I had an interesting conversation with Fory Ackerman when we were his guest liaisons for Icon in Iowa in 1998. Someone else had asked Fory about God, and it came out that he was a staunch atheist. I asked him about it a little more, and he suggested that his wife, Wendayne, had loved a man before him and had lost him in the war. He wasn’t sure how he would feel in the afterlife if they all three were standing around looking at each other.
When we first picked Fory up at the airport, he told us he wanted swordfish. In Iowa. Luckily, we had connections, and we found him swordfish at the Ground Round thanks to Whacked Bob, who worked there.
After his press conferences and interviews on Saturday night he was keen to have dessert, and Bryon took him out and found him wild berry pie. They sat alone in the hotel restaurant about midnight and talked.
For those of you who really don’t know how important 4E was to science fiction, MSNBC will catch you up. In 1999, we journeyed to see the Ackermansion and Fory’s vast collection of books, magazines, and SF/F memorabilia. If ever we had a historian, he was it.
Since Fory didn’t believe in the afterlife, he should know that his life here counted all the more, and we appreciated him while he was here.
