Harlan Ellison - C or D?

My first writer-idol and so obviously hugely important to me; I think he can be very good, but would be better if he were a little less melodramatic, less impressed with himself. This may have more to do with how one leaves one's early idols behind than with his work, though. Search anything that makes use of Yiddish/faux-Yiddish, esp. "I'm Looking for Kadak" and "Prince Myshkin, and Hold the Relish."

Hm. Now I see I haven't enough Ellison in long enough to comment beyond this.

Destroy? The aggro-enthusiastic-melodramtic attitude.

any "opinion" harlan ellison has ever offered on comics has been either just plain empty headed or opportunisitic bullshit to aid his friends

His anger can be bot he best and worst aspects of his writing. when channeled well as in "Driving in the Spikes" his essay on anger and revenge it is hilarious, beautifully detailed and evocative and it succeeds. Other times it can drive his piece off the tracks.

I'd agree that aside from a few stories his greater skill is in nonfiction pieces.

Just for putting Dangerous Visions together he'd deserve classic status but his writing also gives him that.

as you can see I've read a lot of Ellison, but I rarely feel the need to read him anymore: the attitude seeps into his writing more and more as he gets older, and a little of that goes a long way.

Has anyone seen, or will anyone see. Wait.... Does anyone know where I can get a hold of the Documentary "Dreams with Sharp Teeth"? or do you know if it will be released? I am floundering here, because I have been at work all day. What a confusing post....

i thought this dude was the coolest motherfucker on the planet when i was like 11

and namedropped him constantly

haha yeah likewise

He's no Clark Ashton Smith or Fritz Leiber, that's for sure.

But still obviously classic.

his imagination is astonishing. bradbury-sized! not talking about writing talent, just the ability to come up with crazy crazy ideas for decades. i don't know how those guys did it.

Documentary is great. No idea about release, though.

i thought this dude was the coolest motherfucker on the planet when i was like 11

-- and what, Friday, January 11, 2008 6:28 PM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Link

and namedropped him constantly

-- and what, Friday, January 11, 2008 6:28 PM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Link

this is kind of eerie, 11-12 is when I was fully writing him fanmail (see upthread)

and was pretty much exactly as you describe yourself at the same age

I loved Strange Wine, then liked Deathbird Stories...by the 3rd or 4th collection of stories, I wasn't as interested in the fiction, and pretty tired of the ego behind the fiction. "Yeah, I'm an asshole, but you'll always know where you stand with me." Yeah, but...you're an asshole.

I Have No Mouth But I Must Scream (the videogame) is classic.

john, can you explain the ending of "jeffty is five" to me? i never was sure i "got" what had happened.

Sure, I remember it clearly. I guess I should say "spoiler alert" here for those who haven't read the story and think they might. The deal was, the dude who's hanging out with the permanently lost-in-the-golden-age-of-radio Jeffty puts Jeffty in for a bath and Jeffty is listening to the radio. The shows that're on the radio whenever Jeffty's present are one of the time signals in the story - old shows play and are great and take the narrator out of the not-as-good-as-the-past world he otherwise lives in. So while Jeffty's bathing, the guy is out in his living room, doing I forget what. But the light "dims, and dims, and flickrs" - this is your indicator that the radio has fallen into the bathtub and Jeffty has been electrocuted, thereby severing the narrator's connection to his romanticized past.

This is from memory, it's been nearly thirty years since I last read the letter I got from H.E. explaining that - and here I quote - the details of the ending sometimes elude "the more slovenly reader." Yes, really. I was 12.

12 is the ideal gateway age for science fiction.

I got "Dangerous Visions" vol 1 for Christmas.

The documentary is excellent, just caught it at a festival in Toronto. I haven't read any Ellison -- and the movie didn't really leave me with the desire to change anything about that -- but it's very entertaining, especially if you like listening to loud grouchy jews being loud and grouchy (which I do).

dave q's gonna be talkin about science fiction tomorrow evening on resonance FM in london, from 10-11pm GMT

has anybody ever read ellison's essays on writing? they sound fascinating!

I once went to hear him at a lecture, and watched Ellison throw a bottle at an MIT student. This was a couple years ago and I forget the details, but went along the lines of the guy asking a question, and Ellison berating him for asking a stupid question and then throwing the bottle at his head as a final point. Good writer, but an asshole beyond compare.

i thought you meant dave q

Have those old Hour 25 episodes (from the year or so he was host) shown up archived anywhere on the net? I'd love to listen to those again

Have those old Hour 25 episodes (from the year or so he was host) shown up archived anywhere on the net? I'd love to listen to those again

Archives do exist in the "someone has them all on CD" but they aren't on the net at all. For all their gushing about the future, why the hell does Hour 25 have a web site stuck in 1995 design standards? For that matter, why are they streaming mp3s when everyone else is using podcast xml?
http://www.hour25online.com/

fun fact: ellison did the opening narration on the short-lived nickelodeon show "space cases."

I am pissed I can't find his car ad on YouTube.

Mitchell Harding, the other original host of the Hour 25 show, died recently (a month or two ago?), and I guess that site is not well maintained but you'd think they'd at least be able to add a note.

It was on this show that I heard HE say he was in the bar (or heard directly from someone in the bar, he may be too young) when L R0n Hubb4rd said if some could start a religion they could *really* clean up.

