Talk:Forrest J Ackerman

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[edit] Clifton's Cafeteria

I believe that "the now legendary Clifton’s Cafeteria Science Fiction Club" is the same as the Los Angeles Science Fantasy Society, which Ackerman was a founding member of and which met at Clifton's Cafeteria during the late 1930s. Technically, it was the Los Angeles Science Fiction League (or the Los Angeles chapter of the Science Fiction League) from 1934 to 1940, when it voted to secede from the SFL and become an independent club.

Ackerman has told me personally that his middle name is James but that he prefers to use the initial J only without a period.75.25.28.114 15:26, 9 September 2007 (UTC)Fred Patten

[edit] "J" or "J."?

I might be wrong, but I think Ackerman's middle name is just "j", without the period (same as "Harry S Truman"). Will try to confirm before messing with redirects, etc.

The above is correct, 4sj's middle name is J with no period, and someone should fix the redirects (I don't know how).

I believe his middle name is James, but he goes by "Forrest J Ackerman", no period. If I (or someone else) gets a positive answer on which this should be, I'll be happy to move the article and fix the redirects. (By the way, Truman himself, although he had several quips about his nameless middle initial, used a period in his signature, as discussed in the "Truman's middle initial" section of his Wikipedia article.) — Jeff Q 09:28, 5 Jan 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Jan. 12, 2006 Copy Edits

I made some copy edit on Jan. 12 (UTC). In addition to the usual link work, I edited some sentences for flow and to reduce excess verbiage: many sentences were basically running lists. I removed two sentences about actors he knew and writers he corresponded with, since that is not really notable or important, given that his stature is large enough that such acquaintances and correspondence is completely expected and unsurprising.

Mentor to directors: I almost removed the claim that "he served as a mentor" to a large list of famous film directors, and I still think we should remove it. In the interim, I have put a citation-needed tag on it. I think the claim is an exaggeration, both in the number of directors and in the degree of influence, since "mentor" implies roles of teacher and close associate and also implied a great deal of influence.

First Hugo: I changed that to first Hugo for best fan writer.

Perry Rhodan series: I reduced the verbiage and removed the non-neutral-PoV (nNPoV) "unfortunately".

Appearances: Merged redundant material from above into this section and reduced verbiage ("e.g.").

See also section: The lists are not specifically related to Ackerman so I removed the section.

In summary, I think the article as I found it had nNPoV over-awed fan cruft in it that I tried to eliminate. Hu 01:37, 12 January 2006 (UTC)