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thatcrazycajunA discussion elsewhere in the startrek LJ community re the original series' anniversary led to a mention of one of its most beloved episodes, "City on the Edge of Forever," and its original author, Harlan Ellison. I made reference to the fact that Mr. E. still bitches about how the late Gene Roddenberry and others bastardized his initial script, even to the point of writing a book on the subject wherein he includes the original draft. I also remarked that "Harlan bitches" is a redundancy to anyone who knows him well. This reminded me of an essay I wrote a few years back about the man after finally getting to meet him in person. For anyone who is interested (or wants to avoid it), I've posted it behind the following cut-tag.
Addendum, 9/10/06: When I originally posted this yesterday, I had been completely unaware of Harlan's egregious behavior toward Connie Willis at the just-concluded 2006 Hugo Awards ceremony.osewalrus has kindly posted links to video of the incident, commentary from female bloggers angry about it and Mr. Ellison's response (despite his personal disdain for the Internet, he does have a friend maintain a website for him, Ellison Webderland, which apparently had to shut down for a day or two due to a sudden overload of visits -- gee, I wonder why...). My own commentary on the controversy is posted below the links in the comments section. (Talk about great moments in unwitting perfect timing!)
Addendum, 9/10/06: When I originally posted this yesterday, I had been completely unaware of Harlan's egregious behavior toward Connie Willis at the just-concluded 2006 Hugo Awards ceremony.
osewalrus has kindly posted links to video of the incident, commentary from female bloggers angry about it and Mr. Ellison's response (despite his personal disdain for the Internet, he does have a friend maintain a website for him, Ellison Webderland, which apparently had to shut down for a day or two due to a sudden overload of visits -- gee, I wonder why...). My own commentary on the controversy is posted below the links in the comments section. (Talk about great moments in unwitting perfect timing!)DEFENDING HARLAN by Matt G. Leger
Harlan Ellison: either one of these two words alone can conjure up instant awareness of who is being described in any reasonably well-read member of the science fiction and fantasy community. It is virtually a brand name — one of the best-known and most successful in this branding-obsessed era of ours. Just say "Harlan" and fans will smile knowingly or grit their teeth; say "Ellison" and editors, writers and other pros will likewise either grin or grimace. Yes, I'm speaking of the notorious enfant terrible of the SF world (and if you call him an SF writer to his face, he may well spit in yours; he hates being pigeonholed, and has written much else outside the genre). He is as talented and engaging and funny a raconteur in person as he is a master storyteller on paper; one of my friends says of him that he can make attempted murder sound cute. The very mention of his name makes lots of otherwise confident, self-assured adults quake in their shoes...particularly if accompanied by the news that his actual presence is shortly to follow.
He has been writing for over four decades and has produced and sold more than 1,700 discrete pieces of work, ranging from novels, short stories, novellas, teleplays and screenplays to essays, reviews, commentaries and informational articles. For the better part of my life (I was born in 1963 and my earliest recollection of reading his work was in my early teens), he has at various times made me laugh, cry, gasp in wonder, gape in sheer astonishment (usually at his incredible skill and quite often at his equally massive store of chutzpah). And on more than one occasion he's made me want to purchase round-trip airline tickets to Los Angeles for the sole express purpose of kicking his bony old ass all up and down Ventura Boulevard. (I have told him this in more condensed version in person, by the way, and shook his hand, and he nodded ruefully and said, "Oh, yeah." He doesn't say anything about someone that he would not say to them, and I concur.)
But always, always, with whatever he has written, whether it is a foreword for someone else's book or a column for a magazine, whether it is a speech before a group or a TV show based on his teleplay, above all else he has made me think. And this insistence of his that I, and anyone else reading or hearing his words, do just that — bloody well think about what he is saying rather than just passively absorbing, look at what is really happening in this weary world of ours and ignore the propaganda, refuse to fall for the "okeydoke" (the old carny term he uses for a con job), discount the hype and blow off the bullshit — is what makes him precious, valuable, irreplaceable enough as a professional to forgive his self-admitted failings, foibles and transgressions as a person, of which there are many and due to which his enemies are legion. His demand that his readers make use of their God-given cognitive ability — not only use it, in fact, but push it beyond its normal accustomed exertion, challenge themselves and their beliefs, societally-pounded-in teachings and assumptions — is what I admire most about him. I believe this is why I get off way, way more on his nonfiction than I do on his fiction, as excellent as the latter is. (Do I really need to go on about the Hugos and the Nebulas and the Writer's Guild awards and Emmys and Mystery Writers of America Edgars and other awards, honors and plaudits he has earned for his fiction? I didn't think so. And just this past May of 2006, the Science Fiction Writers of America named him their newest Grand Master. In the immortal words of Stan "The Man" Lee, 'nuff said.)
