The Robert Bloch Companion: Collected Interviews, 1969-1986 (Starmont Studies in Literary Criticism)

During a writing career spanning more than fifty years, Robert Bloch has become one of the best-loved figures of science fiction, fantasy, psychological crime and horror fiction, his work being among the most entertaining and enduring efforts in these fields. Yet, taken as a whole - a body of work spanning more than half a century - Bloch's writing can be seen as far more than simple entertainment. He has frequently espoused the opinion that writers must have a point of view if they are to be anything beyond mere reporters. The Robert Bloch Companion compiles more than 25 interviews that Bloch has given over the past twenty years, including several unpublished segments and excerpts from letters. Rather than simply reprint these interviews verbatim, one after the other, each individual interview has been edited to eliminate repetition and combined into what I hope is a cohesive whole, organized somewhat chronologically and by subject. To my knowledge, this is the first ever compilation of anyone's Collected Interviews to be integrated in this fashion, and it is my hope that it will serve as an informative and illuminating autobiographical look at Robert Bloch, the author and the man. It was my intention that The Robert Bloch Companion join with my literary analysis, The Reader's Guide To Robert Bloch (Starmont, 1985) and my illustrated bibliography, The Complete Robert Bloch (Fandom Unltd, 1986) to form an important trilogy of reference materials on this author from three fundamental viewpoints: that of the reader, that of his published work and, now, that of his own words. - from the preface by Randall D. Larson