(1919–mid-October 1999)
Walter A. Willis won a Hugo Award as Outstanding Actifan (1958) and a Retrospective Hugo Award (2004, for work done in 1953) for his fanzine Slant (with James White); Slant and its successor Hyphen (with Chuch Harris) remain classics, as is his enduring fable The Enchanted Duplicator (1954, with Bob Shaw).
“WAW with the Crew in ’52”, a fund to bring him from Belfast for the World Science Fiction Convention, laid a foundation for the Trans-Atlantic Fan Fund (TAFF); he became the first European administrator. (He was brought back to the US by a second special fund, the Tenth Anniversary Willis Fund.) He was Fan Guest of Honor at MagiCon, the 1992 Worldcon. His fanwriting was collected in The Willis Papers (Johnstone & Fields eds. 1961) and Fanorama (Robert Lichtman ed. 1998). Particularly notable, however, is the enormous compilation made by Richard Bergeron in Warhoon 28, a special hardbound issue of his fanzine devoted entirely to Willis. He received nominations for the 1951 Best Fan Writer Retro Hugo and the 1954 Best Fan Writer Retro Hugo.
Like his character Jophan, he slid into fandom on his Shield of Umor.
