He jokingly referred to a mid-level comic book writer as “bugfuck” and “certifiable.” The guy turned out to be surprisingly litigious, and a multi-million dollar lawsuit against Ellison and the magazine dragged on for about a decade. Ellison and TCJ won, but incurred hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of legal bills. The relationship between Ellison and Gary Groth (TCJ’s publisher) soured, to the point that Ellison sued Groth for reasons that escape me at the moment.
Oh, in the same interview, TCJ showed Ellison a copy of The Illustrated Harlan Ellison with loose pages of the “perfect binding” that was popular in late 70s book publishing. Ellison urged all the readers to send their defective copies back to the publisher (ACE, iirc) and demand a refund or a new copy. Shortly thereafter, neither ACE nor any other major publisher would handle another Ellison book for the next two decades. It’s only recently that Ellison’s books have been available in most bookstore chains, except for some (I think) self-published or small-press anthologies.
Anyone with better knowledge of his troubles with book publishers, please feel free to correct me; this is all getting to be 30 years ago and the details are fuzzy. A copy of the interview is available in The Comics Journal Library Vol. 6: The Writers.
It certainly makes him memorable. He’s shown up in other science fiction writers’ stories. In David Gerrold and Larry Niven’s The Flying Sorcerors he appears thinly disguised as one of the Gods in the pantheon of the aliens as Elcin, the diminutive but highly angry God of Thunder. Ben Bova’s The Starcrossed is an equally thinly-disguised story based on the lamentable series “The StarLost” that Ellison proposed (and which Bova helped out on), and which was raked over by the television powers (as Ellison describes with wonderful snideness in his intro to Phoenix Without Ashes by Ed Bryant, based on Ellison’s original teleplay for the series)
But my favorite is in Philip Jose Farmer’s “The Making of Revelation, Part 1” that appeared in Robert Sheckley’s anthology After the Fall, a collection of “upbeat end-of-the-world stories”. In this entry to the anthology, God contracts out the production of the Apocalypse, getting Cecil B/ eMille to run the whole thing. DeMille, in turn, gets Ellison to write the script, because he’s the only writer who isn’t afraid to argue with God.
Eventually even God gets fed up with Ellison, and sends him down to Hell, replacing him with “a hack from Peoria”.
But science fiction (as a genre) is not about space ships. It’s not about science either. However, it is usually fiction.
As a literary character, Ellison also appeared in Michael Anderson’s “Absolutely the Last, This Is It, No More, the Final Pact With the Devil Story,” a story where an author made a deal with the devil and would lose his soul unless he sold one particular story by a cutoff date.
Harlan bought it . . . for The Last Dangerous Visions. There’s also an in-joke in that the description of the story is exactly like a story Ellison had described as being the only story he thought was too out there for the original Dangerous Visions anthology.
Yeah. I never got all the way through The Essential Ellison, but there’s a good reason I got as far as I did.
I was thinking about this today & remembered that he wrote Strange Wine. I remember finding provocative & in a way hopeful, but given Harlan’s general persona, it may reflect a general tendency toward such pessimism as to make Ambrose Bierce look optimistic.
I also like Rob’t Sheckley a great deal; have read a little J. G. Ballard & found his evocation of mood distinctive & sometimes appealing; love Michael Bishop; have read a little James Tiptree & largely hated it.
Ellison fits pretty well in that group.
And he’s partly responsible for the original Jarella story in The Incredible Hulk, which I dug as a kid.
You know, I can see Ellison’s side of this. If I was a published writer, I’d certainly be outraged at the thought that the physical copies of my books were defective. Hell, as a reader, I am outraged when I get a physically defective book. On the other hand, I can see Ace’s side…the guy is a troublemaker, and he cost them gajillions in both money and good will.
And, of course, in such a discussion, we must have a gripping hand. I guess the gripping hand is that Ace is or was notorious for poor treatment of its authors. I’ve read that Ace never was very good at sending royalties, that the advance payment was all the payment authors were likely to get.
Exapno Mapcase, I need a new sig. May I use your line “Science Fiction is not about spaceships.”?
Okay, there’s a problem: you tried to read it straight through.
That’s not the way to approach The Essential Ellison. It’s broken into sections by topic for a reason. If you don’t like what you’re reading skip to another style, period, or subject.
