“For a brief time I was here, and for a brief time, I mattered.”
Harlan Ellison, author, screenwriter, and grand master of science fiction and fantasy, has passed on June 28th, 2018 at the age of 84. Via legal representative and photographer Christine Valada:
Susan Ellison has asked me to announce the passing of writer Harlan Ellison, in his sleep, earlier today. “For a brief time I was here, and for a brief time, I mattered.”—HE, 1934-2018. Arrangements for a celebration of his life are pending.
— Christine Valada (@mcvalada) June 28, 2018
Whether he was shouting love at the heart of the world or screaming because he had no mouth, Harlan Ellison brought noise into not only the field of SFF, but the universe of storytelling itself.
Part runaway, part punk, the education of Harlan Ellison didn’t necessarily predict greatness. He was a dockworker, a gang member, a circus hand, an expelled student, and member of the armed forces all before he was 25 years-old. Crisscrossing from his native Ohio, to New York City, Ellison eventually settled in Los Angeles, where he lived from 1962 until the present day. It was this proximity to Hollywood which involved Ellison in writing for the screen, leading to famous (and infamous) stories sold to the likes of The Outer Limits, Star Trek, and Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea.
None of these writing jobs happened without notable kerfuffle, and like a science fiction rock-star, Ellison’s dust-ups with the powers-that-be are almost as famous as his writing. Think the movie The Terminator bears some similarity to a few Harlan Ellison short stories? So did he, and successfully sued and settled with James Cameron over the issue. Historically, Ellison disparaged Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry for the way his famous “City On the Edge of Forever” Trek script had been rewritten without his permission. Though, in the last several years, Ellison seemed to ease-up on his vitriol toward Trekkies and gleefully participated in two different adaptations of the story, one as a new audio play for Skyboat Media, and another, new version of his first “City” script, beautifully illustrated by IDW comics.
If Ellison was outspoken about the treatment of his work, it was because he believed firmly that writing should be a job, and a respected one at that. In a memorable phone conversation between myself and the author, he mentioned that writing shouldn’t be looked upon as a “holy chore,” but rather as real work. If Ellison earned a reputation for defending the rights of writers, he did so because he believed firmly in the importance of keeping the business of writing an honest profession. Like laying brick, or working in a factory, Harlan Ellison believed writing too, was a simply a job, and one that has to be labored at seriously in order to be done well.
The fleetingness of brilliance, the hard-earned success of a writer in the face of repeated rejection, is summed up brilliantly in this Ellison quip: “The trick isn’t becoming a writer. The trick is staying a writer.” Ellison’s belief in hard work being key to overcoming all obstacles was at the core of everything he did. And the evidence is in his staggeringly prolific output. Despite authoring countless short story collections and novels, Ellison was also an outspoken columnist, a television consultant on Babylon 5, and a considerably famous editor of anthologies. In 1967, Ellison edited Dangerous Visions, a volume that pushed the boundaries of science fiction and fantasy writing, including stories from Philip K. Dick, Samuel Delany and an introduction from none other than Isaac Asimov. Dangerous Visions was notable not just for the fiction, but also for the charming essays Ellison wrote introducing each story. He repeated this trick with the anthology’s sequel, Again, Dangerous Visions, which expanded to include stories from Ursula K. Le Guin, Kurt Vonnegut, and many others. In these books, sometimes Ellison’s elaborate and verbose introductory essays about each writer are more memorable than the short stories themselves.
What can be said of Harlan Ellison’s work itself though? What defines a Harlan Ellison story? Well, some are straightforward science fiction conceits which ask simply “what if?” (What if a man who starts fires with his mind were asked to destroy a star? In “Deeper than Darkness,” we’re faced with just that question.) But sometimes the stories are more slippery, harder to pinpoint, like “Mefisto in Onyx,” where a young telepath begins to confuse his identity with that of a serial murder. Indeed the famous “I Have No Mouth and Must Scream,” initially reads like a straight horror story—a computer is torturing people—but ends up as a stranger meditation on what pain is really all about, and how expression is the only outlet we truly have for it. What happens when that expression is taken away?