Is there anyone left on the face of the planet who doesn't know that he wrote the Star Trek episode "City on the Edge of Forever," far and away the most popular episode (not only of the original series, but among all 400+ episodes of it and its four sequelae combined) in poll after poll? Or of how he was forced to watch his brainchild mutilated in rewrite after hamfisted rewrite and others, including the sainted late Gene Roddenberry hisownself, usurp credit for its success? Is there anyone who has not marveled at his book I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream, so popular it has been made into a commercial-sale computer game? Even channel-surfing TV viewers ran into him on the Sci-Fi Channel in its early days when he provided a regular commentary segment to one of its shows; he also has done the same for the Galaxy Online website. And then, of course, there is Babylon 5, J. Michael Straczynski's five-year masterpiece of future war and peace that is now considered a Trek-caliber watershed for televised SF, for which Harlan served as creative consultant and even acted a cameo role in an episode.
Everyone who knows anything about Harlan has a story about him they have heard or witnessed. Some are funny and some are appalling. He does not have the least little bit of gladness in his heart for suffering fools, and will tell them off in no uncertain terms if they impinge on him. He's almost like Estelle Getty's character Sophia in the classic sitcom The Golden Girls, with her stroke having shut down the part of her brain that censors what she says. I say "almost" because unlike her, Harlan has not to my knowledge had a stroke (though he did have quadruple-bypass surgery a few years back) and does possess at least some ability to restrain himself, as shown by his forbearance to speak publicly on the Star Trek matter for decades until the late 1990s, when he published his original script for "City" in book form, with scads of documentation of both his adversaries' claims and evidence against them.
Even those he calls friends have suffered his insults, his anger and his ridicule, mostly jokingly (ask Peter David, another fine writer and FOH [Friend of Harlan], what I mean) but sometimes not (Star Trek / Babylon 5 actor Walter Koenig swore fulsome oaths never to speak to Harlan again at one point). He is fandom's own combination of George Carlin, H. L. Mencken and Don Rickles, the misanthropic "Mr. Warmth" of the con circuit. And yet this is not entirely sarcasm; the man does possess genuine warmth for the right people, ones he deems deserving. He raised money to help the late George Alec Effinger, yet another fine writer and a onetime friend of mine, after George's New Orleans home burned down and he was sent to the hospital with catastrophic treatment needs. He did the same for the family of the late author Manly Wade Wellman, holding an auction at the 1986 Atlanta World SF Convention, Confederation. He is as gentle as a lamb on Prozac with young children, as I have personally witnessed.
And he gives of himself and his time selflessly to causes in which he believes, such as the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund, set up to pay legal fees for comic-book creatives, publishers and dealers facing community persecution for the content of their wares. (You haven't lived until you've seen him do the country-preacher "Sea of Green" routine he uses to coax donations from crowds.) He famously rounded up talents such as the late A.E. van Vogt and Norman Spinrad to form "The Committee" to generate fan and pro letters to NBC when he was told Star Trek was in danger of being cancelled in its second season (this turned out to be of questionable truth, but read his "City" book for that story). He himself was recently plaintiff in a lawsuit against media behemoth Time Warner and other commercial entities and individuals for allowing the posting of his work and that of many other well-known authors on the Internet without permission or compensation, in violation of copyright law. (The lawsuit was settled, finally, in Harlan's and the other authors' favor. Some days you do get the bear, no matter how much bigger and more fearsome he may be.)
Harlan is a person of extremes, and brings up reactions in kind from those who encounter him. People either love him to death or wish for his death (the latter usually as slow, painful and soon as possible); there is no in-between. Conversely, he will fly cross-country on a moment's notice to succor a friend in need; but if you are foolish enough to make an enemy of him, look the hell out! He reports in his “City” book that one person told him the real reason Gene Roddenberry had been cremated was for fear too many people would come to piss on the Great Bird’s grave. It may well be advisable to do the same for Harlan when he croaks (may that day be long in coming!), for the same reason. He admits to holding grudges, as David Weber writes of a character in his Honor Harrington books, until they die and then having them stuffed and mounted to hold onto them still longer. He gleefully tells a story of how, each year on the anniversary of the publication of a magazine column that trashed Harlan undeservedly, he sent its author a postcard bearing just four words: "I haven't forgotten -- Ellison," year after year, right up until the poor schmuck died of cancer.
