Robert Bloch

Robert Albert Bloch (April 5 1917, Chicago – September 23 1994, Los Angeles) was a prolific American writer. He was the son of Raphael "Ray" Bloch (1884, Chicago-1952, Chicago), a bank cashier, and his wife Stella Loeb (1880, Attica, Indiana-1944, Milwaukee, WI), a social worker, both of German-Jewish descent.
Bloch wrote hundreds of short stories and over twenty novels, usually crime fiction, science fiction, and, perhaps most influentially, horror fiction (Psycho and American Gothic). He was one of the youngest members of the Lovecraft Circle; Lovecraft was Bloch's mentor and one of the first to seriously encourage his talent.
He was a contributor to pulp magazines such as Weird Tales in his early career, and was also a prolific screenwriter. He was the recipient of the Hugo Award (for his story "That Hell-Bound Train"), 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 humorous character Lefty Feep in a story for Fantastic Adventures. He also worked for a time in local vaudeville, and tried to break into writing for nationally known performers. He was a good friend of the science fiction writer Stanley G. Weinbaum. He worked on assistant city attorney Carl F. Zeidler's successful 1940 campaign to become mayor of Milwaukee, and afterwards worked in advertising for several years.Milwaukee Record, "Bloch-Buster: Milwaukee’s Connection to Psycho, H.P. Lovecraft, and Robert Bloch", Tea Krulos, May 6, 2015.
==Early writing career==
During the 1930s, Bloch was an avid reader of the pulp magazine Weird Tales. H. P. Lovecraft, a frequent contributor to that magazine, became one of his favorite writers. As a teenager, Bloch befriended and corresponded with Lovecraft, who gave the promising youngster advice on his own fiction-writing efforts. Bloch's first professional sales, at the age of just seventeen, were to Weird Tales with the short stories "The Feast in the Abbey" and "The Secret in the Tomb". Bloch's early stories were strongly influenced by Lovecraft, and a number of his stories were set in, and extended, the world of Lovecraft's Cthulhu Mythos. It was Bloch who invented, for example, the oft-cited Mythos texts De Vermis Mysteriis and Cultes des Goules.
The young Bloch even appears, thinly disguised, as the character "Robert Blake" in Lovecraft's story "The Haunter of the Dark", which is dedicated to Bloch. In this story, Lovecraft kills off the Bloch character, repaying a courtesy Bloch paid Lovecraft with his tale "The Shambler from the Stars", in which the Lovecraft-inspired figure dies; the story goes so far as to use Bloch's then-current street address in Milwaukee. (Bloch even had a signed certificate from Lovecraft [and some of his creations] giving Bloch permission to kill Lovecraft off in a story.) Bloch later wrote a third tale, "The Shadow From the Steeple", picking up where "The Haunter of the Dark" finished.
After Lovecraft's death in 1937, Bloch continued writing for Weird Tales, where he became one of its most popular authors. He also began contributing to other pulps, such as the science fiction magazine Amazing Stories. He gradually evolved away from Lovecraftian imitations towards a unique style of his own. One of the first distinctly "Blochian" stories was "Yours Truly, Jack the Ripper", which was published in Weird Tales in 1943. The story was Bloch's take on the Jack the Ripper legend, and was filled out with more genuine factual details of the case than many other fictional treatments. Bloch followed up this story with a number of others in a similar vein dealing with half-historic, half-legendary figures such as the Man in the Iron Mask ("Iron Mask", 1944), the Marquis de Sade ("The Skull of the Marquis de Sade", 1945) and Lizzie Borden ("Lizzie Borden Took an Axe...", 1946).
==Psycho and screenwriting==
Bloch became most famous as the author of the novel Psycho, which was adapted by Joseph Stefano into the screenplay for 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. 
He also penned two scripts for the original series of Star Trek, "Catspaw" and "What Are Little Girls Made Of?". In both of these episodes there are direct references in dialogues to incredibly ancient beings known as Old Ones.Memory Alpha, "Old Ones (extragalactic)". He also contributed to the Boris Karloff-hosted series Thriller. 
Bloch also contributed to Harlan Ellison's science fiction anthology, Dangerous Visions. His story, "A Toy for Juliette", evoked 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".
Bloch died in 1994. He was cremated and interred in the Room of Prayer columbarium at Westwood Village Memorial Park Cemetery in Los Angeles.
==Writings on Bloch==
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). Joshi examines Bloch's literary relationship with Lovecraft in a further essay in The Evolution of the Weird Tale (2004).
In addition, Randall D. Larson has authored three reference books about Robert Bloch: The Robert Bloch Reader's Guide (1986, a literary analysis of Bloch's entire output through 1986), The Complete Robert Bloch (1986, an illustrated bibliography of Bloch's writing), and The Robert Bloch Companion (1986, collected interviews).
A compilation of Bloch's Cthulhu Mythos fiction, titled Mysteries of the Worm, was published by Chaosium with commentary by Robert M. Price.
==Selected Bibliography==
===Novels=== 
*Strange Eons (1978)
===Collections===
*The Opener of the Way (1945)
*Pleasant Dreams: Nightmares (1960)
*Mysteries of the Worm (1981, 1993, 2009)
*Flowers from the Moon and Other Lunacies (1998)
===Short Fiction===
*"The Shambler from the Stars" (1935)
*"The Secret in the Tomb" (1935)
*"The Suicide in the Study" (1935)
*"Black Lotus" (1935)
*"The Opener of the Way" (1936)
*"The Faceless God" (1936)
*"The Grinning Ghoul" (1936)
*"The Dark Demon" (1936)
*"Mother of Serpents" (1936)
*"The Mannikin" (1937)
*"The Brood of Bubastis" (1937)
*"The Creeper in the Crypt" (1937)
*"The Secret of Sebek" (1937)
*"Fane of the Black Pharaoh" (1937)
*"The Black Kiss" (with Henry Kuttner) (1937)
*"Eyes of the Mummy" (1938)
*"The Sorcerer's Jewel" (1939)
*"The Dark Isle" (1939)
*"Death Is an Elephant" (1939)
*"Black Bargain" (1942)
*"Hell on Earth" (1942)
*"The Unspeakable Betrothal" (1949)
*"Satan's Servants" (1949)
*"The Shadow from the Steeple" (1950)
*"Notebook Found in a Deserted House" (1951)
*"Terror in Cut-Throat Cove" (1958)
*"The Man Who Collected Poe" (1961)
*"Philtre Tip" (1961)
=== Non-fiction===
*"Poe and Lovecraft" (1973)
==Footnotes==
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Category:Lovecraft's Correspondents
Category:Deceased (Real World)
Category:Artists