It would be a bizarre disservice to write an obituary for Harlan Ellison, and not mention his most famous story, “ ‘Repent, Harlequin!’ Said the Ticktockman.” In this one, a future enslaved under strict schedules is invaded by a rogue figure intent on destroying the “system.” If Harlan Ellison was constantly presenting his middle finger to the establishment—whether that was science fiction, writing schools, Hollywood, or just an authority in general—then he is well represented by the trickster Harlequin, who flings jellybeans into the cogs of the Orwellian machines. Jellybeans!
We can only hope, when Ellison approaches the gates of the afterlife, that they know what they’re in for. After he basically wrestled the future to the ground, how could the afterlife possibly prepare for Harlan Ellison? And what will they do if he’s armed with a bag of jellybeans?
Photo: Harlan Ellison at the Harlan Ellison Roast. L.A. Press Club July 12, 1986. Los Angeles, California. Photo by Pip R. Lagenta used under Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license.
Sad day for all lovers of the written word. His ‘Repent, Harlequin!’ Said the Ticktockman is one of my all time favorite short stories.
Another major loss, such a short time after Gardner Dozois: Ellison defined the American New Wave, provoked endless controversy and inspired scores of dangerous visions.
R.I.P. HARLAN ELLISON . I enjoyed several short stories like Jeffty is 5 and Human Operators. I’m going to have to dig up my copy of Dangerous Visions. My fondest memories will be of his rants on the SciFi Channel when it first got started, and his genre tv work on Outer Limits, Twilight Zone and Babylon 5. He may have been small and loud in defense of writing in general and his own work especially but he told some really great stories.
My favorite writer who inspired a lifetime of reading starting in my teens. His angriest works were his most honest, and taught me to really think about man vs society vs technology vs himself and to not sit-com/calm in front of the glass teat. RIP HE. Your writijmattered a lot.
He was a great writer with an imaginative mind that knew no bounds. May he rest in peace.
I wanted to kill him for “I Have No Mouth” but I forgave him when I read “Jefty is Five” a tender tale that reveals his heart, and that he was not only a rebel. Requiescat in pace, sir. We’ve lost a lot of bright lights in the SF world of late, haven’t we?
I was old enough to read the various Dangerous Visions when they were out, and to have enjoyed many of his own stories and overall snark. Agree with @6 that this is a rough period for SFF greats.
Thank you, Harlan Ellison for CITY ON THE EDGE OF FOREVER, the Star Trek episode that should –and will — live forever.
RIP Harlan Ellison. While I think a lot of his writing and behaviour was problematic, he was also a GENIUS.
I teach “Repent, Harlequin!” every time I get to teach Science Fiction. (Fun fact: Stephen King has openly said that the Ticktockman in his Dark Tower epic is directly based on Ellison’s character.) I have also taught “The Whimper of Whipped Dogs” more than once in my literature classes; I teach in NYC and some of my students still remember the Kitty Genovese murder.
I am kind of wrecked by this news. While I knew Ellison wasn’t doing well, I also kind of thought that he’d continue to be around for a long time. I am sorry that I never got to meet him.
“It would be a bizarre disservice to write an obituary for Harlan Ellison, and not mention…” that he also sexually assaulted a fellow science fiction writer, live on stage at the Hugo Awards in 2006. Or that he ripped off a lot of SF authors over the non-appearance of The Last Dangerous Visions for forty years.
Harlan Ellison was a visionary and important short story writer, scriptwriter and editor. He was unfailingly generous to some younger science fiction authors and those who paid him what he considered to be a reasonable level of respect. He could also be nasty, petty, small-minded and vindictive, sometimes perhaps justifiably (if someone was trying to actually rip him off), often not.
Ellison was a guy who’d get out of a car in a very dangerous part of South Central LA to give a homeless woman money. He was also someone who would relentlessly hound someone through the courts for writing a story based on a very general idea that just happened to coincide with a story element he’d written thirty years earlier. He was a seething mass of contradictions, as most humans are. One thing he was constant about was honesty in writing and not whitewashing or sugar-coating truths, and I think he had enough integrity to include himself in that.
A memorial or obituary that only mentions the good things about an author who prided himself on being a divisive and polarising figure is no fitting memorial for Harlan Ellison at all.
You were one of my biggest influences as a kid growing up reading science fiction. Your stories mattered to me. Rest in peace, my friend.