Let it be stipulated that Harlan is at best mercurial, shifting like a fresh-off-the-assembly-line Ferrari from Nobel Peace Prize-level kindness to thermonuclear hostility. Stipulated that he is, as one poster to the Usenet newsgroup rec.arts.sf.written wrote, "qualified to teach a Ph.D-level course in being an asshole." But damn it to hell, he's our asshole, and as far as I am concerned, anyone who messes with him messes with me -- and I'm far from the only one who feels that way about this éminence grise of what Ellison contemporary, colleague and friend David Gerrold calls "the literature of amazement." (Yes, I know I'm using a lot of French. I'm a full-blooded Cajun by birth, so I'm entitled. Phbbth.) Who can get under your skin despite your love for them better than family? And Harlan is unquestionably part of the family we call SF, however much he may reject the label.
Sometimes I wonder whether, at his advanced age, Harlan ever has moments when he feels he is beating his now-white-haired head against a wall to no purpose and wants to hang it up, quit fighting the good fight, just say “to hell with it” and enjoy a well-earned retirement. (I wished him a hundred years more life and many more writings, and he said, "Oh, God, don't wish that on me..." in mock despair.) I want him to know, should he somehow read this (he disdains the Internet profoundly and will not even use a computer to write; his trusty old typewriter still works just fine, thank you) that millions of us out here are cheering him on as he takes on the Man, turns on the world and rails against entropy itself -– and that I hope he will choose and be able to keep on doing so for a good long time to come. And here is my explanation as to why.
Some have speculated that Harlan actually enjoys being the bête noire of fandom, that he actually makes pissing people off his personal hobby, that he somehow derives pleasure or satisfaction from his curmudgeonly reputation. I cannot tell you whether he would confirm or deny this, as I have not asked him. But as he and Joe Straczynski showed in Babylon 5, real people are not cardboard cutouts, all one thing or all the other, white-hat-wearing good guys or mustache-twirling villains. "Yeh, yeh, even Hitler loved Eva Braun and his mother," I hear you saying; but to compare Harlan's occasional petty behavior to such villainy is to both trivialize the Holocaust and do him an injustice (and being a Jew by both birth and upbringing, Harlan will be the first and most forceful to point this out to you). People get a reputation for being "good" or "evil" based on the choices they make at various points in their lives; as Harlan said in a public appearance not too long ago, we are all who and what and where we are right now by our own choosing, whether we realize it or not. Maybe he does hit the "bad" end of the scale more often than is good for him or others; but at heart, Harlan is on the side of the angels by philosophy. He does have a code of ethics; it may not be comprehensible in spots to some, and he may fall short of it frequently (as he has the grace to own up to), but it is relentlessly consistent and he adheres to it as faithfully as any fallible human being can.
And more to the point, we need someone like Harlan to be the "bad cop" to the "good cop" of other, more gently-tempered celebrities and professionals. Even if he were, as his critics allege, nothing but a cruel, vicious, tact-bereft, perpetually pissed-off loose cannon, perhaps at times it takes one such to speak truth to power in the face of the intimidation and resources power can marshal. As we enter the new millennium, the state of the world in which we live argues vigorously — nay, cries out for the kind of man who is willing to go all Don Quixote on the powers that be and stand up in public to point out that the emperor is fuckin' bare-assed naked. One who doesn't care what the penalty may be for saying so, because he knows it goddamned well needs to be said by someone before the emperor carries all the rest of us down the toilet with him.
Every day that Harlan Ellison continues to write is one more day that truly egregious so-called "SF" product, in films or on television, will not garner millions for a studio or network and its minions without having its wrongnesses, technical, dramatic and otherwise, laid bare (as director Peter Hyams learned to his chagrin after Harlan eviscerated his film Outland in the pages of Starlog magazine). Every day that he appears somewhere to speak is one more day that injustice to the early creators of our best-loved comic-book heroes (and their present-day inheritors) will not go unremarked or unredressed. Every day that he grants an interview to or writes commentary for the press is one more day the pompous and the petty, the dishonest and the dastardly of the publishing and entertainment industries must dread the striking of his well-honed rhetorical lance. In short, every day more that this man draws breath, the genre we cherish is improved; though he may loathe thinking of himself as a part of the genre, he is nonetheless a tireless paladin for it. Or perhaps not so much for SF per se as for excellence in any genre, demanding that we as paying customers settle for nothing less.
Read his essays, currently being reprinted in a new hardcover series called EdgeWorks, and you will see what I mean. Read his scathing two-volume critique reprised therein of the industry that has helped keep a roof over his head and food on his table for over 40 years, The Glass Teat and The Other Glass Teat. Attend an Ellison lecture, if you are fortunate to live close to a venue where he is giving one. Check out his panels at conventions such as I-Con on Long Island or the Worldcons. Count how many times he makes you mad with something he says that you identify with — and note carefully and honestly whether it is because he's truly dead-assed wrong...or because deep down in your heart of hearts, you know he's right and you hate him for it. Tally also how often he tells stories of kindnesses people have done for him, and his extravagant repayments thereof. And note how many times he makes you laugh till your head hurts and your lungs gasp desperately for oxygen, and how many times he tells you something new and worth knowing that you had never before known or even conceived of.
