A little something I threw together.
A truly sad day, even if he could be a bit of a caustic ass. His short stories are truly without parallel in my opinion. And I don’t care how messed up “City on the Edge of Forever” got in his opinion; the basic premise was fantastic.
I have signed Firsts of Deathbird and Strange Wine and a signed Second of Shatterday. Plus a few signed paperbacks like Web of the City and Spider Kiss that Harlan gifted me after I did a favor for him.
I talked to his wife briefly on the phone…like… god, a decade ago?..when he was doing a personal memorabilia sale. You literally had to call the house and tell Suzanne (Susan?) want you wanted to buy. She was very nice.
I wrote a letter to him shortly afterward… I was hoping to get to meet him someday.
He was honestly my last living hero.
Is it alright to use this on social media? Accrediting you of course.
I have an autographed copy of The Illustrated Harlan Ellison, a French-produced graphic novel-ish anthology; I was lucky Mr. Ellison didn’t confiscate it. He claimed he had never seen it before and was dubious that he had been properly paid for it, but he signed it anyway. Then he signed it again with my Sharpie when I went back because his felt tip pen hadn’t penetrated the paper’s finish and had just evaporated away.
Yeah, I had brought up the phone call after he first signed it. I was already double lucky and then I pushed it a 3rd time by going back for another signature. 
My great-grandfather taught me: I’d rather be lucky than good!
1980: My best friend shot a super-8 film of was Ellison’s Deal From The Bottom. I wrote the screenplay and did the cinematography, and my friend directed and did cinematography. My friend wrote to Ellison to ask permission to enter it into film fests. Ellison called him on the phone and reamed him a new one. ‘How dare you use my work without permission!’ Ellison wrote him a letter later that started, ‘Dear M___, I’m sorry for being such a dick on the phone.’ He gave his permission for the film to be submitted to festivals.
The first book of his I read was The Glass Teat, a collection of columns from The LA Free Press dealing with television reviews and life in LA, written from the late '60s to the early '70s.
He was never a tame lion.
Holy Hell, my wife and I met him at the same CC. He gave Laura the one-over and was very charming to her, which amused me to no end.
RIP Harlan.
Damn it. I guess it had to happen Someday. Or Moansday, Duesday, Woundsday, Thornsday, Freeday, Shatterday.
RIP Harlan. “For a brief time I lived. For a brief time I mattered.”
The first sf book I ever bought was Ellison Wonderland. I had no idea who the author was but the title was irresistible.
Harlan was HARLA*N, always neon lit, for better or worse. He was the only person I got to spend time with I can truly describe as larger than life.
First Le Guin, then Ellison. I have to assume Silverberg is next.
Inimitable, infuriating, uncompromising, unbearable in the way only someone who knows when he’s right can be, but why should it be otherwise? When you have an informed opinion, you stand by it. Not long ago I re-read the collection of TV/Film/Media commentary/reviews, Harlan Ellison’s Watching, and even in the ones I thought he was full of it, he was so with style and conviction and thorough knowledge of the matter at hand, you knew he was not just talking out his fundament.
And just how like him to check out and leave us stuck in a world that has become *The Teddy!! Crazy!! Show!! *
He was a tremendous rider when he was on. He wrote a ton of classic stories and a much larger percentage of completely forgettable stuff, IMHO. That said, the memorable staff is pure gold. Some of the best science fiction ever written.
However his sexual assault of Connie Willis, which Ellison described as “puckish behavior“ is inexcusable and unforgivable and has badly tainted my ability to reread anything he’s written now.
Go ahead. Just as long as it’s not traceable back my photobucket acct.
I enjoyed the hell out of those books. What’s funny, is that I didn’t discover them until the early 80s and even then it was amazing how entertaining they were despite him being objectively wrong any number of things - Laugh In wasn’t revolutionary at all, it was largely a dead end. The Smothers Brothers show was not groundbreaking, it’s totally forgotten. And yet, they are some of the most entertaining books I’ve ever read
Errata: I believe the work he used was ‘prick’, not ‘dick’.
A touching story about Ellison, by JMS.
Adversely?
I was thinking that his death might actually make it’s release sometime soon more likely rather than less.
When “Harlequin Ellis” was a character in DC comics: https://twitter.com/Joe_A_Blevins/status/1012419661999165441?s=19
Cavorting with some porn stars in 1972: https://twitter.com/Boilerplate1893/status/1012446255845236736?s=19
Barnes & Noble published a retrospective about HE last year: Harlan Ellison: He’s Not Dead Yet, and He’s Not Done Either
A video interview from a few years ago: Archon 39: Interview with Harlan Ellison | Critical Blast
When he was raided by NYPD for narcotics: https://twitter.com/uh__Bob/status/1012598426750636032?s=19
When he would write stories in bookshop windows: https://twitter.com/PatrickZircher/status/1012418804805226499?s=19
I did not know that Demon with a Glass Hand and the film Blade Runner was shot in the same building: https://twitter.com/PatrickZircher/status/1012640066487881728?s=19