05/forrest-j-ackerman-writer-editor-who-coined-sci-fi-dies-at-92/
Ripozu en paco s-ro Ackerman.
This is even more disrespectful than the racial-slur posts, if that's possible...
What do lesbians have to do with the quantum mechanical pseudo-particle for friction?
thegodmovie.com - watch it
He must be an American or live in America. I see he had to sell off his assets to pay for health care.
...in 5 4 3 2 1.
Slashdotters won't know what to make of this. Do they focus on the geeky, or focus on the boobies?
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
There, fixed that for ya... unless of course you meant for /.ers to start queuing to make lesbian jokes...
Ackerman was always known as a big-hearted, genuinely decent guy in addition to being a huge science fiction/fantasy fan. Stories of the parties, comings and goings and general happy weirdness at his house were legend.
He'll be missed.
I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.
no joke. american healthcare industry would take everything except your soul to treat a mere sneeze.
Read radical news here
And this "lesbian fiction" is found where today?
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
From TFA:
"Famous Monsters of Filmland ceased publication in 1983, but returned a decade later with Ray Ferry as publisher and Ackerman as editor. Ackerman, however, reportedly had a falling out with Ferry and left the magazine. Years of litigation followed. In 2000, after a civil trial, Ackerman won a trademark infringement and breach-of-contract lawsuit against Ferry, though he said a year later that he had not yet collected a penny of the judgment.
In recent decades, according to a 2003 Times story, Ackerman slowly sold pieces of his massive collection in order to survive. Because of health problems and his still-unresolved legal battle, he put up all but about 100 of his favorite objects for sale in 2002.
The same year, he moved out of the Ackermansion and into a bungalow in the flats of Los Feliz. But he continued to make what was left of his collection available for fans to view on Saturday mornings."
It appears as though he was also involved in a legal battle as well which the article seems to imply he never received the money owed to him. I wonder if that was at all costly. There's also no mention of him actually selling his house either and the article's statement that people could still view what remained of his collection leads me to believe that he still owns the house. The article also mentions that his collection consisted of some 300,000 objects. I have no way of knowing how valuable any of those objects is on average or how valuable the 100 or so he sold were, but it seems that the vast majority of his collection is still intact. All of this leads me to assume he was still in possession of a considerable amount of wealth.
Of course don't let this get in the way of taking a swipe at the American healthcare industry.
Posting for fixing grammar is never going to affect a person's grammar.
The first link in the summary refers to him as Forrest J. Ackerman, and that's wrong. There is no period after the J as you can see in the Wikipedia article. Yes, I know that Wikipedia isn't always right, but it is this time. I was fortunate to have met him a few times, and hear him speak, and 4E always insisted on having his name spelled correctly. If you want to abbreviate, 4SJ will be just fine, ThankYouVeryMuch.
Good, inexpensive web hosting
Think a penny a word.
A quarter cent a word for anything that might be difficult or impossible to sell over the counter.
Payment on publication, at least in theory.*
Still, you had a realistic chance of placing your stories somewhere.
If you were sufficiently talented and adroit, you might chance submitting a story with strong sexual themes to a magazine like The New Yorker.
But not every writer is destined to reach such heights.
* - If you were being paid on acceptance, you were writing for the Saturday Evening Post, your stories were in production by MGM, and ground was being broken for your new house in Conneticut.
Ackerman didn't coin the term "sci-fi" in 1954. For god's sake, Jeff Prucher won a HUGO AWARD for his book _Brave New Words_, about the language of SF, and gives a 1949 example from Heinlein!
The book is based on the OED's SF quotations project; the entry for this term is free online at
http://www.jessesword.com/sf/view/210
;-)
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Sad, sad, sad. I met him a couple of times at Esperanto gatherings (the Zamenhof banquet in Berkley) and he was always a welcome and witty character.
She wears a strapon dildo and uses it as punisment for not paying the fines. When you don't have any more left, Lord Xenu uses her metamod-ray to shrink you down to the size of an insightful 1' midget and you become her implement of a dildo for the day during the "breaking-in" of the new members. That's 12 full inches of Cruis'n cock that you become shovered deep into the bowels of various people to explore a new science similar to phrenology known as rectology. It has been found that in a telikenitect way, unlike the hands-on approach of phrenology, letting someone know that they will be anally explored will cause the subconcious chi energy from the intestines to inspire a concious pattern of thought to emerge all the money necessary to discharge the debt as fined.
In case anyone was wondering what Lord Xenu more closely resembled on Planet Earth durring her descent to award good collections on her high sabaths: he is the body of Rosy O'donell, the teeth of Kathy Fent-Malda, the attitude of Bruce Perens, and the efficiency of Hans Reiser jelly-rolled all into one royal asshole that somehow looks like Angela D'Angelo when staring in "Boss Bitches." Lord Xenu is the reason why Rammstein went strait but then Chuck Norris is the reason why Rammstein turned gay. There is only so much testosterone that can exist at one time in a hemisphere on Planet Earth and ol' Chuck Norris would cause the world to wobble if everyone didn't band together like faggots to counter the imbalance.
Larry Silverstein got billion$ in collecting the insurance money for Building 3 just as contracted of him 2 unrelated weeks before he agreed to take his part in the war on terrorism fraud that enabled the Patriot Act.
As well, the War on Drugs has been a U$ 17 trillion per year business, 3/4 of all seized estates are done with paramilitary precision without any initial injured party or property damage by usage. Yet, the disinformation continues and more houses are stolen from people that are constantly looking for waygs to relaxe or improve and optimize the course of the day
Another one bites the dust. We just lost Ursula K. Leguin last month, Robert Asprin this past May, Arthur C. Clarke in March. No more chances to chat with them at cons anymore!
The term "sci-fi" was an alliterative way of honoring Hugo Gernsback, one of the early SF editors, who was also very much into radio and coined the term "Hi-Fi". Forry was trying to come up with a catchy title, and he did.
Most TruFen - hard-core science fiction enthusiasts - would pronounce it "Skiffy", though.
See 'ya on the other side, Forry, we'll miss you!
Do forgive me, but I do not believe that, other than in Hollywood blockbusters and US presidentiale election propaganda, people are either all good, Yoda-like, or all bad. Forry, who used to give paraphernalia (he gave me too) with the combination "4E" (pronounced by Americans "Forry"), was in my opinion a mostly decent and very cordial fellow fan. I met him at the World Science Fiction Convention in The Hague, Netherlands, in 1990, and we must have talked for at least half an hour, during which he managed to convey a number of very interesting and/or funny anecdotes, he did not behave at all arrogantly and he was most courteous. I have met in my life many SOBs (at that convention for instance there was an obnoxious Aussie fan, who managed to attract, by his vulgarity, drunkenness and hate-loaded speech mannerism, the unanimous detestation of the attendees), and I know a few symptoms. Forry exhibited none. That is all I can say. R.I.P.
The Force actually is with me.
Will neither mourn nor celebrate his passing.
Ackerman's business practices were questionable at best. As an Agent it is passing strange to take money for foreign publication, NPR radio plays, of an author's work and give no accounting of the money or checks for money received.
How do you think he amassed that memorabilia? By screwing over the countless lesser authors who he represented.