Profile of Robert Bloch on Famous Like Me

Robert Albert Bloch (April 5, 1917 – September 23, 1994) was a prolific American writer.

Bloch wrote hundreds of short stories and over twenty novels, usually crime fiction, science fiction, and perhaps most influentially horror fiction. He was a contributor to pulp magazines in his early career, and was also a prolific screenwriter. He was the recipient of the Hugo Award, the Bram Stoker Award, and the World Fantasy Award. He served a term as President of the Mystery Writers of America.

Robert Bloch was also a major contributor to science fiction fanzines and fandom in general. In the 1940s, he created the humosous character Lefty Feep in a story for Fantastic Adventures.

He was a friend and correspondent of H. P. Lovecraft, and was the author of a number of stories that were set in, and which extended, the world of the Cthulhu Mythos. Bloch even appears, thinly disguised, as the character "Robert Blake" in Lovecraft's story The Haunter of the Dark, which is dedicated to him, the only Lovecraft tale so inscribed. In this story Lovecraft kills the Bloch character off, repaying a courtesy Bloch started with his tale "The Shambler from the Stars" in which the Lovecraft inspired figure dies. Block later wrote a third tale, picking up where The Haunter of the Dark finished.

He became most famous as the author of the novel Psycho, which was adapted — quite faithfully, but by Joseph Stefano rather than Bloch— into the film of the same name, directed by Alfred Hitchcock. His best-known work as a screenwriter is probably The Night Walker (1964), which he wrote for William Castle although he also penned several scripts for the original series of Star Trek. Aside from his immense output, he gained a reputation among fellow writers for his kindness, generosity and laughably atrocious puns.

Bloch was born in Chicago, Illinois. In addition to writing science fiction, he also worked in vaudeville and, along with Harold Gauer, helped to elect Carl Zeidler as mayor of Milwaukee in 1940.

His autobiography entitled Once Around the Bloch (ISBN 0-312-85373-4) was published in 1993. There is an essay on his work, with particular reference to the novels Psycho and The Scarf, in S. T. Joshi's book The Modern Weird Tale (2001).

He also contributed to Harlan Ellison's science fiction anthology, Dangerous Visions. His story, "A Toy for Juliette" featured themes stemming from both the Marquis de Sade and Jack the Ripper. In fact, Ellison's own contribution to the anthology was a direct follow-up of Bloch's, and was titled "The Prowler in the City at the Edge of the World".

Books and Media

Fiction

• Psycho (novel) 1959
• American Gothic
• The Scarf (novel)
• Firebug (novel)
• Atoms and Evil (collection)
• House of the Hatchet (collection)
• Such Stuff as Screams are Made Of (collection)
• Strange Eons (a "Cthulhu Mythos" novel)
• Psycho II (Novel)
• Psycho House (Novel)
• Midnight Pleasures (Collection)

Non-fiction

• The Eighth Stage of Fandom
• Once Around the Bloch, an Unauthorised Autobiography (1993)

External resources

• http://mgpfeff.home.sprynet.com/bloch.html
• http://members.tripod.com/~gwillick/bloch.html
• "The Ultimate Cthulhu Mythos Book List" — Listing of all mythos novels, anthologies, collections, comic books, and more.
• Open Directory category: Bloch, Robert
• Robert Bloch at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database

This content from Wikipedia is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article Robert Bloch