In other words, if you are going to pass judgment on Harlan Ellison, do it on the man, not the myth. As Spider Robinson wrote of the late Robert Heinlein, inferring anything about a person from her/his fiction is a mug's game; it is in a fiction writer's job description to get into the head of someone different from her/him in temperament, experience or belief and report back what s/he finds. Read Harlan's fiction, certainly, and enjoy it, savor it, see how it's done by someone who honest-to-Ghu knows how. But if you would truly know him, and you are not one of those favored to be among his personal circle or even ones outside it of whom he is fond, read his nonfiction, hear his speeches, talk to the man one-on-one (it is possible; I have done it myself and survived the experience). Contrary to popular belief, he does not bite your head off unprovoked if you approach him. He will tell you "No" firmly if you delay him from doing his business with "just one more thing..."; he has written than people who say that to you 90% of the time are looking to do nothing worthwhile with the time they are attempting to steal from you, and he is right, and I should have remembered this if I did not want him to say it to me as he did. If you know his rules going in, the onus is yours for breaking them.
Along with Heinlein, the late Dr. Isaac Asimov (the only author I can think of who matches Harlan for sheer quantity and variety of output) and Robinson, Harlan is part of my personal pantheon of literary Grand Masters, and admittedly this colors my observations somewhat. But I have made an honest effort to cite fact as well as opinion, personal experience rather than hearsay, and documented statements rather than rumor in this polemic. Beyond that, I enjoin you again: look at the work, talk to the man and get as much factual data as you can before you write him off as just a bitter old crank or a mean-assed rat bastard. For myself, he has immeasurably bettered my ability to distinguish truth from falsehood, beauty from ugliness and quality from crapola...and for that I thanked him when I met him, and I thank him again here; I will owe him that debt to the end of my days, for it cannot be repaid. Maybe he will never choose me to enter his circle of friends, and that is his right...but I'd settle for just being allowed to hang with him some evening when he's really on a roll.
END
Harlan Ellison: either one of these two words alone can conjure up instant awareness of who is being described in any reasonably well-read member of the science fiction and fantasy community. It is virtually a brand name — one of the best-known and most successful in this branding-obsessed era of ours. Just say "Harlan" and fans will smile knowingly or grit their teeth; say "Ellison" and editors, writers and other pros will likewise either grin or grimace. Yes, I'm speaking of the notorious enfant terrible of the SF world (and if you call him an SF writer to his face, he may well spit in yours; he hates being pigeonholed, and has written much else outside the genre). He is as talented and engaging and funny a raconteur in person as he is a master storyteller on paper; one of my friends says of him that he can make attempted murder sound cute. The very mention of his name makes lots of otherwise confident, self-assured adults quake in their shoes...particularly if accompanied by the news that his actual presence is shortly to follow.
He has been writing for over four decades and has produced and sold more than 1,700 discrete pieces of work, ranging from novels, short stories, novellas, teleplays and screenplays to essays, reviews, commentaries and informational articles. For the better part of my life (I was born in 1963 and my earliest recollection of reading his work was in my early teens), he has at various times made me laugh, cry, gasp in wonder, gape in sheer astonishment (usually at his incredible skill and quite often at his equally massive store of chutzpah). And on more than one occasion he's made me want to purchase round-trip airline tickets to Los Angeles for the sole express purpose of kicking his bony old ass all up and down Ventura Boulevard. (I have told him this in more condensed version in person, by the way, and shook his hand, and he nodded ruefully and said, "Oh, yeah." He doesn't say anything about someone that he would not say to them, and I concur.)
But always, always, with whatever he has written, whether it is a foreword for someone else's book or a column for a magazine, whether it is a speech before a group or a TV show based on his teleplay, above all else he has made me think. And this insistence of his that I, and anyone else reading or hearing his words, do just that — bloody well think about what he is saying rather than just passively absorbing, look at what is really happening in this weary world of ours and ignore the propaganda, refuse to fall for the "okeydoke" (the old carny term he uses for a con job), discount the hype and blow off the bullshit — is what makes him precious, valuable, irreplaceable enough as a professional to forgive his self-admitted failings, foibles and transgressions as a person, of which there are many and due to which his enemies are legion. His demand that his readers make use of their God-given cognitive ability — not only use it, in fact, but push it beyond its normal accustomed exertion, challenge themselves and their beliefs, societally-pounded-in teachings and assumptions — is what I admire most about him. I believe this is why I get off way, way more on his nonfiction than I do on his fiction, as excellent as the latter is. (Do I really need to go on about the Hugos and the Nebulas and the Writer's Guild awards and Emmys and Mystery Writers of America Edgars and other awards, honors and plaudits he has earned for his fiction? I didn't think so. And just this past May of 2006, the Science Fiction Writers of America named him their newest Grand Master. In the immortal words of Stan "The Man" Lee, 'nuff said.)
