# Harlan Ellison (1934-2018) **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [June 28, 2018, 7:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/harlan-ellison-1934-2018/816945 "2018-06-28T19:32:29Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 18\ **Page:** 7
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [July 2, 2018, 6:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/harlan-ellison-1934-2018/816945/121 "2018-07-02T18:37:04Z")
> [@Wendell\_Wagner](#): > > I’ve been told that the story that Ellison tells about being in the room when somebody suggested (in L. Ron Hubbard’s presence) that the way to make money is to start a religion is wrong. I was told that there was such an occasion, but Ellison wasn’t there. There’s a problem with believing any of the stories that Ellison tells. It appear that he often puts himself in events that didn’t involve him at all. It appears that he often just makes up stories out of whole cloth. Yes, Ellison tells great stories. Often they’re just stories, not true accounts of real events. I don’t believe for a minute that Harlan ever told such a story. It would have occurred in the late 1940s when Harlan was still a teenager in Ohio. The timing is ridiculous. I never heard Harlan ever make an anachronistic reference like that. I knew an old-time fan who says he was present that Hubbard talked about founding a religion to make money. But that was someone who was an adult in the 1940s. And almost certainly Hubbard didn’t need somebody to suggest such a thing to him. It would have been obvious to anybody living in California at the time. The place was rife was charlatans and quasi-mystics starting profitable cults and had been for decades. Anthony Boucher, who wrote _Rocket to the Morgue_, a thinly disguised version of the Manana Literary Society, the pro sf group in LA in the 1940s which Hubbard was a member of, also wrote _Nine Times Nine_, about such a cult and the money it made. I’d bet that the every get together of the just-getting-by authors in the MLS had a suggestion that one of them start a cult to get rich. ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [July 2, 2018, 6:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/harlan-ellison-1934-2018/816945/122 "2018-07-02T18:48:05Z")
Since nobody beat me to it, Sharyn McCrumb’s _Bimbos of the Death Star_ is a 1988 mystery set at an sf convention, in which the obnoxious guest of honor is murdered. The murderee is obviously Harlan, at least to every f&sf reader who picked it up. It won the Edgar for best original paperback [She admits it was Harlan](https://paulinhouston.blogspot.com/2011/07/bimbos-of-death-sun.html). > [@](#): > > … And yes, I met Harlan Ellison at the awards banquet in New York at which we both won awards. It turns out that people had been inundating him with copies of the book, because everybody recognized him, and everybody thought they’d be the only person sending him a book. Perhaps because I was eight months pregnant at the time, he did not beat me to death with his trophy. ---
**Author:** ![Czarcasm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/czarcasm/32/4050_2.png) [@Czarcasm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Czarcasm)\ **Post date:** [July 2, 2018, 6:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/harlan-ellison-1934-2018/816945/123 "2018-07-02T18:49:14Z")
Harlan was indeed a teenager(16) when it happened, and the story can be found [here](https://tonyortega.org/2013/02/16/scientology-mythbusting-with-jon-atack-making-a-million/). As a young science fiction writer he apparently visiting the Hydra Club in New Yorkwhen the conversation supposedly took place. ---
**Author:** ![Tamerlane](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tamerlane/32/7602_2.png) [@Tamerlane](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tamerlane)\ **Post date:** [July 2, 2018, 6:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/harlan-ellison-1934-2018/816945/124 "2018-07-02T18:54:36Z")
> [@Exapno\_Mapcase](#): > > I don’t believe for a minute that Harlan ever told such a story. It would have occurred in the late 1940s when Harlan was still a teenager in Ohio. The timing is ridiculous. I never heard Harlan ever make an anachronistic reference like that. The link at post #101. Audio of Harlan Ellison being interviewed by Robin Williams. On re-listen he does admit he was a High Schooler at the time. ---
**Author:** ![Czarcasm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/czarcasm/32/4050_2.png) [@Czarcasm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Czarcasm)\ **Post date:** [July 2, 2018, 7:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/harlan-ellison-1934-2018/816945/125 "2018-07-02T19:03:24Z")
He had already had two stories published by that time, also. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [July 2, 2018, 7:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/harlan-ellison-1934-2018/816945/126 "2018-07-02T19:03:28Z")
> [@](#): > > Quoth **Revtim** : > > Goodbye, little fuck. I’ve been wondering how long it would take before someone referenced that. ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [July 2, 2018, 10:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/harlan-ellison-1934-2018/816945/127 "2018-07-02T22:04:10Z")
