For those who’ve never seen it, the '80’s Twilight Zone adaptation of “Paladin of the Lost Hour” is a fine piece of work. The Twilight Zone 1x16 Paladin of The Lost Hour - YouTube
Have tissue handy.
Mr. Ellison in the field of comic books:
‘But you have sex with a sheep one time…’
Heh. But it’s also not the only time he did it. It’s only the most well-known incident. A number of other women have reported similar behavior.
It doesn’t do him or his victims any favors by ignoring his abusive behavior and only focusing on his apparent good points. He was a complex human being who by word-of-mouth did some amazingly kind things and by documented evidence did some really gross, abusive and rapey type things. In addition he wrote some good science fiction. These are all parts of who he was.
This is exactly the analogy that came to mind regarding this incident. Call it sexual assault or not - and I’m acknowledging here, just for the record, that I understand why it could be called sexual assault - it doesn’t rise to the level of being the kind of misdeed that’s severe enough that bringing it up on a post intended to memorialize him and mourn his passing, could reasonably considered appropriate or classy.
In any case, I do apologize for the hijack because it was, in fact, me who brought it up here in this thread in the first place. (Yes, my username is different. I just changed it. See MPSIMS for a brief explanation.)
Ellison’s legacy lives in on Black Mirror and in all future shows which will be influenced by that one (I’m guessing there will be a lot of them). The intersection of technological contrivances with dire scenarios regarding the consciousness or what would have been in earlier eras called “the soul” will always make me think of Ellison when I see it come up in plot devices.
[Moderating]
If that’s how you feel about him, take it to the Pit. If you have polite things to say about Ellison, go ahead. That includes polite criticism, if you think that’s what’s appropriate. If you can’t be civil, or if you don’t want to discuss Ellison himself, you don’t need to be in this thread.
My FB feed has a few folks eulogizing him, and a few folks telling about their first- or second-hand experiences with him treating folks in an appalling, often illegal manner. Friend of mine wrote,
and I think that’s about right. He had this entitled enfant terrible thing going on. Maybe, maybe if his fiction spoke to me more I’d be more conflicted about him.
My experience with Ellison started when I must have been ~14 and picked up a copy of his then new anthology Stalking the Nightmare. It may not have been his best collection, but I think it was a very good introduction to his style. The personal essay were utterly fascinationg to me( Disney, the Starlost saga, tales of his adventures )and I still love the bleak Grail and the pretty amusing Djinn, No Chaser. In some ways I think he was a better fantasy writer than SF.
Probably so, to some extent. But I find it interesting that in his remembrance John Scalzi mentions how he once led a protest at a con against Arizona not passing the ERA. A complex guy, who seems to have been passionate about everything in life, for good or bad. Folks that intense are really kind of rare.
I think he can be described as the oldest “Angry Young Man” - and a good proof of why you shouldn’t let your adolescence define you for life.
I also read someone saying he’d mentored Octavia Butler, who is one of the best. There’s no doubt that Ellison was complex, but it’s absolutely true that you fuck one sheep…
When we look at folks’ lives, we look at their accomplishments, but we tend to weigh their sins on a separate scale. Ellison’s accomplishments went beyond those of most writers; but his sins also did. The greatness of his stories doesn’t get weighed against his violent assaults on those around him.
Even when his scripts were watered-down and he Alan Smithee-'d them as Cordwainer Bird, they still blew the mind of this Canadian kid. May there be a sympathetic Mu Lambda 165 to guide you in the next life.
Is there any way you can link to it? I’d love to see it, and I can’t find it using Google.
I misremembered slightly-It was Harlan Ellison, Isaac Asimov and Gene Wolfe on Nightcap, with Studs Terkel and Calvin Trillin.
I’m not conflicted about him at all. He was, without a doubt, an excellent writer. He was also, without a doubt, personally reprehensible. Those are two completely independent traits, and so there is no conflict.
One bit of his that’s stuck with me: “Paladin of the Lost Hour” starts with a young man rescuing an old man from a beating at the hands of some street thugs. Ellison describes the young and old man as “One of these two men was white, and the other was black”, but never says which is which. I always find myself oscillating between which way I picture the characters, and can’t decide whether it really changes the dynamic of the story or not.
Yet it seems that for every tale of violating others’ boundaries or of entitled “I know for 100% certain I am fuckin’ right, why should I care how you feel” attitude, there’s another one of generosity and magnanimity and of how he was the sort of friend you wanted by your side when the shit hit the fan.
Very many people are in the same boat. That is a theme we have repeatedly brought up in many a thread.
Thank you!
Ellison certainly had his good side and his bad side. A very talented writer and often considerate of and generous to his friends, but caustic, aggressive and annoyingly opinionated, as well. The first two items here, an obit and a remembrance, both by Mark Dawidziak, are worth a read: Harlan Ellison, fiery and brilliant writer from Cleveland, dead at 84 - cleveland.com
I’ve also seen it explained that a cordwainer is a shoemaker, and birds don’t need shoes, so a shoemaker for birds is a useless person (who might, though, now take credit for a incompetently-altered script that the writer didn’t wish to).
Trooper in the so-so graphic novel adaptation of Ellison’s “City on the Edge of Forever” script looks an awful lot like Ellison himself: https://www.amazon.com/Star-Trek-City-Edge-Forever/dp/1631402064/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1530470536&sr=8-1&keywords=ellison+city+edge+forever
I highly recommend the illustrated screenplay of the never-produced I Robot movie (much truer to Asimov’s original than the Will Smith version): https://www.amazon.com/Robot-Illustrated-Screenplay-Harlan-Ellison/dp/1596870419/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1530470810&sr=1-1&keywords=ellison+i+robot+screenplay&dpID=41ZVU6xmo0L&preST=_SY291_BO1,204,203,200_QL40_&dpSrc=srch
Depite all your many faults, may you rest in peace, Harlan.
That’s not that surprising. Guys who are loudly, performatively feminist in public but creeps behinds closed doors are their own cliche. I imagine more than one pick-up attempt started with some variation of, “So, I was protesting the failure of the ERA in Arizona…”
That’s how Stephen King described him in Danse Macabre as the, and I am paraphrasing here, the one person he wants by his side if King ever suffers a heart attack because no one would ensure the availability of World-Famous Cardiologists like a mad HE.