Is there anyone left on the face of the planet who doesn't know that he wrote the Star Trek episode "City on the Edge of Forever," far and away the most popular episode (not only of the original series, but among all 400+ episodes of it and its four sequelae combined) in poll after poll? Or of how he was forced to watch his brainchild mutilated in rewrite after hamfisted rewrite and others, including the sainted late Gene Roddenberry hisownself, usurp credit for its success? Is there anyone who has not marveled at his book I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream, so popular it has been made into a commercial-sale computer game? Even channel-surfing TV viewers ran into him on the Sci-Fi Channel in its early days when he provided a regular commentary segment to one of its shows; he also has done the same for the Galaxy Online website. And then, of course, there is Babylon 5, J. Michael Straczynski's five-year masterpiece of future war and peace that is now considered a Trek-caliber watershed for televised SF, for which Harlan served as creative consultant and even acted a cameo role in an episode.
Everyone who knows anything about Harlan has a story about him they have heard or witnessed. Some are funny and some are appalling. He does not have the least little bit of gladness in his heart for suffering fools, and will tell them off in no uncertain terms if they impinge on him. He's almost like Estelle Getty's character Sophia in the classic sitcom The Golden Girls, with her stroke having shut down the part of her brain that censors what she says. I say "almost" because unlike her, Harlan has not to my knowledge had a stroke (though he did have quadruple-bypass surgery a few years back) and does possess at least some ability to restrain himself, as shown by his forbearance to speak publicly on the Star Trek matter for decades until the late 1990s, when he published his original script for "City" in book form, with scads of documentation of both his adversaries' claims and evidence against them.
Even those he calls friends have suffered his insults, his anger and his ridicule, mostly jokingly (ask Peter David, another fine writer and FOH [Friend of Harlan], what I mean) but sometimes not (Star Trek / Babylon 5 actor Walter Koenig swore fulsome oaths never to speak to Harlan again at one point). He is fandom's own combination of George Carlin, H. L. Mencken and Don Rickles, the misanthropic "Mr. Warmth" of the con circuit. And yet this is not entirely sarcasm; the man does possess genuine warmth for the right people, ones he deems deserving. He raised money to help the late George Alec Effinger, yet another fine writer and a onetime friend of mine, after George's New Orleans home burned down and he was sent to the hospital with catastrophic treatment needs. He did the same for the family of the late author Manly Wade Wellman, holding an auction at the 1986 Atlanta World SF Convention, Confederation. He is as gentle as a lamb on Prozac with young children, as I have personally witnessed.
And he gives of himself and his time selflessly to causes in which he believes, such as the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund, set up to pay legal fees for comic-book creatives, publishers and dealers facing community persecution for the content of their wares. (You haven't lived until you've seen him do the country-preacher "Sea of Green" routine he uses to coax donations from crowds.) He famously rounded up talents such as the late A.E. van Vogt and Norman Spinrad to form "The Committee" to generate fan and pro letters to NBC when he was told Star Trek was in danger of being cancelled in its second season (this turned out to be of questionable truth, but read his "City" book for that story). He himself was recently plaintiff in a lawsuit against media behemoth Time Warner and other commercial entities and individuals for allowing the posting of his work and that of many other well-known authors on the Internet without permission or compensation, in violation of copyright law. (The lawsuit was settled, finally, in Harlan's and the other authors' favor. Some days you do get the bear, no matter how much bigger and more fearsome he may be.)
Harlan is a person of extremes, and brings up reactions in kind from those who encounter him. People either love him to death or wish for his death (the latter usually as slow, painful and soon as possible); there is no in-between. Conversely, he will fly cross-country on a moment's notice to succor a friend in need; but if you are foolish enough to make an enemy of him, look the hell out! He reports in his “City” book that one person told him the real reason Gene Roddenberry had been cremated was for fear too many people would come to piss on the Great Bird’s grave. It may well be advisable to do the same for Harlan when he croaks (may that day be long in coming!), for the same reason. He admits to holding grudges, as David Weber writes of a character in his Honor Harrington books, until they die and then having them stuffed and mounted to hold onto them still longer. He gleefully tells a story of how, each year on the anniversary of the publication of a magazine column that trashed Harlan undeservedly, he sent its author a postcard bearing just four words: "I haven't forgotten -- Ellison," year after year, right up until the poor schmuck died of cancer.