> [@Czarcasm](#): > > Harlan was indeed a teenager(16) when it happened, and the story can be found [here](https://tonyortega.org/2013/02/16/scientology-mythbusting-with-jon-atack-making-a-million/). As a young science fiction writer he apparently visiting the Hydra Club in New Yorkwhen the conversation supposedly took place. > [@Czarcasm](#): > > He had already had two stories published by that time, also. The link you cite says: > [@](#): > > “In Blue Sky, I wrote that in his autobiography Over My Shoulder, publisher Lloyd Arthur Eshbach remembered taking lunch with Astounding Science-Fiction editor John W. Campbell and Ron Hubbard in 1949 (p.125). Hubbard repeated a statement he had already made to several other people. He said he would like to start a religion, because that was where the money was,” Jon said. > > “And, yes, Russell reckoned we had three distinct sources, all of whom were told this directly by Hubbard,” he said, and added an aside: “I like the ‘dead-agent’ logic of Scientology that says because George Orwell also said it, Hubbard didn’t…” > > We told Jon that another person who has his own version of Hubbard’s statements on religion is writer Harlan Ellison, and you can hear him talking about it with Robin Williams in a recording on YouTube. In that version, Harlan says he was visiting New York as a high schooler, and was hanging out at the Hydra Club with several science fiction writers, including Hubbard. (In 1950 Ellison would have been about 16.) Hubbard talked about the idea constantly, as I said. But there’s no way he was talking about Dianetics as an idea to come in 1950. The book was published on May 9. An article about it was in the May 1950 _Astounding_, and deadline would be two months before cover date at minimum. Newspaper articles clearly working off of press releases start mentioning Dianetics on Feb. 1. The first full article on the forthcoming book I’ve found is March 28. The book was clearly written and submitted to Heritage House in 1949. Both of Harlan’s 1949 stories were in the _Cleveland News_. Printing stories by high schoolers in sections geared to them was fairly common in newspapers back then and I suspect that’s all these were, especially since his first professional publications didn’t occur until 1956. Earlier stories appeared only in fanzines. Maybe if somebody has _The Essential Ellison_, they could look these up. Harlan may have visited New York in 1950 or even 1949. But he almost certainly didn’t. In [Harlan Ellison: The Edge of Forever](https://books.google.com/books?id=XvaIuzLV41gC&pg=PA30&lpg=PA30&dq=%22harlan+ellison%22+%22Hydra+club%22&source=bl&ots=6tKwSoKYHk&sig=wSc-lwWKt2nFEA02EIs4azcn-v4&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjpptq-s4HcAhVIHqwKHbVADX4Q6AEIOzAD#v=onepage&q=%22harlan%20ellison%22%20%22Hydra%20club%22&f=false), the trip to New York is talked about in the 1952-3 time span, much more likely for many reasons. Ellison would have been at least 18 and by that time had entered the world of sf fandom, which he hadn’t done at 16. Even so, Hubbard is not mentioned in the list of writers Ellison met at the Hydra Club. You can say that allows for an earlier visit. I say the memories he talked about were at best conflated and most likely never occurred. Just like the “little fuck” story. ---
**Author:** ![carnivorousplant](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/carnivorousplant/32/3563_2.png) [@carnivorousplant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/carnivorousplant)\ **Post date:** [July 2, 2018, 10:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/harlan-ellison-1934-2018/816945/128 "2018-07-02T22:14:09Z")
Does anyone have a link to the significance of “Little fuck” and Ellison? ---
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [July 2, 2018, 10:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/harlan-ellison-1934-2018/816945/129 "2018-07-02T22:27:17Z")
> [@Exapno\_Mapcase](#): > > The link you cite says: > > Hubbard talked about the idea constantly, as I said. But there’s no way he was talking about Dianetics as an idea to come in 1950. . Dianetics wasnt the religion. The religion/cult was based after the book. The cult was born 2 years later. ---
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [July 2, 2018, 10:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/harlan-ellison-1934-2018/816945/130 "2018-07-02T22:28:38Z")
> [@carnivorousplant](#): > > Does anyone have a link to the significance of “Little fuck” and Ellison? Snopes: > **[Harlan Ellison](https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/repent-harlan-said-the-ticked-off-woman/)** > > Was Harlan Ellison rebuffed after making a crude remark to a tall blonde woman? ---
