RIP Harlan Ellison

[DrNewGod]

Calling him "difficult" would be understatement. But SciFi lost a giant today.

[seismic-2]

Indeed. I'm not sure it's even appropriate to wish him to Rest In Peace, because it would be totally out of character for him to do so. May your afterlife, if there is one, be... wonderful (in the true sense of "full of wonder"), Mr. Ellison, as all your writings were.

[Malvolio]

We've lost another one.

How much better would the new Star Trek have been if Ellison had been at the helm instead of J.J. Abrams?

[Powerboy]

Calling him "difficult" would be understatement. But SciFi lost a giant today.

He was a controversial figure once referred to in a good way as "Science Fiction's last angry young man".

He once said to an interviewer, "I am not the easiest person to get along with- as you may have heard."

Rest in peace.

[ed2962]

Rest in peace, Harlan Ellison. I liked his script for the Star Trek episode "The City on the Edge of Forever"

I first learned his name when I was a kid from a Star Trek fumetti "paperback novel" of that episode.

[ed2962]

I'm not sure the whole story ever came out but in the past I was kinda curious about his falling out with Comics Journal publisher Gary Groth.

[Gray Lensman]

Another one from B5 gone.....the Great Maker is cruel.

[Ragged Maw]

I have no tear ducts and I must cry.

[foxley]

Exit the Fanatic--Stage Center.

Vale Harlan.

[ouroboros]

I'm not sure the whole story ever came out but in the past I was kinda curious about his falling out with Comics Journal publisher Gary Groth.

Re Ellison and Groth, I posted this on In Memoriam, but it fits here:

never met Ellison, though I saw him when he spoke at a local convention, maybe in the 1980s. He worked the crowd really well, saying that everyone in our city was "bug***k*, which got great applause, though I'm sure he said the same damn thing anywhere else he spoke. He read his story "All the Lies That Were My Life," which I didn't care for, but his reading was riveting. I saw him a couple more times at San Diego Comicon, usually teamed with Peter David, with whom he had worked out a cute routine of pretend animosity.

DAVID: "I'm just being puckish."

ELLISON: "Well, puck you."


His sixties classic tales made a big impression on me, particularly "Deathbird" and "Repent, Harlequin." I was still writing occasional reviews for COMICS JOURNAL when he and Gary Groth were sued by Michael Fleischer because of remarks Ellison had made about Fleischer in a JOURNAL interview. Personally, I think Fleischer was less offended by what Ellison had said than by the fact that a JOURNAL reviewer had just torpedoed Fleischer's prose book CHASING HAIRY around the same time. I felt like I had a ringside seat as Groth and Ellison became deadly enemies after Fleischer's suit was dismissed. The feud was incredibly convoluted, involving other players like Peter David and Charles Platt, and the magazine GAUNTLET devoted a long, well-researched essay to the mutual bad behavior of both parties, though all that took place before Ellison sued Groth to block the publication of a book touching on their involvement.

I disagreed with a lot of what both Groth and Ellison wrote, though I sympathize with Ellison's love of popular fiction. He was also an unapologetic "comic book guy" at a time when his compeers in fantastic fiction would not dream of being associated with that tawdry medium.

I'm tempted to sum up his career with the words, "Not always deep, but never dull."

[Trey Strain]

We've lost another one.

How much better would the new Star Trek have been if Ellison had been at the helm instead of J.J. Abrams?

With all due respect to Ellison, it would have been a bad idea to put him in charge of anything. He was constantly embroiled in conflicts and lawsuits, and many people in Hollywood considered him just too much trouble to work with. A friend of mine who is mild-mannered and doesn't exaggerate about anything took a screenwriting class under him and told me he was a "psycho." Yet for all that, he produced some very fine work. That we got as much out of him as we did was pretty fortunate, I think.

[DrNewGod]

With all due respect to Ellison, it would have been a bad idea to put him in charge of anything. He was constantly embroiled in conflicts and lawsuits, and many people in Hollywood considered him just too much trouble to work with. A friend of mine who is mild-mannered and doesn't exaggerate about anything took a screenwriting class under him and told me he was a "psycho." Yet for all that, he produced some very fine work. That we got as much out of him as we did was pretty fortunate, I think.

Trey, you need to write this down. I think you're absolutely correct.

[Trey Strain]

Trey, you need to write this down. I think you're absolutely correct.

I did!

Re his conflicts with Gene Roddenberry, I actually tend to side with Ellison. I read an interview with Gary Lockwood, who starred in Roddenberry's television series The Lieutenant, where he said Roddenberry would lie to people. Leonard Nimoy said Roddenberry had a cruel sense of humor that he didn't appreciate. And it's never been revealed who assaulted Grace Lee Whiney because Whitney and Nimoy took that to their graves, but you can look up the speculation online as to who that television executive was.

[DrNewGod]

I did!

Re his conflicts with Gene Roddenberry, I actually tend to side with Ellison. I read an interview with Gary Lockwood, who starred in Roddenberry's television series The Lieutenant, where he said Roddenberry would lie to people. Leonard Nimoy said Roddenberry had a cruel sense of humor that he didn't appreciate. And it's never been revealed who assaulted Grace Lee Whiney because Whitney and Nimoy took that to their graves, but you can look up the speculation online as to who that television executive was.

Ahhh, Hollywood. So glamorous.

[master of read]