Let it be stipulated that Harlan is at best mercurial, shifting like a fresh-off-the-assembly-line Ferrari from Nobel Peace Prize-level kindness to thermonuclear hostility. Stipulated that he is, as one poster to the Usenet newsgroup rec.arts.sf.written wrote, "qualified to teach a Ph.D-level course in being an asshole." But damn it to hell, he's our asshole, and as far as I am concerned, anyone who messes with him messes with me -- and I'm far from the only one who feels that way about this éminence grise of what Ellison contemporary, colleague and friend David Gerrold calls "the literature of amazement." (Yes, I know I'm using a lot of French. I'm a full-blooded Cajun by birth, so I'm entitled. Phbbth.) Who can get under your skin despite your love for them better than family? And Harlan is unquestionably part of the family we call SF, however much he may reject the label.
Sometimes I wonder whether, at his advanced age, Harlan ever has moments when he feels he is beating his now-white-haired head against a wall to no purpose and wants to hang it up, quit fighting the good fight, just say “to hell with it” and enjoy a well-earned retirement. (I wished him a hundred years more life and many more writings, and he said, "Oh, God, don't wish that on me..." in mock despair.) I want him to know, should he somehow read this (he disdains the Internet profoundly and will not even use a computer to write; his trusty old typewriter still works just fine, thank you) that millions of us out here are cheering him on as he takes on the Man, turns on the world and rails against entropy itself -– and that I hope he will choose and be able to keep on doing so for a good long time to come. And here is my explanation as to why.
Some have speculated that Harlan actually enjoys being the bête noire of fandom, that he actually makes pissing people off his personal hobby, that he somehow derives pleasure or satisfaction from his curmudgeonly reputation. I cannot tell you whether he would confirm or deny this, as I have not asked him. But as he and Joe Straczynski showed in Babylon 5, real people are not cardboard cutouts, all one thing or all the other, white-hat-wearing good guys or mustache-twirling villains. "Yeh, yeh, even Hitler loved Eva Braun and his mother," I hear you saying; but to compare Harlan's occasional petty behavior to such villainy is to both trivialize the Holocaust and do him an injustice (and being a Jew by both birth and upbringing, Harlan will be the first and most forceful to point this out to you). People get a reputation for being "good" or "evil" based on the choices they make at various points in their lives; as Harlan said in a public appearance not too long ago, we are all who and what and where we are right now by our own choosing, whether we realize it or not. Maybe he does hit the "bad" end of the scale more often than is good for him or others; but at heart, Harlan is on the side of the angels by philosophy. He does have a code of ethics; it may not be comprehensible in spots to some, and he may fall short of it frequently (as he has the grace to own up to), but it is relentlessly consistent and he adheres to it as faithfully as any fallible human being can.
And more to the point, we need someone like Harlan to be the "bad cop" to the "good cop" of other, more gently-tempered celebrities and professionals. Even if he were, as his critics allege, nothing but a cruel, vicious, tact-bereft, perpetually pissed-off loose cannon, perhaps at times it takes one such to speak truth to power in the face of the intimidation and resources power can marshal. As we enter the new millennium, the state of the world in which we live argues vigorously — nay, cries out for the kind of man who is willing to go all Don Quixote on the powers that be and stand up in public to point out that the emperor is fuckin' bare-assed naked. One who doesn't care what the penalty may be for saying so, because he knows it goddamned well needs to be said by someone before the emperor carries all the rest of us down the toilet with him.
Every day that Harlan Ellison continues to write is one more day that truly egregious so-called "SF" product, in films or on television, will not garner millions for a studio or network and its minions without having its wrongnesses, technical, dramatic and otherwise, laid bare (as director Peter Hyams learned to his chagrin after Harlan eviscerated his film Outland in the pages of Starlog magazine). Every day that he appears somewhere to speak is one more day that injustice to the early creators of our best-loved comic-book heroes (and their present-day inheritors) will not go unremarked or unredressed. Every day that he grants an interview to or writes commentary for the press is one more day the pompous and the petty, the dishonest and the dastardly of the publishing and entertainment industries must dread the striking of his well-honed rhetorical lance. In short, every day more that this man draws breath, the genre we cherish is improved; though he may loathe thinking of himself as a part of the genre, he is nonetheless a tireless paladin for it. Or perhaps not so much for SF per se as for excellence in any genre, demanding that we as paying customers settle for nothing less.
Read his essays, currently being reprinted in a new hardcover series called EdgeWorks, and you will see what I mean. Read his scathing two-volume critique reprised therein of the industry that has helped keep a roof over his head and food on his table for over 40 years, The Glass Teat and The Other Glass Teat. Attend an Ellison lecture, if you are fortunate to live close to a venue where he is giving one. Check out his panels at conventions such as I-Con on Long Island or the Worldcons. Count how many times he makes you mad with something he says that you identify with — and note carefully and honestly whether it is because he's truly dead-assed wrong...or because deep down in your heart of hearts, you know he's right and you hate him for it. Tally also how often he tells stories of kindnesses people have done for him, and his extravagant repayments thereof. And note how many times he makes you laugh till your head hurts and your lungs gasp desperately for oxygen, and how many times he tells you something new and worth knowing that you had never before known or even conceived of.
