Not that I want to hijack…ah, well, what the hell.
I met Bradbury at a writer’s conference in Palm Springs back in the early/mid-‘90s. It was hosted by private-eye writer Arthur Lyons, and he roped in Dean Koonz and Ray Bradbury as attendees to up the attraction ante for the rubes. I was invited because I was Lyons’ editor at the time.
I was all excited about meeting RB, being a fanboy since I was just a tyke. During lunch (we were seated a couple of chairs apart) I made a reference to Alley Oop, which caught RB’s ear, and he scootched over and we started a conversation about old comic strips, which he loves and knows a hell of a lot about. We made a date to meet for drinks in the bar before the dinner that evening.
When I showed up he was already talking to a couple of fans, about…politics, of all things. Turns out he thought Reagan and his appointees had been the bee’s knees, and that Bush Sr. had been far too liberal. He seemed to be particularly entranced by the “Just Say No” anti-drug campaign and AG Ed Meese’s jousting with pornographers.
My hero-worship slipping dangerously, I asked him how a guy who had written Fahrenheit 451 and the “House of Usher” chapter in The Martian Chronicles could now be pro-censorship. He smirked that he had “gotten wiser over the years.” So that’s where I left it with Ray Bradbury.
Ah, heck. If I can enjoy listening to Parsifal, there’s no reason I shouldn’t re-read Dark Carnival.
You must have read a version that I’ve never seen. Memtok let himself be castrated, but it happened long before the events in the story and is referred to in passing. Duke was castrated on the orders of Ponce - and with Duke’s mother’s approval. Nobody else, and nobody that did it to himself.
Statements like that make me wonder if the people commenting on books have even read them.
“Students Wildly Indignant About Nearly Everything” From populist hero to snide reactionary. Truly, a sad decline. Thank the Good Lord it didn’t happen to Walt (Pogo) Kelly.
That’s just bizarre- I remember a Reagan-era issue of Omni on censorship in which Ray Bradbury said, “They’ll take my pornography when they take it from my cold, dead hands.” Maybe I’m misremembering this? I had always been struck by that article.
I really believe that the public Ellison is more or less a role he plays. I’ve talked to two people who have met him at home with his wife , and they pretty much agree with what David Gerrold once said; something to the effect: “Harlan is really just a cuddly little Jewish guy with a potbelly who schlepps about his house with his wife.”
To schlep is to drag around a wearisome object or to fall behind because of one’s burden.
Schlepping around the house with one’s wife suggests (to me) hauling the groceries in and moving the wife’s plants to be watered and, maybe, re-arranging the furniture.
If not “challenging”, then at least “entertaining”. TNG’s bad episodes could be measured by seasons (it wasn’t until season 2 or 3 that the episodes were consistently good), and DS9 was about 50/50 good/bad… the bad episodes being the “filler” episodes that weren’t directly related to the overarching plot. Voyager’s good episodes can be counted on one hand, unfortunately.
I would understand frustration with Star Trek… there’s a lot of potential with the series, but Paramount has refused to take any significant risks with it for over a decade. They’re pushing it into the gutter, in my opinion.
Any Sci-Fi bigwigs you met in person and can claim (or is reputed) to be a nice guy, polite and kind to all they meet, faithful to their family, progressive in politics… and all this without being wacky about it?
Or are all the SF kingpins creepy jerks?
Peace.
Overheard at the Hugo nominating committee: “C’mon man, you gotta represent, like da capn of da Entahprahse.”
> I just have to contribute my favorite skewering of Harlan
> Ellison. Apparently, at an SF con, he approached a tall,
> statuesque blonde and said to her, “What would you say to a
> little fuck?”
>
> She looked down at him, and said, “Go away, little fuck.”
This is an apocryphal story. The way that I’ve heard the story told, the line that he said was “What would you say to a friendly little fuck?”, to which the blonde replied, “Hello, friendly little fuck.” Since this is an apocryphal story, I sometimes tell this story about myself. I’m shorter than Ellison, so it makes more sense being told about me.
Incidentally, many people who’ve met Ellison have stories about being lied to by him. Both the writers Charles Platt and Christopher Priest have written pamphlets about his dishonesty. I have my own story about being lied to by Ellison.
E-Sabbath – can I be your shorter term personal hero for, oh, maybe an hour and a half? I never edited anyone (not so might-tee might-tee) but do have personal knowledge of both men (I’m lettin’ it all hang out). Surprise! The ass-grabber is not Ellison. In person, he seems perfectly lovely, albeit a bit anti-choice. Not a particularly defensible position, I feel, for one who has bragged about his zillions of conquests.
Love what you said about Harlan – “sure he’s a big ol’ jerk, but he’s right most of the time. Except when he’s wrong, but it’s all his opinion and he’s not disguising it.”
Moriah – who are the sci-fi kingpins? I know a couple of writers, and they are lovely people, good to their wives and children, kind to puppies and kittens… but they are probably not kingpins.
Asimov is a creep from creepville. After my experience with him, I read something in People magazine about how awful it was when his wife had cancer and boo hoo hoo. Good lord. Fortunately, I was never much of a fan. And I’m willing to admit that he may not be from creepville. Perhaps years of fame and groupies made him what he was.
About that apocryphal story, FWIW, I would never say anything remotely funny to a guy if I want him to leave me alone.
Evidently it ran in the family as according to the News of the Weird, his son was busted for kiddie porn. (Seems his PC died, and he took it to be repaired without wiping his harddrive first.)