@Werthead: I agree with a lot of what you have said. I have heard some pretty terrible stories about Ellison’s behaviour towards women. And he DEFINITELY had one heck of a temper, especially when he felt he was being wronged in any way.
You’re right: he was “a mass of contradictions.” In some ways, he was like Spider Jerusalem in Transmetropolitan: “[Tell] the truth, no matter who it hurts.” (And even if “your truth” isn’t the same as someone else’s.)
However, IMHO, this obituary was trying to be respectful – perhaps because the assumption is that all of us who frequent this website already know a lot about Ellison and who he was, both good and bad. I haven’t really gone hunting in the mass media for this obituary; I will do so and I wonder how he’s being portrayed there.
“In these books, sometimes Ellison’s elaborate and verbose introductory essays about each writer are more memorable than the short stories themselves.“
I’m reminded of something I saw once in Isaac Asimov’s magazine:
“Higgledy-piggledy
Hellraiser Ellison
writes with such fever, such fervor, such strength:
twenty-one pages of
Sesquipedalian
intros for stories of
twenty page length.”
PS: I have to add that I am ANGRY that Ellison’s death isn’t getting more attention. Yes, he was not always the best person. But he contributed enormously to SF and to literature in general. I didn’t know about his death until I read it here, and I have news alerts set up on my devices. I know there are many, many terrible things going on right now (Maryland) but it’s also terrible that we lost such a great writer
In the late Seventies many of the original generation of SF writers were dying. Professional writers and serious fen passed the word. “Have you heard? We lost another one.” The memento mori of the time was: Timor mortis conturbat me. “The fear of death troubles me.”
Here’s a slice of the old poem, much recalled at the time. The flesh is weak, the devil is sly.
Ending with the flower of all makers, Geoffrey Chaucer.
Lament For The Makers
By William Dunbar
I that in heill wes and gladnes,
Am trublit now with gret seiknes,
And feblit with infermite;
Timor mortis conturbat me.
Our plesance heir is all vane glory,
This fals warld is bot transitory,
The flesche is brukle, the Fend is sle;
Timor mortis conturbat me.
The stait of man dois change and vary,
Now sound, now seik, now blith, now sary,
Now dansand mery, now like to dee;
Timor mortis conturbat me.
No stait in erd heir standis sickir;
As with the wynd wavis the wickir,
Wavis this warldis vanite.
Timor mortis conturbat me.
On to the ded gois all estatis,
Princis, prelotis, and potestatis,
Baith riche and pur of al degre;
Timor mortis conturbat me.
He takis the knychtis in to feild,
Anarmit under helme and scheild;
Victour he is at all mellie;
Timor mortis conturbat me.
He hes done petuously devour,
The noble Chaucer, of makaris flour,
The Monk of Bery, and Gower, all thre;
Timor mortis conturbat me.
@Fernhunter – Thank you for the lovely poem!
I’m not old enough to remember the “original generation” of SF writers dying. However, I am also aware that many of the next generation of SFwriters have died or may die soon. I remember Ray Bradbury’s death (another writer who, sadly, I never got the chance to meet) a few years ago. And now Harlan Ellison. (What the HECK is it about June, anyways – one of my best high school friends died in June and my mentor and chair of my disseration committee also died in June. I am starting to DREAD this month.)
I sent an email to my entire English department about Ellison’s death and told my students this evening. While I always teach him in my SF class, I may try to get an article published about his work. I know there is some Ellison scholarship out there, but IMHO he hasn’t received the critical attention he deserves.
All I can think of is Jonathan Swift’s epitaph:
“[He is now] Where fierce indignation can no longer
Rend his heart.
Go, traveller, and imitate if you can
This earnest and dedicated
Champion of Liberty”
A friend of mine once recounted a sterling Ellison moment. There was a story Harlan wrote, I don’t recall the name, which he disowned, swearing never to sign it. My friend had a copy of this story in one of those flip books, two books back-to-back in one book. So my friend took this to a signing and presented the alternate story for signing. Ellison began signing and then realized what had been done. He finished signing it, and then ripped the book in half, presenting my friend with the signed half and tossing the other portion away.
My friend was quite pleased. I believe he said Harlan was also amused, but I don’t rightly recall.