In other words, if you are going to pass judgment on Harlan Ellison, do it on the man, not the myth. As Spider Robinson wrote of the late Robert Heinlein, inferring anything about a person from her/his fiction is a mug's game; it is in a fiction writer's job description to get into the head of someone different from her/him in temperament, experience or belief and report back what s/he finds. Read Harlan's fiction, certainly, and enjoy it, savor it, see how it's done by someone who honest-to-Ghu knows how. But if you would truly know him, and you are not one of those favored to be among his personal circle or even ones outside it of whom he is fond, read his nonfiction, hear his speeches, talk to the man one-on-one (it is possible; I have done it myself and survived the experience). Contrary to popular belief, he does not bite your head off unprovoked if you approach him. He will tell you "No" firmly if you delay him from doing his business with "just one more thing..."; he has written than people who say that to you 90% of the time are looking to do nothing worthwhile with the time they are attempting to steal from you, and he is right, and I should have remembered this if I did not want him to say it to me as he did. If you know his rules going in, the onus is yours for breaking them.
Along with Heinlein, the late Dr. Isaac Asimov (the only author I can think of who matches Harlan for sheer quantity and variety of output) and Robinson, Harlan is part of my personal pantheon of literary Grand Masters, and admittedly this colors my observations somewhat. But I have made an honest effort to cite fact as well as opinion, personal experience rather than hearsay, and documented statements rather than rumor in this polemic. Beyond that, I enjoin you again: look at the work, talk to the man and get as much factual data as you can before you write him off as just a bitter old crank or a mean-assed rat bastard. For myself, he has immeasurably bettered my ability to distinguish truth from falsehood, beauty from ugliness and quality from crapola...and for that I thanked him when I met him, and I thank him again here; I will owe him that debt to the end of my days, for it cannot be repaid. Maybe he will never choose me to enter his circle of friends, and that is his right...but I'd settle for just being allowed to hang with him some evening when he's really on a roll.
END
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Harlan story part 1
Date: 2006-09-10 05:39 am (UTC)Shortly after Again, Dangerous Visions (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Again%2C_Dangerous_Visions) came out in 1972 (it was bigger than the first collection), Harlan was tooling around Los Angeles late at night when he saw three disheveled-looking ladies standing around a fire in a trash bin in a well-used part of town. Being Harlan and suffering from eternal Weltschmertz, he took pity, pulled over, and walked over to the fire. After striking up a conversation about Tom Bradley's chances against Sam Yorty in the mayoral election, he discovered that they were SF readers.
So he asked if they knew some of his friends' work. Yes, they did. So he spent an amiable half hour chatting about this book and that story, and then one of them reached into her collection of stuff and brought out a dog-eared book. Again, Dangerous Visions, it said on the cover. "Have you seen this?" she said. "It's fascinating. Couldn't put it down."
Harlan couldn't help himself. He grinned from ear to ear. Why he felt more proud that three homeless ladies read his book than anyone else, I don't know. It was one of those Ellison moments. "I'm Harlan Ellison," he said.
"Oh," she said, and immediately looked into the fire, as did her companions.
"Did I say something wrong?" he asked.
"No, no. It's a wonderful book," she replied, still looking into the fire.
"Look, can I buy you all some dinner?"
They shook their heads.
"What's the matter?"
"We cannot leave the fire," one said. "We are watching."
Harlan looked, and looked a little closer to see a small pot in the middle of the fire.
"That can't be much dinner. Can you at least let me get you some take-out?"
"If you wish."
So Harlan got into his car and drove off. He'd get them food they could eat for a week. And some clothing. And as he drove, Harlan started thinking about the three women, hovering over a fire and a pot in a fire. They knew SF. They knew his work. They had ADV even though they were surely penniless. Wait a minute...
Re: Harlan story part 2
Date: 2006-09-10 05:39 am (UTC)"It matters not. You will get the food we're expecting," said the tallest.
"Oh," Harlan said. "You know what I'll get?"
The shortest looked up from the fire at him and stared him down.
"Look, I think I know who you are."
The women laughed. "Oh, you do???" one woman asked.
"I don't know your names, but my work is myth and misdirection. You surely knew I'd figure it out."
They smiled.
Harlan couldn't stand the silence. "So tell me what you're going to say!"
They smiled.
"Okay. Okay. When I told you my name, you stared into the fire, as if you'd seen a ghost. Why?"
The shortest looked up at him. "Do you really want to know?"
