A Tribute to Harlan Ellison
Legendary writer Harlan Ellison died yesterday (June 28, 2018). He was one of my literary heroes here's a tribute: Harlan Ellison & Me:
Well, ok I never knew Harlan Ellison and I never met him, but when you’ve read enough of a writer you feel like you know them. Ellison was a major influence on my writing and he died today (June 28, 2018) at age 84.
I first discovered Ellison when I was 19 when I read Dangerous Visions, one of the most famous and influential anthologies in not only science-fiction but in literature as well. I read Visions about eight years after it was originally published, but I knew its reputation, cutting edge stories by mostly unknown writers whose stories couldn’t be published in traditional markets because of their controversial content, the writers dangerous visions. I read it while I was working my way through school on a graveyard shift. I’d finish my work and had a couple hours of reading and the stories were a turn on but so were the introductions. A paragraph or two of Ellison’s insight into the writer, how he got the story, or something about the story itself make a compelling supplement to the story, so much so that it drove me to go on a Harlan Ellison reading spree. I moved on to Shatterday. Again, Ellison had introductions to his stories that included something about how the story came to him. In those introductions the fledgling writer in me learned how to find stories, how to use my own life as grist for stories. It was a revelation. I moved on to other books (short-stories, Ellison’s chosen form of which he was a master) Gentleman Junkie and Other Stories of the Hung-up Generation, Strange Wine, Sex Ain’t Nothing but Love Misspelled, The Beast Who Shouted Love at the Heart of the World, all great titles with great stories. Some of Ellison’s stories are classics of literature such as Jefty is Five, Repent, Harlequin! Said the Ticktockman, I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream, A Boy and His Dog. Then I hit The Glass Teat, although in a pre-Amazon world it took me forever to find a copy of the then out of print book. The Glass Teat was a compilation of articles Ellison wrote for the L.A. Free Press from 1968 to 1971 and were critiques of television programs of the times as well as the medium itself. By the time of my reading in the early 80’s colleges had incorporated The Glass Teat into their curriculums.
Before I was a Harlan Ellison fan I was a Star Trek fan and I knew Ellison had written the Star Trek episode City on the Edge of Forever which is generally acknowledged as the best episode of that series. Except he didn’t write it, he thought Dorothy Fontana and probably Gene Roddenbury himself had a hand in changing the story enough that Ellison protested to the union and had his name taken off and the pseudonym Cordwainer Bird was credited as writer of the episode (Ellison’s name has since been put back in the credits). When City on the Edge of Forever won the Writers Guild Award in 1968 it was discovered Ellison submitted his original script.
Ellison was one of the “angry young men of literature” from the 50’s. Writers that heralded a new wave in writing whose philosophy was that writing was art with something to say, that art was important, that writers could be artists with messages and stand up for what they believed in. This was a validation of ideas that I had but perhaps until then hadn’t found any role models for. This is how Harlan Ellison influenced me. My admiration of Ellison is only a small part of the whole that Ellison was he marched in Selma with Martin Luther King Jr, he wrote in almost every genre imaginable, he wrote for television, his screenplays influenced a new generation (James Cameron with The Terminator). He was friends with other legends like Ray Bradbury, and Issac Asimov. He also influenced and mentored many writers. Octavia Butler was a student of Ellison’s and Neal Gaiman also acknowledges Ellison’s influence. Thank you Harlan for all the stories that you gave us that will be told by future generations.
If you'd like to read this at Medium I posted there with a picture and video of Ellison
Well, ok I never knew Harlan Ellison and I never met him, but when you’ve read enough of a writer you feel like you know them. Ellison was a major influence on my writing and he died today (June 28, 2018) at age 84.
I first discovered Ellison when I was 19 when I read Dangerous Visions, one of the most famous and influential anthologies in not only science-fiction but in literature as well. I read Visions about eight years after it was originally published, but I knew its reputation, cutting edge stories by mostly unknown writers whose stories couldn’t be published in traditional markets because of their controversial content, the writers dangerous visions. I read it while I was working my way through school on a graveyard shift. I’d finish my work and had a couple hours of reading and the stories were a turn on but so were the introductions. A paragraph or two of Ellison’s insight into the writer, how he got the story, or something about the story itself make a compelling supplement to the story, so much so that it drove me to go on a Harlan Ellison reading spree. I moved on to Shatterday. Again, Ellison had introductions to his stories that included something about how the story came to him. In those introductions the fledgling writer in me learned how to find stories, how to use my own life as grist for stories. It was a revelation. I moved on to other books (short-stories, Ellison’s chosen form of which he was a master) Gentleman Junkie and Other Stories of the Hung-up Generation, Strange Wine, Sex Ain’t Nothing but Love Misspelled, The Beast Who Shouted Love at the Heart of the World, all great titles with great stories. Some of Ellison’s stories are classics of literature such as Jefty is Five, Repent, Harlequin! Said the Ticktockman, I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream, A Boy and His Dog. Then I hit The Glass Teat, although in a pre-Amazon world it took me forever to find a copy of the then out of print book. The Glass Teat was a compilation of articles Ellison wrote for the L.A. Free Press from 1968 to 1971 and were critiques of television programs of the times as well as the medium itself. By the time of my reading in the early 80’s colleges had incorporated The Glass Teat into their curriculums.
Before I was a Harlan Ellison fan I was a Star Trek fan and I knew Ellison had written the Star Trek episode City on the Edge of Forever which is generally acknowledged as the best episode of that series. Except he didn’t write it, he thought Dorothy Fontana and probably Gene Roddenbury himself had a hand in changing the story enough that Ellison protested to the union and had his name taken off and the pseudonym Cordwainer Bird was credited as writer of the episode (Ellison’s name has since been put back in the credits). When City on the Edge of Forever won the Writers Guild Award in 1968 it was discovered Ellison submitted his original script.
Ellison was one of the “angry young men of literature” from the 50’s. Writers that heralded a new wave in writing whose philosophy was that writing was art with something to say, that art was important, that writers could be artists with messages and stand up for what they believed in. This was a validation of ideas that I had but perhaps until then hadn’t found any role models for. This is how Harlan Ellison influenced me. My admiration of Ellison is only a small part of the whole that Ellison was he marched in Selma with Martin Luther King Jr, he wrote in almost every genre imaginable, he wrote for television, his screenplays influenced a new generation (James Cameron with The Terminator). He was friends with other legends like Ray Bradbury, and Issac Asimov. He also influenced and mentored many writers. Octavia Butler was a student of Ellison’s and Neal Gaiman also acknowledges Ellison’s influence. Thank you Harlan for all the stories that you gave us that will be told by future generations.
If you'd like to read this at Medium I posted there with a picture and video of Ellison
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