R.F. Lucchetti (1930-2024)
R.F. LUCCHETTI, 94, the dean of Brazilian pulp writers, died March 5, 2024 of respiratory failure following a stroke in Ribeirão Preto, in the Brazilian state of São Paulo.
Rubens Francisco Lucchetti was born January 29, 1930 in Santa Rita do Passa Quatro. He left his mark on the fields of horror cinema, comics and literature, crime fiction, pulp radio shows, cultural journalism, science fiction, and the book market for genre fiction pocket books – an array of contributions as no other in the history of popular culture in Brazil.
In 1956, he created and wrote the pulp hero radio show O Escorpião Escalate (The Red Scorpion), in Ribeirão Preto, also in the interior of São Paulo. An adept of classical horror, he wrote horror comic book scripts for most of the great local artists, but especially for Italian-born Nico Rosso. He was the main screenwriter for José Mojica Marins, the famous Coffin Joe character and moviemaker, and Ivan Cardoso, for whom he would write a 1990 homage to O Escorpião Escarlate with a feature film with that title, but in a crossover with Alvaro Aguiar’s As Aventuras do Anjo (The Adventures of the Angel; 1948 to 1966 at the National Radio), and the novelization of his original script.
His career spanned 82 years. He first published at 12 in a neighborhood newspaper, and wrote more than 1,500 books (mostly under pseudonyms or as ghostwriter), about 300 comic book scripts, 25 movie scripts, hundreds of radio and TV scripts, and dozens of stories published in the local pulps. He was also an experimental animator, creating animation short films in which drawings were done directly into the film reels. More importantly for, he edited and wrote for the burgeoning field of pocket books during 1972 to 1981, at the Bruguera/Cedibra publishing company, helping to set local writers in the practice of authoring westerns, crime fiction, military fiction, science fiction and horror under pseudonyms. As KL. Munro he wrote the first Brazilian space opera series, the adventures of the Aquarius team, with 15 novellas published by Cedibra in its Coleção S.O.S. in 1974.
Recently, he and his son (and main collaborator) Marco Aurélio Lucchetti were curating his best works in the Coleção R. F. Lucchetti through Editorial Corvo, with 16 books so far. He is survived by his son.
–Roberto de Sousa Causo
