William Bond Warren (April 26, 1943 – October 7, 2016) was an American film historian, critic, and one of the leading authorities on science fiction, horror, and fantasy films. Early life and education Warren was born in North Bend, Oregon and grew up in Gardiner on the Umpqua River. He became interested in science fiction films during the genre's first boom period in the 1950s after seeing The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951). Discovering Famous Monsters of Filmland with its first issues, he received regular acknowledgments and thanks as a contributor throughout the early years of the magazine, along with Don Glut, Eric Hoffman, and Mark Thomas McGee. Move to Los Angeles Warren and his wife Beverly moved to Los Angeles in 1966. As an assistant to science fiction agent, editor, and collector Forrest J Ackerman, Warren came into contact with major filmmakers-in-waiting, also inspired by Ackerman; he went on to develop personal friendships with several of them. He and Beverly became very active in the Los Angeles Science Fantasy Society, as well as being involved in many of the Los Angeles-centric science fiction conventions held through the 1980s. He and friend Allan Rothstein were on the convention committee of L.A. Con II, the 42nd World Science Fiction Convention (Worldcon). Taking advantage of their knowledge of who was attending and the convention's programming schedule, they wrote the murder mystery, Fandom is a Way of Death, set at the convention. Everyone named in the story, except the detective Johnny Atlantis, were real people, including all the victims and the murderer. This was sold separately as a convention publication, with the solution placed in an envelope with every copy. On the last day of L.A. Con II, the murderer was revealed and took a bow. Warren's 1968 short story "Death Is a Lonely Place" appeared in the first issue of the magazine Worlds of Fantasy. During this period, he also wrote stories for Warren Publishing's oversize black-and-white comic books Creepy, Eerie, and Vampirella. Books In the late 1960s and early 1970s, Warren made significant contributions to Walt Lee's three volume Reference Guide to Fantastic Films (Chelsea-Lee Books, 1973). He helped plan the project, did the final research, and prepared the final type galleys for publication. Warren was also a regular contributor to Leonard Maltin's Movie Guide, a book series of capsule film reviews that began in 1969; it was updated annually