**Author:** ![Jim\_s\_Son](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/e19adc/32.png) [@Jim\_s\_Son](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jim_s_Son)\ **Post date:** [July 2, 2018, 11:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/harlan-ellison-1934-2018/816945/131 "2018-07-02T23:33:50Z")
> [@CalMeacham](#): > > My understanding is that Ellison came in on his own. > > I missed this event by one year – I arrived at the U of R the next. > > Rochester (and the University in particular) had a pretty active feminist community – they had once called a bomb threat in to prevent a showing of the movie _The Story of O_\*\* – so it’s not surprising they were up in arms about a showing of **A Boy and His Dog**. and Harlan, of course, would ALWAYS want to defend his work against any charges, especially against censorship. Getting him and the Rochester Women’s groups together must have ben like throwing sodium suspension into water. I am SO sorry I missed this one. > > \*There’s no proof that it was them, but most people thought it was virtually certain. If not them directly, at least someone sympathetic to their views. I can’t remember if it was women’s groups or one in particular who a few months earlier had a story in the campus newspaper with the headline “XYZ is a witch!”. Actually a wiccan is probably more accurate according to a later story about a talk she gave: she was no devil worshipper. But I think Ellison debated several people about the film’s merits. Phyllis Schafly had a number of people who didn’t like her or agree with her but she definitely gave a talk and lengthy Q and A period. Don’t know if they tried to prevent her from appearing. I don’t have any contact with anyone I went to school there with. Besides, taking night courses meant a lot of classmates had day jobs. Whether the U of R has backs issues of the student newspaper on microfilm or if the local Rochester papers covered it is beyond my knowledge. ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [July 2, 2018, 11:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/harlan-ellison-1934-2018/816945/132 "2018-07-02T23:43:03Z")
> [@DrDeth](#): > > Dianetics wasnt the religion. The religion/cult was based after the book. > > The cult was born 2 years later. > [@](#): > > A year ago, L. Ron Hubbard was an obscure writer of pseudoscientific pulp fiction. Today he has: > … Half a million devout followers. > > … A foundation with a chain of bustling branches stretching from Elizabeth, N.J. to far-off Honolulu. > > … The best-selling nonfiction book since Dale Carnegie discovered the secret of success. > > … A swarm of pop-eyed students, who stand in line for the privilege of plunking down 500 bucks for a one-month course which converts them into “professional auditors,” complete with a couch and capable of outpsyching any ordinary psychiatrist. > > … Even larger and faster-growing tribes who pay $200 each for the 15-lecture short course - or $25 an hour to have their “cases opened” by $500 professional auditors. > > … And a small army of associate members, at a mere 15 smackers each, who gratefully keep up with the whirlwind developments of Hubbard’s new “science” of dianetics through the Dianetics Auditors Bulletin. [Look magazine, December 5, 1950](http://www.lermanet.com/scientologynews/look-120550.htm) Hubbard planned this before the book was published. There is not the slightest doubt about that. He told the entire science fiction community of his hopes. John W. Campbell actively aided and abetted him from the beginning. The cult appeared two minutes after publication, not two years. ---
**Author:** ![drad\_dog](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/aeb1de/32.png) [@drad\_dog](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/drad_dog)\ **Post date:** [July 3, 2018, 12:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/harlan-ellison-1934-2018/816945/133 "2018-07-03T00:35:27Z")
> [@Jim\_s\_Son](#): > > University of Rochester NY. I don’t know if they specifically brought him in or if Ellison heard about it and did it on his own. > > This is also the same era when the men’s basketball team, a weak Division III team (or something like that) played a game against the North Carolina Tar Heels (a division I powerhouse). After the national anthem, the coach turned around to address his team and found his starting line up was at the North Carolina bench to get the autograph of Tar Heels star Phil Ford. Weird. I was at a University film program in the northeast and LQ Jones came by and showed it to our class and chatted. I don’t remember any sexist claims, but: We had a huge screening of The Thing which was attended by someone from the production. He was explainng the movie and mentioned that there were no women basically because everyone would be wondering who she was f\*\*\*ing. It didn’t go over well. ---
**Author:** ![Fenris](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fenris/32/498_2.png) [@Fenris](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fenris)\ **Post date:** [July 3, 2018, 12:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/harlan-ellison-1934-2018/816945/134 "2018-07-03T00:57:41Z")
> [@RealityChuck](#): > > Anyone who thinks he was a terrible person knows nothing about him. I wonder if Ms. Willis or his other victims know nothing about him (except that he assaulted them). Yeah, he sexually molested a woman, on stage, and there’s video and pictures of it, (plus more than one report of other women similarly assaulted by him), but once he helped a guy in a wheelchair get into a crowded elevator so that…that’s a “Get out of a sexual assault charge” free card? Huzzah. :rolleyes: You’re really not helping your “Aaaaw, he’s not such a bad guy” cause when you attack his victims. ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [July 3, 2018, 3:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/harlan-ellison-1934-2018/816945/135 "2018-07-03T03:29:03Z")