In particular there’s a non-fiction essay called “Xenogenesis” toward the end of the book that every science fiction fan should read. It’s Ellison turning his rabid bitterness against fandom and really tearing into it.
Don’t read his novels. Read his short stories. AFAIK, there are few Catholic references. He was more likely to have Native American references.
Prior to around 1970, the best science fiction was usually in short stories. Not that there weren’t great novels, but it’s the shorter works that were the heart of the genre.
It’s very bitter – and pretty much unfair. There is only one incident that is clearly appalling (the vomit), and Ellison twists that to make it sound even worse than it was. Consider one piece of evidence: a writer being upset because a fan called her “very creative.”* Many of the other incidents were just people making small faux pas and Ellison blowing them up into signs of the apocalypse.
It’s a great read, no doubt. But it shows the uglier parts of Harlan Ellison’s nature. He can be a genuinely nice and caring person, but give him an audience and he has to show off. He gets caught up in the story and things can turn very ugly very quickly.
*She felt the term overlooked all the hard work she put into a story.
I agree with your assessment completely but it’s one of those reality checks (heh heh) that a lot of fans need from time to time. And the fact that it reflects a lot of the negative things about Ellison (how he harassed and stalked one jerk, for example) is good for getting the full Ellison experience.
ETA, I’m also dubious of the complete truth of many of the anecdotes but that’s also part of the Ellison experience.
Although he made his mark as a fiction writer, I much prefer Ellison’s nonfiction stuff. Two of my favorites are *Stalking the Nightmare *and The Harlan Ellison Hornbook.
D.C. Fontana (if I recall) did the revisions. After four decades, Ellison is still seething over the affair, so much that a few years ago he wrote a book about it, and included his original script.
Know what? I actually prefer the revision. It’s a tighter story, and fits better with the overall development, in the following episodes and movies, of Kirk’s character. But – it didn’t fit with Ellison’s take on the character, and for him that’s unforgiveable.
Hugely talented, severely damaged in childhood (judging from things he’s talked about in his own works and his 20-page introductions). Could be your best friend or your worst enemy. Doesn’t write a birthday card unless he gets paid.
Played a big part in warping my young brain, when I started reading his stuff around 1970. Some of the new writers who seem to be trying really hard to be edgy and shocking have got nothing on stuff Ellison did when Nixon was in office.
ETA: I’d have to say Ellison’s also personally fearless. As a skinny, 5’5" intellectual Jew, he took on a fake identity and joined a street gang so he could write about it, eventually getting cut in a knife fight. (Unless he made the whole thing up.)
Also, Isaac Asimov used Ellison as the basis for his fictional protagonist in the mystery novel Murder at the ABA. (American Booksellers Association.)
Science fiction is one of the last fields in which writers can still make their reputations through short stories. Kelly Link hasn’t written a novel yet, neither has Ted Chiang. Yet just about every story they write wins an award. Paul DiFilippo, Ray Vukcevich, Eliot Fintushel, Jeffrey Ford, Jay Lake, are all newish writers who are still more famous for short works than novels. John Kessel and Jim Kelly are an earlier generation who also have few novels but dozens of well-regarded shorts. And before them are Kate Wilhelm and Theodore Sturgeon and Ray Bradbury and bunches more. (Including David Bunch.) The fact that Harlan doesn’t write novels puts him at a disadvantage in the commercial world but doesn’t affect his literary status at all.
An amusing tale from Ellison’s Book about writing City on the Edge of Forever. Everyone at Trek was waiting with great enthusiasm about this great script he was working on and why it was taking so long to finish. Bill Shatner impatient for this wonderful script in the works came to Ellison’s house on his motorcycle to take a look at the story. As he began to look through the script he began to count the lines of Kirk’s dialog. According to Harlan, Shatner was not interested in the quality of the work just that Bill had more lines than Nimoy. Shatner then leaves the house and wipes out on his motorcycle leaving a mark on Harlan’s driveway that is still there to this day.
A common criticism is that the climactic scene was unshootable as Ellison wrote it. (I agree, but it’s been a long time since I read the script.) I understand some other changes were made because the episode would have run way over budget if they’d tried to shoot them.
