Ed Wood
(April 28, 1926 – May 12, 1996)
Ed Wood was a long-time sercon fan and well-known curmudgeon. He became a fan in the 1950s and worked on many regionals and Worldcons. He was a member of the University of Chicago Science Fiction Club, the Little Men, Pensfa, and PSFA. He published the fanzine, the Journal of Science Fiction. He was a reviewer for Luna Monthly and Science Fiction Times. He married fellow fan JoAnn Wood.
He was one of the founders of Advent:Publishers, a major fannish small press. He lived for many years in Chicago before moving to Texas.
He was a passionate collector, which two stories about him exemplify:
Before he and JoAnn were married, she and a friend decided to clean up his kitchen. (Presumably he lived in fannish splendor.) He was sitting in his book and magazine-filled living room when JoAnn called, "Hey, Ed, where's the Comet?" He replied, "On the third shelf next to the bedroom door. There were five issues between December 1940 and July 1941."
At FanHistoriCon 3 in 1995, Ed was attending a panel on what do we want to happen to all out stuff after we die? Partway through the panel, Ed stood up and dramatically announced that he was not going to pass his collection on to anyone. It made sense only in the context of his life and when he died he was going to have it burned as a funeral pyre. He then stalked out of the room. (Ed was given to the occasional bit of drama.) (JoAnn whispered loudly, "Like hell he is!")
In 1966, at Tricon, the 1966 Worldcon, at the "Critics in Science Fiction" panel, Ed stood up, shook his fist, and roared, "I will not stand idly by and see the grandeur and glory that is science fiction crucified upon a cross of pedantic scholasticism."
He was semi-immortalied in The Enchanted Duplicator as Dedwood, who, like Ed, was sercon and disapproved of fandom's light-hearted, irreverent side. Ed had once boasted of having thrown away every issue of Walt Willis's classic fannish fanzine Hyphen, unread.
Mike Resnick wrote a wonderful appreciation of Ed in Mimosa #30 — read here
| Person | 1926—1996 |
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