Everything about Robert Bloch totally explained
» For the French racing driver, see Robert Bloch (racing driver).
Robert Albert Bloch (
April 5 1917,
Chicago –
September 23 1994,
Los Angeles) was a prolific
American writer, primarily of
crime,
horror and
science fiction. 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). 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. In the 1960s, he wrote 3 stories for .
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 [andsome 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).
Politics
In 1939, Bloch was contacted by
James Doolittle, who was managing the campaign for a little-known assistant attorney in
Milwaukee, Wisconsin named
Carl Zeidler. He was asked to work on his speechwriting, advertising, and photo ops, in collaboration with Harold Gauer. They created elaborate campaign shows; in Bloch's 1993 autobiography,
Once Around the Bloch, he gives an inside account of the campaign, and the innovations he and Gauer came up with — for instance, the original releasing-balloons-from-the-ceiling
shtick. He comments bitterly on how, after Zeidler's victory, they were ignored and not even paid their promised salaries. He ends the story with a wryly philosophical point:
» If Carl Zeidler hadn't asked Jim Doolittle to manage his campaign, Doolittle would never have contacted me about it. And the only reason Doolittle knew me to begin with was because he read my yarn ("The Cloak") in
Unknown.
» Rattling this chain of circumstances, one may stretch it a bit further. If I hadn't written a little
vampire story called "The Cloak", Carl Zeidler might never have become mayor of Milwaukee.
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, although he also penned several scripts for the original series of including "
What Are Little Girls Made Of?", "
Wolf in the Fold", and "
Catspaw". He seemed happiest, among his television work, with his contributions 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.
Books and Media
Novels
Short-story collections
The Opener of the Way (1945)
Sea Kissed (1945)
Terror in the Night (1958)
(1960)
Blood Runs Cold (1961)
Nightmares (1961)
More Nightmares (1961)
Yours Truly, Jack the Ripper (1962)
Atoms and Evil (1962)
Horror 7 (1963)
Bogey Men (1963)
House of the Hatchet (1965)
The Skull of the Marquis de Sade (1965)
Tales in a Jugular Vein (1965)
Chamber of Horrors (1966)
The Living Demons (1967)
Dragons and Nightmares (1968)
Bloch and Bradbury (1969)
Fear Today, Gone Tomorrow (1971)
House of the Hatchet (1976)
The King of Terrors (1977)
The Best of Robert Bloch (1977)
Cold Chills (1977)
Out of the Mouths of Graves (1978)
Such Stuff as Screams Are Made Of (1979)
Mysteries of the Worm (1981)
Midnight Pleasures (1987)
Lost in Space and Time With Lefty Feep (1987)
The Complete Stories of Robert Bloch: Volume 1: Final Reckonings (1987)
The Complete Stories of Robert Bloch: Volume 2: Bitter Ends (1987)
The Complete Stories of Robert Bloch: Volume 3: Last Rites (1987)
Fear and Trembling (1989)
Screams (1989)
Mysteries of the Worm (rev. 1993) from Chaosium books
The Early Fears (1994)
Robert Bloch: Appreciations of the Master (1995)
Flowers from the Moon and Other Lunacies (1998)
The Lost Bloch: Volume 1: The Devil With You! (1999)
The Lost Bloch: Volume 2: Hell on Earth (2000)
The Lost Bloch: Volume 3: Crimes and Punishments (2002)
The Reader's Bloch: Volume 1: The Fear Planet and Other Unusual Destinations (2005)
Non-fiction
The Eighth Stage of Fandom (1962)
Out of My Head (1986)
Once Around the Bloch: An Unauthorized Autobiography (1993)Further Information
Get more info on 'Robert Bloch'.
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