Interesting article in this week’s Seattle Weekly about a lawsuit that Ellison filed against Fantagraphics.
Links to court documents are posted here.
The original complaint (PDF) is amazing in a “pot, meet kettle” sense.
Ellison has been chasing lawsuits over his stuff forever. This doesn’t mean he’s entitled to fair share, however. He just seems to keep losing track of his properties. He still sues various people occasionally over the story used in the old Star Trek episode “City on the Edge of Forever.” He’s sued various publishers for stories even resembling his story.
Ya, he has some issues…
Ellison is by all accounts a dick, but I still think he’s one of the most badass writers of all time and can do no wrong in my eyes.
Argent Towers, Ellison is not a dick – that’s too weak a word. He’s a megaegomaniac, with an attitude the size of Jupiter.
I was at a convention several years ago where Ellison was a guest of honor. It was worth the trip to see the clip of his commentary on “Science Fiction vs. Sci-Fi.” As a bonus, he read his short story “Paladin of the Lost Hour.” I agree, he is one of the most badass science fiction writers ever.
I have an anthology of his, which he autographed for me. It’s the only book I’ve read that states up front: “Caveat lector – Do not read this book in one sitting.”
He can do no wrong because he can write? Are you serious?
Why the good Lord saw fit to give such a writing talent to such an amazing arsehole is one of the great mysteries of our time.
Yeah, the Penny Arcade guys have no love for him either. Scroll down to scroll down to the post entitled The Story to read the confrontation Gabe and Tycho had with him.
I’m annoyed by the article’s assertion of some long-standing feud between comic fans and scifi fans. That’s false, and it’s pure sensationalism.
Ellison is a colossal dick, and to borrow a phrase, I wouldn’t piss on him if he were on fire.
I know nothing about Ellison other than the fact that he trademarked his name so it can’t be used for commercial purposes without his permission. It seems to me he’s angry about his past experiences, but that doesn’t mean he should be able to stifle Fantagraphics’s First Amendment rights. I hope Fantagraphics doesn’t die- I want them to finish The Complete Peanuts!
I saw Harlan Ellison give a presentation at MIT, probably in 1977 or so. He was an arresting speaker but unmistakably a man with a momunental chip on his shoulder. Midway through his performance, a flurry of students reluctantly got up to leave – the last bus for Wellesley College was about to depart, and a number of students had to go, or they would have had no way home that night.
Ellison started insulting the students as they trudged up the aisles, which seemed a bit childish.
The other memorable part of the evening was when a young lady launched a bizarre and unfounded attack against Ellison for writing the line (I may be paraphrasing it) “her face was black against the snow” which I think appeared in I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream.
The questioner accused Ellison of being a racist, because the face was “black” (which pretty clearly meant “hard to see against the blinding white of the snow in the sun” and had nothing to do with race, which didn’t enter into the story at all).
Ellison was brilliant in his savaging of the questioner, who richly deserved his scorn. I’m always vaguely sorry the guy is such an obvious meglomaniac, because not only is he a good writer, he is exceedingly eloquent as well. It’s a shame, really.
Though Groth sounds just as bad/good:
I always think of a comment I read in some other veteran sci fi author’s bio. He and some other authors were talking about a new writer who was referred to as the next Harlan Ellison. One of the vets then said something along the lines “We’d better kill him now.”
[sub]Of course it would have been even better if he said “Let’s nuke him from orbit, it’s the only way to be sure.”[/sub]
Harlan can be a very wonderful and thoughtful person, but get him in front of a crowd and he often turns into Bad Harlan. I saw him at a con years ago bragging (very entertainingly) how he reduced some poor secretary to tears for some small infraction on his ego. He’s also quite touchy and a self-promoter: he will announce all sorts of projects in front of a crowd that never see the light of day (e.g., a Babylon 5 episode that would be a sequel to his “Demon with a Glass Hand” with Robert Culp reprising his role).
I understand he’s a very nice man when you know him one-to-one. But not when he has an audience.
Stories about Harlan are legend in SF circles. How, if you ask him to autograph a particular book of his, he will ask what you paid for it, give you the cash, then tear it into pieces.
Then there was the incident at the Hugos last year (about 45 seconds in).
He’s a hell of a writer, though.
That was probably Isaac Asimov’s autobiography (fascinating reading). He and Ellison were friends.
I read some of his stuff back in the late 70s, and watched the adaptations of his work in “The New Twilight Zone.” It always struck me as pretentious drivel. It also struck me as being written by a dick, so that it came as no surprise later to find out that he is, in fact, a dick.
From the rules of life: Someone who is nice to you, but not nice to a waitress is not a nice person
From Rick’s additional rules of life: The same is true for secretaries.
I had no dog in this hunt until I read Reality Chuck’s post. Now I side firmly with he is a dick.
Well, I did just call him a dick. If I literally thought he could do no wrong, I’d be trying to justify his behavior by saying it was all part of his art, or something like that. There’s no excuse for being an asshole.
Supposedly, Ellison once went up to a woman at a party and said, “what do you say to a little fuck?” As the story goes, she retorted, “hello, little fuck.” Snopes reports this story as being apocryphal, but I love it anyway.
I’ve had several encounters with Ellison over the years, and he has never been anything but unfailingly polite to me, except when I obviously set myself up for a take-down (and we were both smiling during the episode). He not only signed a number of books for me, but he actually gave me a few after I helped him set up for a reading when there was no-one else around. I think that may be key: Give him an audience and he gets his ego involved. Deal with him one-on-one and he can be very pleasant.
Harlan? Harlan, a dick & a megolmaniac?
That sweet little pixie of a man?
He relates the same story in “Asimov Laughs Again”, his second collection of humor/stories.
Asimov said enthusiastically, “There’s a fellow who’s a new Harlan Ellison”.
The other writer, Robert Silverberg, said, “Shall we kill him now?”
Well, it seems you all know Uncle Harlan, but are not familiar with Gary Groth.
I’ve been around indie comics for long enough to know that even people who work at Fantagraphics, maybe especially them, consider Gary Groth to be a self-important ass. I wasn’t really familiar with why, but that article helped explain it. Think of some of the bizarre overheated arguments that some of us have gotten into on the SDMB. (At least, I know I have.) Now imagine that kind of personal grudge animating the approach to editorial & business decisions of a small-press publisher over years & years.
If he didn’t have Los Bros. Hernandez to make money for him, I fear friend Groth would be a fringe political commentator whinging on about the grand conspiracies against him (a bit like my local Libertarian tract-writer).
I think a lot of this is due to Groth being too full of himself to refrain from poking the bear.
I mean this particular lawsuit, in case it isn’t clear.