Robert Fordyce Aickman (27 June 1914 – 26 February 1981) was an English writer and conservationist. As a conservationist, he co-founded the Inland Waterways Association, a group which has preserved from destruction and restored England's inland canal system. As a writer, he is best known for his supernatural fiction, which he described as "strange stories". Aickman's fiction often relied on unsettling atmosphere and indirect suggestion, along with characters who experience "dislocation in time and space", rather than explicit depiction of supernatural or gory events. The writer of his obituary in The Times, as quoted by Mike Ashley, said: "...