One of my all-time favorites. I’m not sad he’s gone…he was pretty old and had been more or less ill for awhile.
He’s leaving behind a huge body of unbelievably great writing. We should all be so lucky.
Having grown up in California I had the fortune to see Ellison several times. A few times at bookstores and a few at cons. Good speaker, always had stories to tell. I’m kicking myself for having lost his business card, which he gave me once when I asked if he’d be open to speaking at my school. It was a simple gray or silver card with his name and info on it and in the center were the words: I write.
For a short time we could also hear him on Friday nights on the radio when he would host a radio show called Hour 25. He was doing it for a friend but I think he didn’t last because he pissed off the FCC too much with his cussing, which should not surprise anyone if true.
An Icon and a Lion. I think this article was shared on twitter today (a fantastic read on its own) but it recounts a run-in a young Ellison had with Frank Sinatra, refusing to be pushed around or bullied by ole Blue Eyes. Very Ellison.
I think I read just about every book (certainly the sci-fi ones), that he has ever written. He will be missed. Did someone say he has a youtube series or channel?
Arguably the most important SF writer of the 70s (sort of a toss-up with Ursula LeGuin). Enormously influential, and well outside just the SF field.
Damn it, this world just keeps getting worse and worse.
Farewell Harlan–you were an ass, but you were my kind of ass.
Ellison was often a guest on Prisoners of Gravity, a TV show dedicated to exploring topics in SF and comics. YouTube clips should exist of these appearances.
He also spent a lot of time on the old Tom Snyder show, Tomorrow. There’s a great series of clips of him with some of the old TOS cast.
Here’s another great one:
Science-fiction authors of all people should live forever so they live to be proven wrong on (almost) all their predictions.
My pet Wookie and I think otherwise.
The Steam version of I Have No Mouth And I Must Scream is currently on sale for $1.49. Just sayin’
As if City on the Edge were even top 5. Sigh, normals.
Oh it’s a good episode, and whatever they did to stomp on Harlan’s vision worked out fine for the show. I was just kvetching about the conventional wisdom that it’s the best TOS episode.
Isaac Asimov wrote a story about meeting a young writer at a convention. After the writer left, he remarked to the other writers that he was with that the guy reminded him of a young Harlan Ellison. And he said, “Someone whose name I don’t remember, except it was Robert Silverberg, said, ‘Let’s kill him now.’”
Wait, Ellison was pals with Hubbard? I know they knew each other, but always thought Ellison was not a fan of Hubbard since he basically outed Hubbard saying Scientology was just a way to make him rich.
The Scalzi piece about Ellison is great; the ending is terrific.
— Alan
Yeah, back when they were just cocksure writers back in the day. To hear HE tell the story, he had some kind of Mark of Cain that L-Ron had bestowed on him. None of the Scientologists would bother him.
This is an old story but it’s new to me. The short version: because a writer for Marvel completely ripped off Soldier for an issue of The Incredible Hulk (funny how people keep appropriating Soldier!) Ellison got an apology and one copy of every Marvel comic for the rest of his life.
So I saw this (bumped) thread and gasped. Harlan Ellison died!
And I even posted in this thread earlier!
We are all suffering from weird time dilation effects. I can’t believe that this thread was made way back in 2018 and not a few weeks ago. Yet anything more than three months ago may as well be a decade ago.
Bump for an awesome interview, which I had never seen before. To paraphrase Bonnie Raitt, I miss Harlan Ellison more than I miss being 8 years old.
