Ben Indick, popular and highly esteemed fanzine fan, passed away September 28 at the age of 86 after a period of shaky health. He is survived by his wife, Janet, two grown children and two grandchildren.

In years gone by Ben was a prolific writer of letters of comment to fanzines, File 770 luckily among them. He became one of the leading personalities in Donn Brazier’s famous Title in the 1970s.  

Andrew Porter reminisces: “Ben Indick received the First Fandom Hall of Fame award at Anticipation, the 2009 Worldcon. Besides his long-running fanzine Ben’s Beat, he had hundreds of articles, reviews and other material published, for instance George Alec Effinger: From Entropy to Budayeen (1992), ‘H. Russell Wakefield: The Man Who Believed in Ghosts’ in Discovering Classic Horror Fiction (Borgo Press, 1992), short stories in a variety of places, an interview with Nelson S. Bond in Publishers Weekly, and material in REHUPA, the Robert E. Howard United Press Association.”

Robert Lichtman advised the Trufen list: “Contributions in Ben’s memory can be made to The Dramatists Guild Fund. The Guild, of which he was a lifetime member, is America’s national organization of playwrights, and is a group that was dear to his heart.”

[Via Robert Lichtman and Andrew Porter.]