"Yes. I really do."
"All right," she continued. "Here's why we looked away from your face: We knew we'd meet you, but not necessarily tonight. We generally meet people as at least minor surprises. It's about the only thing that makes the job interesting. Seeing the future is boring. Why would you ever pick up a deck of cards for solitaire if you know what's going to happen?
"And here is what we know, because it is so strongly written: You will die with the publication of The Last Dangerous Visions. It makes us sad. But there you have it."
Harlan breathed and said nothing for a minute. The last in the Dangerous Visions series was to be published in 1973.
"Well, that's a shock."
"It's sad. You're a good writer and editor. You inspire. You drive people bananas. And sometimes you do both in the space of a minute. You're entertaining in an existential sense, which I find valuable."
Harlan said, "Will I survive until the publication date?"
"Hard to say," said the shortest witch, "but I think so."
Harlan stared and then thought and then smiled.
"Why, thank you!" he shouted and ran to his car.
The Last Dangerous Visions has not been published in the 34 years since. Harlan is still alive. Many contributing authors are confused, surprised, or resigned to Harlan's failure to deliver the book.
But maybe this is Harlan's way of staying alive. He survived the 1994 L.A. earthquake, and he's survived multiple-bypass surgery. He survived his youth and his middle age, and he is the aging enfante terribly of SF and Hollywood.
I suspect Harlan still has that book MS secreted away somewhere. Some day, and I hope it's not for several more years at least, Harlan will be very sick and, this time, he decides survival isn't worth the effort and pain. But he won't ask for barbituates or an overdose of morphine. No—he will ask that a loved one take the MS of The Last Dangerous Visions and make sure it gets published, and very soon indeed. And then, as the witches foretold, he will die with the publication of the book.
It is perhaps appropriate that Harlan has this curse, or maybe a boon. But, in any case, he's been around for a surprising number of years, given his dyspeptic approach to some of the world while he's a total Jewish mother to the rest of it.
But, by being clver, Harlan has secured for himself a unique privilege, to be the very first writer in the history of the world to commit suicide by book.
Re: Harlan story part 2
Date: 2006-09-10 04:12 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-09-10 04:12 pm (UTC)Just curious.
no subject
Date: 2006-09-10 05:37 pm (UTC)Harlan at Worldcon
Date: 2006-09-10 06:11 pm (UTC)From my looking at the video, there is some back and forth between the two, with Ellison horsing around (puting a mike in his mouth) while Willis exhorts him to "behave." After a bit of back and forth, Ellison (who is only about shoulder high to Willis) puts his hand on Willis' left breast.
Many are offended and outraged, seeing this as classic male chauvinist behavior. Defenders of Harlan argue that he was just horsing around and got a bit out of hand in the moment. Inappropriate, but a 75 year old guy who has made a reputation as fandom's irrascible a-hole "take me or leave me" will occassionaly slip into the inappropriate.
You can read critical of Ellison here: http://www.amptoons.com/blog/archives/2006/09/04/harlan-ellison-gropes-connie-willis/
And Ellison's response here: http://harlanellison.com/heboard/unca.htm (you gotta scroll down some).
Anyway, a spirited defense of Harlan is likely to be viewed in light of the current contretemps.
Re: Harlan at Worldcon
Date: 2006-09-10 11:57 pm (UTC)As for changing my analysis: Even for Harlan, this incident is pushing the boundaries; nay, running roughshod over them. I am grieved for his conduct, and I fully understand the anger of many women who feel this is just one more proof of the unequal treatment of women in both SF literature and the world in general. It's damned hard for me to blow this one off with something on the order of "Well, that's just Harlan being Harlan, waddayagonnado?"
I will not condone his actions; were he to contact me personally, I hope I would have the courage to say to his face that I think he did a massive wrong to Ms. Willis and should at the very least apologize to her publicly. However, I note that she herself has stated that she has had far worse behavior from Harlan, and that she can deal; and accounts of the rest of the introduction and ceremony indicate that she handled it with dignity, class and circumspection -- far better than he deserved; I would not have blamed her one bit if she'd slapped him backhanded across the face right there on stage, in front of God and everybody.
So I am loathe to abandon my championing of the man's work, which is beyond reproach, or of the man's personal willingness to do battle with injustice, to speak for the little guy (including women's issues, for which he has stood up in the past) and to get the truth out there. If we are to abandon him for this one incident in a long and hell-raising life, do we not risk throwing out the proverbial baby with the bath water? By that standard, I should have been expelled from the LJ community myself last week for my own errant behavior.
Most of what I wrote above, I think, can still stand. But I do think that Harlan needs to take a good, hard, long look at himself and see if he can find some way to make this right with Ms. Willis and with the SF community at large. I hope this answers your question.