With Harlan it started with Dangerous Visions (and More Dangerous Visions); but I was caught for good by Jefty was Five.
I find it sad that on a site devoted to Fantasy and Science fiction, whose stated aim is “to provoke, encourage and enable interesting and rewarding conversations with and between its readers,” there have been a mere 19 comments in two days on a post announcing the death of speculative fiction legend Harlan Ellison. What a harsh reminder of the transience of fame! A subject worthy of a brief, brilliant, bittersweet story by the inimitable Harlan Ellison.
@20/ Jeromemartel,
Perhaps an appropriate epitaph would be:
“He was a good writer, and an unpleasant person. In the eyes of God, which counts for more?”
I imagine that most readers would prefer not to speak ill of the dead, and that is why they do not comment.
@21 Keleborn,
I’d amend your epitaph to read “great writer.” Not that Ellison was always great, of course (who is?), but often enough: his best work, in my opinion, deserves to be remembered for as long as humans are reading stories.
As for his personality, yes it could be. . .unfortunate. I believe it has tended to overshadow his writing, which is a shame (although also his own damned fault). I suspect, however, that Ellison himself would have preferred to be righteously excoriated than politely ignored in the aftermath of his demise.
@Keleborn and jeromemartel: I think you are both right. I just read a twitter thread by an author I respect, who wrote about how angry they were about some of the unconditional adulation of Ellison in light of some of the REALLY not-okay things he did during his life, especially in regards to his treatment of women. That made me re-think some of the comments I’ve posted here.
As I said, I never knew Ellison personally and only know him through his writing, which always has and continues to impress me. I’ve spent my entire career in English trying to reconcile the difference between the author and the text. For example, I adore most of T. S. Eliot’s poems but kind of hate him as a person. I teach Isaac Asmiov in my classes but have read some really bad accounts of his behaviour towards women. Ellison wasn’t a saint by any means and, from everything I’ve read, he did some REALLY terrible things. But he also changed the field of SF and influenced many other writers and scholars, including myself. If you check Caitlin R. Kiernan’s (a Tor writer) personal blog, she posted an entry about how when she was in a personal dark place, Ellison would call her and tell her jokes to try to cheer her up.
I’m not trying to valorize Ellison at all. I will admit that I admire his willpower (but NOT many of the other things about him as a person) and that some of his stories rank up there with the best things I’ve ever read. Again, I regret that I never got to meet him because my opinion of him as a person was formed by what I’ve read about him, not my own experience with him
@22, @23,
For those who admire Ellison’s writing, I think that all you need to do is to allow a little time to pass before people are ready to focus on that.
Who remembers, or cares, that Beethoven beat up his brother? And I admire Asimov’s Robot novels and did not even know of his mistreatment of women (though given his shallow characterization of women and humans in general, I can believe it). I love Wagner’s Ride of the Valkyries, but sometimes do wish I had never been informed of his antisemitism. It seems that human beings are … complicated.
I also enjoyed Ellison’s “Repent, Harlequin!”, his Jack the Ripper story (My name isn’t Jack!), his Dangerous Visions introductions, his essays for the The Glass Teat, and his account of his joining a gang (don’t remember title.) I haven’t read more than that mostly because the short story form isn’t the one that most interests me.
@Kelborn: It’s “Memos from Purgatory,” which is kind of ironic now, because Red Hook has become SO gentrified and is actually a very expensive neighbourhood!
I think it’s IMPORTANT to remember the injustices that great writers have committed and I’m not sure it’s fair to say that we have to allow “time to pass” to talk about them.. For example, when I teach and write, I try always to acknowlege these writers’ flaws. IMHO, it is a disservice to them to not acknowledge that.
I completely agree that people are complicated. As I posted earlier, Caitlin R. Kiernan recently posted on her blog about how Ellison would sometimes call her and tell her jokes to cheer her up when she wasn’t doing well. By the same token, there are a LOT of accounts of writers and fans who were insulted by Ellison. AND he had a history of not-okay conduct towards women. (As did Asimov, for that matter.)
