Aaron's Book of the Week :: Boris Karloff: The Frankenscience Monster by Forrest J. Ackerman

The Book of the Week is Boris Karloff: The Frankenscience Monster by Forrest J. Ackerman. This book was done as a tribute to Boris Karloff, but now it is our Book of the Week to honor Forrest Ackerman, who passed away earlier this month at the age of 92.

Forrest Ackerman was the greatest sci-fi fan of all, "Mr. Science Fiction" from the early days of the genre. Indeed, Forry was the one who coined the term "sci-fi," for which writers and other fans still love him, even if they don't always love the word. (For years, the term "sci-fi" was verboten among serious readers because of its association with monster movies and other Hollywood crapola. In recent years the word has become acceptable again, perhaps because Hollywood has lately managed to produce some decent SF/F like the Lord of the Rings films and Battlestar Galactica.)

Forry Ackerman edited and translated many books and magazines, notably the magazine Famous Monsters of Filmland. He appeared, usually briefly, in many movies. (Perhaps his most notorious film work was for the horror movie Incubus. For some bewildering reason that film was made in Esperanto, and when star William Shatner declined to learn the language, Forry did the voice-over. So if you get the DVD of Incubus -- just the kind of dreadful film Ackerman loved -- and watch it in Esperanto, you will see William Shatner speaking with Forry Ackerman's voice.) Forry also served as agent to many writers and filmmakers, both great (Ray Bradbury, Isaac Asimov) and not-so-great (Ed Wood).

Most importantly, Forrest Ackerman accumulated the world's greatest collection of science fiction books, magazines, and memorabilia. His home, the fabled "Ackermansion," was legendary among fans, containing some 300,000 collected pieces. This includes one of the best collections anywhere of SF books and magazines, for example a first edition of Dracula signed not only by the author Bram Stoker but also by the greatest actors to ever play the role including Bela Lugosi and Christopher Lee, and certainly the greatest collection of sci-fi movie props in the world. What happened to the famous robot from the classic silent film Metropolis? It's in the Ackermansion. The monster masks from The Creature from the Black Lagoon and This Island Earth? They're in the Ackermansion. The rings worn by Bela Lugosi in Dracula and Boris Karloff in The Mummy? In the Ackermansion. The gold idol Indiana Jones finds at the beginning of Raiders of the Lost Ark? You get the idea.

The award given annually at the World Science Fiction Convention to honor an influential sci-fi fan is officially called the "Forrest J. Ackerman Big Heart Award." Forry will be dearly missed.

Aaron's Book of the Week :: Fun with Your New Head by Thomas M. Disch

Continuing our tribute to Thomas M. Disch, his collection Fun with Your New Head was the Book of Last Week. (I didn't get around to it last week, but I can't just let everything slide because we have to finish our Disch tribute before the Hugo Awards are announced August 9.)

This is the 1972 first paperback printing of Fun with Your New Head, cover art by Gene Szafran. Disch was a prolific author of short fiction early in his career, and Fun with Your New Head was Disch's second collection of short fiction, appearing just after One Hundred and Two H-Bombs and shortly before White Fang Goes Dingo, Getting Into Death, and The Man Who Had No Idea -- and doncha love these titles? (Never mind that Fun with Your New Head first appeared in England under the humdrum title Under Compulsion.) Fun with Your New Head contains some of Disch's most memorable short fiction, such as "Descending," in which a department store escalator only goes down . . . and down and down and down, and "The Roaches," a rather darker version of the scene in the film Enchanted where the princess magically summons help from some cockroaches.

The Book of This Week will be a signed copy of one of Disch's early novels.

Aaron's Book of the Week :: Fire Watch by Connie Willis

The Book of the Week is the hardcover first edition of Fire Watch, signed and inscribed by Greeley, Colorado author Connie Willis (cover art by Tom Kidd). As nice as it was to find a 100-year-old first edition of The Jungle, this was my most exciting acquisition at the book sale mentioned last week. Connie Willis is an amazing author and one of the most decorated writers in the history of science fiction and fantasy -- she has won Hugo Awards in fiction categories eight times and Nebula Awards six times, both more than any other author ever (and she is a contender for a ninth Hugo Award this year for her excellent novella "Inside Job").

Fire Watch is a collection of short fiction, published in 1984. It was Willis's first solo book (she had previously coauthored Water Witch, a collaboration with Cynthia Felice). Two of the stories in Fire Watch had won the first of her many awards to come -- the title story, about a time traveler caught in the London Blitz of World War II, won both the Hugo and Nebula Awards for Best Novelette of 1982 and the poignant "A Letter from the Clearys" won the Nebula Award for Best Short Story of 1982 -- yet Willis was still relatively unknown when the book was published. Because of this, and because collections of short fiction generally do not sell as well as novels, the initial print run for Fire Watch was quite small, which is why copies of the first edition (especially signed copies) are highly prized by collectors.

Connie Willis signed my copy of Fire Watch two weeks ago, when she was so amazingly kind as to come to Denver to meet with my son and a group of his 4th and 5th grade classmates, who had just finished reading her outstanding novel Doomsday Book, next week's Book of the Week.