Michael Moslow (1952-2010)

Michael Moslow, a New York City fan, died January 7 in local hospital from pneumonia.  

According to Dennis McCunney on SMOFS, this represented a relapse after Moslow had been in intensive care late last year, A few weeks ago he “was still wearing a trache, but was mobile and in good spirits.” Moslow was on the verge of retiring from the Post Office and moving upstate with his wife, Naomi.

The service for Moslow will be held January 11 at 10 a.m. at Shomrei Hachomos Orthodox Chapel, 4218 Fort Hamilton Parkway, Brooklyn, NY, 11219.

John Hertz: Forry Remembered at Lunacon

By John Hertz: Lunacon is hosted annually by the New York S-F Society, the Lunarians. Lunacon LII in 2009 was March 20-22 at the Hilton Rye Town, Rye Brook, N.Y., fondly known as the Klein Bottle Hotel because the fourth floor is the seventh floor and the green grass grows all around.

The Forry Ackerman memorial was Sunday morning at 10. Lee Gilliland moderated Louis Epstein, Dennis McCunney, the Wombat, and me. Dave Kyle was attending the con but not staying in the hotel. We asked him to join us but he couldn’t get his car through the multi-dimensional barriers in time.

Without Kyle, everyone on the panel was much younger than Forry. I thought this showed how he reached into the future. The Wombat had met him in 1973 – when Forry had already been an active fan almost forty years.

Lenny Provenzano in the audience had some photos of Forry and his house the Ackermansion on a laptop computer. Failing to get a big screen and a projector we put the laptop on the table and crowded in. Forry would have found some way to joke about the laptop turning into a desktop and no doubt being a were-computer.

Gilliland who is active in Man from U.N.C.L.E. fandom remembered Forry in “The Vampire Affair”. He had many cameo appearances. Epstein who co-founded the National Tolkien Society remembered Forry in the 1981 edition of Tolkien’s letters. Forry was an agent for an early project to film The Lord of the Rings. Tolkien’s comments are pungent today.

I told how Forry had co-founded the Big Heart Award. When he stepped down from administering it after fifty years, we could finally give it to him. He won the first fan Hugo. When he was called to the stage he said “But I really think this should go to Ken Slater” and walked away.

Once Forry was driving Walt Willis across the country. Just thinking of those two punsters together staggers the mind. In Wyoming he told Willis they should visit Cheyenne because of its literary reputation. Willis said he didn’t know it. “What!” said Forry, “you haven’t heard of Cheyenne’s fiction?”

Forry held Open House at the Ackermansion every Saturday he was in town. He had hundreds of thousands of books, and things too fierce to mention. He told tours, “I’ve read every last word.” They would gasp. “Yes,” he would say, “as soon as I get another book I turn to the last page, and read the last word. So I’ve read every last word.”

Arisia Conreport in PW

Who knew that Publishers Weekly Genreville blogger Rose Fox helps run a con? Well, I guess plenty of people knew she runs Arisia’s green room — and now so do I.

Fox’s January 20 installment “On the Road: Arisia 2009, and Fannish Collectivism” explores the con’s unique dealers’ set-up. Rather than using the typical setup of a ballroom filled with tables, at Arisia they set aside a floor of sleeping rooms where dealers are allowed to sell their wares. (Dennis McCunney explains in a comment that this arrangement emphatically is the exception, not the rule.) Fox notes:

One of the dealer rooms was rented by a group called Hot Chicks with Books: several female writers who pooled their money and time to create a little temporary collective bookshop selling their work. A couple of the participants have said it was extremely successful and they look forward to doing it again next year and perhaps at other cons.

[Thanks to Francis Hamit for the link.]