I am NOT saying any of this is fine – and still trying to negotiate the Harlan Ellison I loved in his writing with the real-life Ellison. But, despite the MUCH MORE egregious things (for example) Ezra Pound said and did, he is still considered a part of the literary canon in a way that Ellison isn’t. While I still may not like Ellison as a person (and again, to be fair, I never met him), I think his work holds up against over canonical texts
@25/ Jaimew,
Let me rephrase. I do not mean that you in particular should wait before trying to discuss or assess Ellison’s life or work – that is up to you. I am merely suggesting that as time passes people will be more interested in his writing than in his interpersonal behavior, and for that reason you and others will have a more receptive audience.
Of course that still may not satisfy you. If you are teaching a literature course, and teaching it as part of a humanities curriculum, then I imagine you will want to discuss it in terms of what it can teach us about humanity: not just about what the writer expressed in his writing, but how that writer related to his or her society. Furthermore, I imagine that describing and attempting to account for the complications and contradictions to be found in people – perhaps especially creative people – would have been of great interest to Ellison himself.
On the other hand, if one is an aspiring writer and wishes only to read Ellison in order to learn something about how to write, then one need not take an interest in such things. Ellison’s use of a separate paragraph for the word “vanished” in his JackTheRipper story, for example, awoke me to the realization that the page is a kind of canvas on which one may draw, in addition to simply writing prose.
Again, you are welcome to have your own attitude about this, but I would suggest that concerning oneself with the person when assessing the work is a good way to keep yourself … busy. I look about me and see a table, a chair, a lamp, a coffeemaker, a tapestry of a Snow Tiger, books on a bookshelf, plates and dishes … God only knows the political attitudes or styles of interpersonal relationship belonging to the people who made these things. Most of the time, what matters to me is whether these things are made well. But there are occasional exceptions, of course. I prefer to avoid using FedEx, for example.
By the way, it would be interesting to hear whether you think what Ellison did in Memos from Purgatory qualifies as rape.
@@@@@ 21, Keleborn asks:
“He was a good writer, and an unpleasant person. In the eyes of God, which counts for more?”
If you work as a bookkeeper or a plumber, you get the normal range of human challenges. You deal with them as you can. Perhaps you’re a loving husband and father. Perhaps you get drunk and beat your wife and children. Those choices and actions are the common human lot.
If we are made in the image of God, that is never more true than in the act of creation. Those blessed and cursed with a creative mind have the normal human temptations. But on top of those, they have another set of challenges. Dealing with the demands of creation makes even normal life harder. When Jung discussed creativity he said, “It is not easy to carry a full bowl.”
Were you pleasant or unpleasant? Creation does not care. Creative realization comes to the just and the unjust. The kind and the unkind. Was Michelangelo’s creativity refused because he was a homosexual? Was Einstein not given—for so he described it—Special Relativity because he cheated on his wife? The question answers itself. Did they pay for it in study and frustration and work and sacrifice and lifespan? Of course they did.
That does not exempt the highly creative from normal moral judgments. But I give them an extra slice of compassion. Just as I would to others who are handicapped by the hard conditions of their existence.
A woman considering an affair with Einstein or Picasso did well to proceed with care. On the other hand, she had to do the same with any plumber or bookkeeper. It remains true that Einstein and Picasso were doing things—excellent things—that no one else could accomplish. They paid for those achievements in coin not asked of your everyday straphanger.
Harlan was very nice to me, wrote lots of stuff which I published in my fanzines Algol and later in Starship, and indeed I published The Ellish, a special issue of Algol which became the basis for The Book of Ellison, a limited edition hardcover/trade paperback which I published for the 1978 Worldcon in Phoenix.
Harlan claimed that the book was unauthorized and he refused to autograph it for people. But I have kept all the royalty checks I paid to him, endorsed by him before depositing them, and he earned several thousand dollars from his share of the book. And that was in the late 1970s, early 1980s, when money went much further than today.
Later, Charles Platt wrote a really obnoxious postcard to him for his “Ask Uncle Harlan” column in Orson Scott Card/Mark Van Name’s magazine Short Form. Harlan never checked with me to see if I’d actually written the letter (a year later, he faxed me a copy of it; it used a typewriter I didn’t own, a return address I never used, had someone else’s signature). The editor never checked to see if I was the author; nor did the publisher.
Ellison wrote a hateful, vitriolic response to the postcard, and I first saw it in print after publication—I was not sent a copy at the time—when I showed up at the World Fantasy Convention, saw everyone staring at me, and didn’t know why.
