Walt Sullivan

Walter Sullivan from a VOM cover, courtesy of Rob Hansen

(August 31, 1920 – May 23, 1944)

Walter J. Sullivan was an early fan who discovered sf in 1932 with ASF and fandom in 1937 when he subscribed to Amateur Correspondent. In November 1938, he was enticed into real fanac by Sam Moskowitz and James Taurasi and became radio editor of Fantasy-News and an assistant editor of Vadjong.

Walt served in the U.S. Army as a radio operator in India during World War II and was killed in a plane crash in China in 1944, one of fandom’s fatalities of the war. Born in New York, he went to school in New Mexico.

Tribute to Walter Sullivan by Sam Moskowitz 
Published in Fantasy Times #12
(Delivered at the First Post War Stf. Convention)

The boys are back. That is, most of them are back. But for many who lie in a geography book of lands whose pages they have turned; there is no returning.

Among those boys were science-fiction fans. With the same sincere enthusiasm for a better visioned world of tomorrow as you and I. Among these were our friends.

In paying tribute to them? I chose as a symbol Walter Sullivan. Not only because I know him personally, but because he was typical of the average science-fiction fan.

Coaxed into activity after vigorous protestations Walter soon established a reputation for himself as a reporter of science-fiction events of unusual clarity. Much of the charm, of his work lay in the fact that as he wrote, his words seemed to caress the incidents written as though they meant much to him. For at heart, Walter Sullivan had been a lonely person with his one companion his powerful short-wave set which he now beamed to the stations of the world and with scholarly zeal soon became the worlds greatest expert on the fantastic in radio.

Walter Sullivan didn’t have to die! At the time of his death he had done his share of air-missions as a radio operator and had been assigned to duty as head instructor in the radio school at the airfield feeding the Burma theatre of war. But they were so short of men that only a week before his death Walter Sullivan refused transfer to another base in India, and instead volunteered to resume his work in the air. Somewhere, near the notorious "hump”  he lost his life

Because Walter Sullivan loved the science-fiction world. Because in the company of people like us he found his greatest joy, and because I believe Walter Sullivan to be typical of every boy who gave his all in this past war, I ask the assembly to rise and stand a moment in his memory.

• Early short biography in Who's Who in Fandom 1940, page 13.
• FindAGrave entry.

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Person

1920—1944

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