AG Monday
Harlan Ellison, part 1.
And so begins our multi-part look at Harlan Ellison, one of the most influential writers, editors, and personalities in the realm of “speculative fiction.” In this first episode, we look at Harlan Ellison the public persona: the guy we knew from TV and radio interviews, convention appearances, writings about himself, and other avenues. Force of nature, pugnacious champion for a more serious take on the genre, nemesis of TV producers, editor of groundbreaking SF anthologies, champion of fellow writers, vocal critic of everything that he deemed wrong about the world — call him what you will, he left a deep imprint on science fiction and fantasy. He won dozens of awards, and earned the respect and affection of his fellow SF&F writers. Most of them.
As Robert Bloch said about him, “He is the only living organism I know whose natural habitat is hot water.”
In later episodes, we’ll cover Ellison’s writing, as well as adaptations of his works to the screen.
Typewriters! The Southern California SF scene! Dead gophers! Tom Snyder! Creative writing professors! Beloved TV scripts! Fights with TV executives! Fights with editors! Fights with other writers! Fights with fans! It’s all here.
Ancient Geeks is a podcast about two geeks of a certain age re-visiting their youth. We were there when things like science fiction, fantasy, Tolkien, Star Trek, Star Wars, D&D, Marvel and DC comics, Doctor Who, and many, many other threads of modern geek culture were still on the fringes of popular culture. We were geeks before it was chic!
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I only knew Harlan tangentially, but my former partner had many interactions with the man, among others, serving with him on the WGA editorial board and being slandered by him on a radio show, leading to a threatened lawsuit and a very grudging apology.
He liked to think of himself as a fearless crusader against everything corrupt in the world, but bu the 1990s, at least, he was really just a dick.
But he should serve future generations as a cautionary tale — he started out as a brilliant writer, and thought he was feeding his talent by encouraging himself to get angrier and angrier at the world. And in the end, the anger didn’t sustain him, it paralyzed him, and he spent his last decades without producing a memorable word.
@wr: This comports with our conversations about him (we recorded 4 total eps), and so is gratifying to have those thoughts confirmed by someone with first-hand information.
I’ve never read Ellison. I got a book of some of his short stories in the 90s, but couldn’t make headway. I can’t even recall what part of what story I read. I also got his illustrated screenplay for I, Robot. I read a bit of it, before I got tired of it. The beginning was mostly cliche (reluctant protagonist, dogged reporter, dramatically broken vase). It’s still in my bookshelf.
In the 70s, Asimov wrote a non-science fiction book called Murder at the A.B.A. (American Booksellers Association). It’s a murder mystery (spoiler alert!). it features a middle aged writer called Darius Just, who happens to be short, somewhat acerbic, and who has had martial arts training. Asimov says he’s based on Ellison. the book is pretty good, and Asimov appears in it as a character.
Last, I think he was involved in Babylon 5 as a consultant of some kind. He appeared in one episode, season 4 ep. 17, as a PsiCop tech.