ANDREA SEABROOK, host: A science fiction legend died this week, the man who coined the phrase sci-fi. His name, Forrest J. Ackerman. He was 92. He was a writer, literary agent, and the force behind the magazine Famous Monsters of Film Land. Ackerman discovered the writer Ray Bradbury, and he amassed a mind-boggling collection of sci-fi and fantasy artifacts - Mr. Spock's pointy ears, Bela Lugosi's Dracula cape, and the pterodactyl that swooped in for Fay Wray in King Kong.</s>ANDREA SEABROOK, host: Forrest Ackerman once told the Los Angeles Times how he came up with the phrase sci-fi. It was 1954, he said. My wife and I were listening to the radio, and when someone said the word hi-fi, the word sci-fi suddenly hit me. If my interests had been soap operas, I guess it would have been cry-fi or James Bond, spy-fi. Forrest J. Ackerman died Thursday of heart failure. He was 92. This is NPR, National Public Radio.
The man credited with coining the phrase "sci-fi" died this week at the age of 92. Host Andrea Seabrook has this remembrance of Forrest J. Ackerman.