Robert Bloch

 

Robert Albert Bloch was a prolific American writer, primarily of crime, horror and science fiction. Bloch wrote hundreds of short stories and over twenty novels, usually crime fiction, science fiction and, perhaps most influentially, horror fiction. He was one of the youngest members of the Lovecraft Circle. H. P. 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 three scripts for Star Trek.Bloch was born in Chicago, the son of Raphael "Ray" Bloch (1884 - 1952), a bank cashier, and his wife Stella Loeb (1880 - 1944), a social worker, both of German-Jewish descent.Bloch became most famous as the author of the novel Psycho, one of the first examples of modern urban horror relying on realism rather than the supernatural, which was adapted by Joseph Stefano into the screenplay for the 1960 film of the same name, directed by Alfred Hitchcock. He had written an earlier split-personality short story, "The Real Bad Friend", which appeared in the February, 1957 Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine, that foreshadowed the 1959 novel Psycho. 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 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 died in 1994 in Los Angeles. He was cremated and interred in the Room of Prayer columbarium at Westwood Village Memorial Park Cemetery in Los Angeles.