> [@Fenris](#): > > I wonder if Ms. Willis or his other victims know nothing about him (except that he assaulted them). Yeah, he sexually molested a woman, on stage, and there’s video and pictures of it, (plus more than one report of other women similarly assaulted by him), but once he helped a guy in a wheelchair get into a crowded elevator so that…that’s a “Get out of a sexual assault charge” free card? Huzzah. :rolleyes: > > You’re really not helping your “Aaaaw, he’s not such a bad guy” cause when you attack his victims. Did Connie ever say - at the time or thenafter - that she felt sexually assaulted? This is a serious question. I don’t know of Connie ever making a public statement about it, but it’s been 12 years and a lot of Internet has passed without my being aware of the latest gossip. Nor has she said a word since Harlan’s death, despite the myriads using her name to attack him. I’d really like to hear what Connie has to say now, and what passed between them afterward. [Will Shetterly](http://shetterly.blogspot.com/2018/07/what-harlan-ellisons-haters-wont-tell.html)has both the video and some context on his site. There’s also [Cory Doctorow’s](https://boingboing.net/2018/06/28/rip-harlan-ellison.html) take on Harlan. > [@](#): > > But over the years, as I committed my own share of missteps and came to realize that I’d made them, and as I’ve reconciled with friends who had done great wrongs themselves, I have discovered some place inside me where two things can be true: that someone did something bad, and that someone did something good. Importantly, I can have these two views without the need to balance them (“the good outweighs the bad, so we can still be friends”), because balance is so often erasure (“with all the good he’s done, why dwell on the bad?”). I’ve never done anything which even misinterpreted could be construed as sexual assault. But what I said above that every famous person can be attacked for faults can be applied to me. And to you, Fenris, and to everyone else in this thread. As I also said, I don’t know where to draw the line or for what actions or who I cast out when. If you deem Harlan one to cast out, I can’t be holier-than-thou. But I sure don’t need you to decide for me. Or to attack me for ambivalence as I try to sort the person I encountered from the person others did. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [July 3, 2018, 1:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/harlan-ellison-1934-2018/816945/136 "2018-07-03T13:09:19Z")
OK, Snope’s URL for that fact-check is just genius. ---
**Author:** ![Revtim](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/revtim/32/1042_2.png) [@Revtim](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Revtim)\ **Post date:** [July 3, 2018, 3:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/harlan-ellison-1934-2018/816945/137 "2018-07-03T15:32:54Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > OK, Snope’s URL for that fact-check is just genius. Wow, I missed that, you are right. ---
**Author:** ![UncleMoose](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/e0b2c6/32.png) [@UncleMoose](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/UncleMoose)\ **Post date:** [July 10, 2018, 6:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/harlan-ellison-1934-2018/816945/138 "2018-07-10T18:30:10Z")
> [@CalMeacham](#): > > My understanding is that Ellison came in on his own. > > I missed this event by one year – I arrived at the U of R the next. > > Rochester (and the University in particular) had a pretty active feminist community – they had once called a bomb threat in to prevent a showing of the movie _The Story of O_\*\* – so it’s not surprising they were up in arms about a showing of **A Boy and His Dog**. and Harlan, of course, would ALWAYS want to defend his work against any charges, especially against censorship. Getting him and the Rochester Women’s groups together must have ben like throwing sodium suspension into water. I am SO sorry I missed this one. > > \*There’s no proof that it was them, but most people thought it was virtually certain. If not them directly, at least someone sympathetic to their views. This is so strange, as I was at the debate. Once it was announced that “A Boy and His Dog” would be shown, a movement started to ban the movie. This led to a letters war breaking out in the Campus Times (student newspaper) between both on and off campus woman’s rights groups and the campus science fiction society (IIRC they were the ones that had suggested the movie) calling out that kind of censorship. Someone wrote to Harlan and sent him the clippings and asked him to comment. Instead, he offered to pay his own way to Rochester if someone could set up a debate. It ended up being as acrimonious as you would expect. The two things I remember: 1. He mentioned that there had been a time when he had committed to attend a convention or awards show in Las Vegas. He then realized that Nevada had not supported the ERA, and he had vowed not to spend a penny in any state that had not voted to ratify the ERA. He ended up spending the night in a tent outside of town in order to not break the commitment or his vow. 2. It kept being said at the debate that “people” did not want the movie being shown. A student stood up during the Q&A section and asked exactly who had tried to initially block the movie, which caused a bit of an uproar because it had been done via anonymous letters. In an after event, Harlan ended up offering the kid a job. I have wondered how long that lasted. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/harlan-ellison-1934-2018/816945.md?page=6)