From that time on, Harlan apparently decided I was evil incarnate, and he went out of his way to attack me at every turn. When I was editing/publishing Science Fiction Chronicle, he was silent when I published material that cast him in a good light. But he absolutely hated when I published material that cast him in a bad light.
He even claimed, completely without truth, that I was the one who personally got Publishers Weekly not to review his books.
He would attack me, often by name at conventions I was not at, or on line, with others posting his comments on my topic on GEnie. They too are hateful, vitriolic, libelous.
I saved all this material as Word files, still have them.
Lastly, when Nat Segaloff did his book, A Lit Fuse, I was never approached for it, nor am not mentioned in it. But I have nearly a dozen photos in the book (for which NESFA Press paid me) which I took over the many decades I knew Harlan, starting in the 1960s.
Nat now has all that all material, which he was unaware of when he was doing the book. (And in fact I was the one who told him by phone that Harlan had died.)
Incidentally, I first met Harlan at the 1966 Westercon. Later, he endorsed the Fanoclast bid for the 1967 Worldcon, and I was in his room at the Sheraton-Cleveland before the vote. He had just finished typing a new story, entitled, “I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream,” which he read to me and the other Fanoclasts there: Ted White, Dave Van Arnam, Mike McInerney, others.
So Harlan is gone. I certainly have many good memories of him, but others which aren’t.
@Keleborn: I completely agree, especially because much of what I do in the classroom and in my own work classifies as “cultural critique.” I have said I adore and teach T. S. Eliot. Yet I don’t sugar-coat his sexism, homophobia, and anti-Semitism. I’m also a HUGE Lovecraft fan (and have taught and written about him as well), but IMHO, there is no way to discuss Lovecraft without discussing the man’s MANY flaws.
By the same token, Ellison was often very generous to other writers. So was Lovecraft. I’ve been lucky enough to see the original copies of some of Lovecraft’s letters that are held at the John Hay Library at Brown University. Lovecraft could be completely *charming* sometimes – as when talking about how he didn’t mind eating canned spaghetti to keep to his food budget, or about his love for ice cream.
This is all a complicated grey area with which I encourage my students to engage. On the internets over the past few days, I’ve seen high praise of Ellison coupled with stories of how he hurt people (and again, we can’t EVER forget how he sometimes treated women). I’m aware of critical methods that completely divorce the author from the text (close reading), but I am not sure we can continue to do so, because the author (and the historical period in which they wrote) is REFLECTED in the text. That doesn’t mean that we should give Ellison a “pass” for all the lousy things he did, or that we should stop reading his work. But I think it DOES mean that we should read it from a more informed perspective, realizing his failures as a person as well as his successes along with his literary body of wor
It has been MANY years since I’ve read “Memos from Purgatory,” but IIRC, wasn’t sex with a female gang member part of his so-called “initiation?” I guess the question would be whether or not the woman consented to that and I don’t remember the text well enough to know if she did or not. And of course there is another layer here: Ellison knew he wasn’t “really” becoming a gang member. He was infiltrating the gang so he could write about it. That created a power differential between himself and the other members, including the woman with whom he had sex. And he admitted that the women in the gang were “property.” I am…NOT sure what to think about this. On the surface, it sounds like r@pe to me. However, I’d have to read the book again.
(For another account of gangs around that time period, see “Tomboy” by Hal Ellson – often confuzzed with Harlan Ellison – and by which Ellison has admitted he was inspired.)
@Fernhunter: I hear your point, but am not sure I agree. Yes, to an extent, being “gifted” comes along with burdens and responsibilities. However, as I get older, I find myself rejecting the stereotype of the “tortured genius.” I think far too many people use that as an excuse to do whatever they want. I’m not sure that intelligence and talent earns anyone any extra “compassion.” Doing terrible things remains doing terrible things, no matter how smart you are. And, to some extent, being a Michelangelo or an Einstein comes with MORE responsibility. (“With great power comes…great responsibility!”) :P I’m not saying that high intelligence and talent can’t sometimes lead to emotional and mental turmoil; that is a different thing. But I’m not going to let Einstein “off the hook” for cheating on his wife, or Ezra Pound “off the hook” for being such a virulent anti-Semite.