To make a long story short, back in the late '60s/early ‘70s, Ellison edited a series of SF anthologies. For the last one (The Last Dangerous Visions) he promised the authors for years that the book would, no really, be coming out Real Soon Now, with numerous excuses as to why it wasn’t out yet. Meanwhile he held control over the stories’ publication rights so that they couldn’t even be published elsewhere. A number of authors have died since then. ~30 years later, apparently he’s now admitting that yeah, maybe it’s not gonna be published, but previously even mentioning the title was supposedly a hell of a big button to push in him.
Google Christopher Priest’s “The Last Deadloss Visions” for an excellent analysis (or look it up where it was published) - the Wiki article says that it was pulled off the net, but you never know with such things.
Isaac Asimov was beloved last time I checked. He was also known as a prolific chaser of skirts.
Re Last Dangerous Visions
If the contracts were worded in the standard way, the writers could not get those stories published anywhere else until they were published in LDV. Asimov wrote a Black Widowers mystery centering on a publisher buying a story and sitting on it (When No Man Pursueth).
> If he’s such a misogynist, why have literally THOUSANDS of women lined up to
> sleep with him–a geeky 5’3" writer with an intelligence and wit that’s out of
> ballpark?
Dozens of women, maybe even a couple of hundred of them, but not thousands of them. It’s not unknown for an intelligent, manipulative man to get a gullible woman to fall for him. For each of his first four wives, Ellison got a reasonably pretty woman to accept his “I’m a brilliant writer” act for a couple of years, and then each of them left him when they got tired of him. His fifth marriage has lasted because he toned down his jerkiness when he realized that this might be the last chance he would ever get to have a young, pretty women marry him.
He is, incidentally, a liar who can make up a story to impress a random person he’s just met on the spur of the moment.
It’s true that first publication rights are a standard provision of such contracts. However, Ellison was still soliciting contributions long after it became painfully obvious the book was never going to be published, and I understand Ellison has been extremely vindicative to contributors who have requested to be released from their contracts.
It’s not the first time Ellison has ever been a jerk. In the introduction to *The Other Glass Teat, * Ellison concocted a cock-and-bull story about how the Nixon administration had conspired to suppress The Glass Teat, apparently to cover up the book’s embarassingly poor sales in its first edition. (I’m embarassed to admit I swallowed the story hook, line and sinker.) He also has a reputation for ignoring deadlines outrageously. Ellison has practically made a career out of castigating others in publishing, film and television for their supposed lack of integrity, and then he goes and pulls stunts like this. I realize all of us are hypocrites to some degree, but this really is too much.
That’s not proof, of course, but it makes sense. You wouldn’t put something like that past Nixon or Agnew, would you?
IIRC, in his foreword Ellison claims the whole thing happened because, before the second volume was published, someone brought to Agnew’s attention a line from one of the columns in the first: "Spiro Agnew masturbates with copies of the Reader’s Digest."
According to the website quoted in BrainGlutton’s post:
> We do know for a fact that the Nixon Administration kept an enemies list and
> that Ellison was on it.
Yes, there was an enemies list. Was Ellison on it? Cite?
BrainGlutton writes:
> !!! First I’ve ever heard of Dr. A cheating on his wife! Do you have a cite?
He discusses it in his autobiography. He says that he was faithful for the first 12 years or so of his first marriage to his first wife, although he was well-known for making remarks to other women (while his wife wasn’t there) about what he’s like to do with them. This was mostly passed off as being obnoxious humor. Finally one of the women took him up on his offer, and Asimov says that he had a number of affairs after that point. His first wife divorced in the early 1970’s, and soon he married his second wife. I don’t know if he cheated on her.
Ellison is an important science fiction author of the period, but I wouldn’t call myself a fan.
I would be more likely to believe him (or anyone) than Nixon; but then I want to dig him up and be sure they drove a stake through his black heart before screwing down the lid.
The fact remains that all we really have is Ellison’s account of what supposedly happened. Considering how widely and fiercely Nixon was hated, it is surprising that the left didn’t jump all over such an incident. It would have been a major scandal–not nearly as big as Watergate, to be sure, but more than enough to kick up a major stink. I’m highly skeptical that either Nixon or Agnew was even aware of Ellison’s existence. I maintain that Ellison most likely made up the story to cover up his embarassment over the book’s poor sales. I’ll continue to maintain that until someone comes up with independent verification of Ellison’s account.
I can’t verify this, but I sem to recall reading that Susan, Ellison’s current wife, was a bartender back home in Scotland before she went to see HE speak in England (this is where they met). So, probably, she’s one who has heard it all, and can take care of herself against the best of 'em.
I happen to know the guy who more or less introduced Ellison and his wife Susan. This is Rog Peyton, who owned the (now closed) bookstore Andromeda Books in Birmingham, England. Rog told me that Susan was assisting him at his table in the dealers room at a science fiction convention in the U.K. (probably about 1983) where Ellison happened to be one of the guests of honor. Ellison came by to pick up some books that he had asked Rog (before the con) to order for him. Susan was busy with someone else and did not take it kindly when Ellison got obnoxious and demanded that she immediately get the books and ignore the other customers. She picked up the books he ordered and threw them at him. Ellison gasped at someone actually refusing to be cowed by his usual obnoxious behavior and said something like, “What are you doing the rest of the con? I want to get to know you.” And they’ve been together ever since.
Sounds like the makings of a beautiful Harlequin romance. I’m going to start right on it. Don’t know how I’ll work in the part about women being good for eating, though.