I forgot that Ellison was in Gay Talese's "Frank Sinatra Has A Cold"

Love him or hate him, this is a pretty good interview:
http://www.avclub.com/content/interview/harlan_ellison_part_one
http://www.avclub.com/content/interview/harlan_ellison_part_two

The computer game of I Have No Mouth etc etc was quite good.

-- adam (adam), Friday, July 11, 2003 3:21 PM (4 years ago) Bookmark Link

This is entirely OTM.

I can't find this dude's books anywhere! What the hell?

http://www.the-underdogs.info/game.php?id=531

There's no soundtrack for this rip AFAIK, so play Thom Yorke's Eraser in the background while listening.

Underdogs site is a godsend.

Oh God that interview. He never changes, does he? You know, his books are great, (Abbie -- try here, this is a good thing to have) but it's just impossible anymore for me to think of him as other than your garden-variety cranky old man. There's a reason young people ignore them. Oh, you're disappointed in humanity because Americans eat bad food and watch American Idol? Wow, what a... challenging opinion!

I have a big soft spot for cranky old men, as long as I don't have to be anywhere within talking distance of them.

I've tried and tried to like this guy, read several books, all the famous stories, but fuck it, he does nothing for me. Just not a good writer.

I have a big soft spot for cranky old men, as long as I don't have to be anywhere within talking distance of them.

^^^^^

I still prefer his non-fiction to his stories

The notoriously silly film he wrote, The Oscar, is on TCM tonight.

Tony Bennett's finest hour

I've only seen a couple scenes, and the SCTV version.

A detailed breakdown.

Then the bewilderment begins. How is one supposed to react to the superimposed words The Oscar followed by credits reading “starring / Stephen Boyd / Elke Sommer / Milton Berle”…? (Elke Sommer?!) “Introducing TONY BENNETT as HYMIE KELLY” doesn’t help. Although the credit assigning co-responsibility for the script to author and professional curmudgeon Harlan Ellison is sure to provoke a laugh from those familiar with him.

http://jabootu.net/images/ohymie.jpg

“You finally made it, Frankie! Oscar night! And here you sit, on top of a Glass Mountain called ‘Success’. You’re one of the chosen five, and the whole town’s holding its breath to see who won it. It’s been quite a climb, hasn’t it, Frankie? Down at the bottom, scuffling for dimes in those smokers, all the way to the top. Magic Hollywood! Ever think about it? I do, friend Frankie. I do."

The lawsuit on the edge of forever.

I knew this revival would be about litigation. I was afraid he was going to be after ned/ilx/freaktrigger, that the great Xanadu April Fools joke would become real.

Where is that story about him participating in an intervention against an internet imposter?

So one of the merchandising items was apparently a "talking christmas ornament."

My landlord/ex-roommate has like 10 of those talking ornaments, which go on the tree every year.

I finally got a copy of 'Dangerous Visions' a year or two ago, but it hasn't moved from my 'to be read' bookshelf yet.

Really? What do they say?

Lawsuit settled:

Legendary writer/crank/lawsuit enthusiast Harlan Ellison has settled his lawsuit with Paramount for an undisclosed settlement, Variety reports. The litigious curmudgeon had sued the entertainment super-giant over merchandising and publishing royalties to the Ellison-penned Star Trek episode "City On The Edge of Forever".

According to Variety, "Ellison's suit accused Paramount of failing to notify him about the "Crucible" trilogy of books based on the teleplay and merchandising that included a "talking" Christmas ornament."

For some reason, the thought of Ellison angrily contemplating a "City on The Edge of Forever" talking Star Trek Christmas ornament makes us happy. The article quotes Ellison as saying, "I'm pleased with the outcome" which marks the first time "Harlan Ellison" and "pleased" have appeared in the same paragraph.

Will settling this lawsuit turn Ellison into a perspicacious propononent of positivity? Will you soon see him skipping gaily through various science-fiction convention halls? Did Ellison's settlement consist entirely of crates upon crates of Star Trek talking Christmas ornaments? We do not know, yet we remain, as always, cautiously optimistic.

Ellison is a good example of the sort of guy whose personality would be extremely grating when taken in raw, unedited form, but who takes his numerous vices, flaws and shortcomings and makes something halfway palatable out them, through artful manipulation and presentation.

I liked some of his SF well enough, back in HS, when I still read SF. I wouldn't want him in the same room with me for even a minute.

This rant from the documentary is pretty spot-on

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mj5IV23g-fE

Harlan Ellison says goodbye

Due to his failing health, there had been some doubt about whether Ellison would show up in person or participate in panels, readings and other events by telephone from his home in Sherman Oaks, Calif. But at press time he affirmed he was coming. He is also adamant that MadCon will be the final convention he ever attends, in any fashion.

"The truth of what's going on here is that I'm dying," says Ellison, by phone. "I'm like the Wicked Witch of the West -- I'm melting. I began to sense it back in January. By that time, I had agreed to do the convention. And I said, I can make it. I can make it.'"

Besides giving several talks and sitting on panels, Ellison has a book signing with David scheduled for 3 p.m. Friday at Frugal Muse's west-side location. His Sept. 26 event at the Barrymore Theatre is up in the air; check MadCon2010.com for updates.

The legendarily opinionated author says there is no question he will not answer. (Although he'd prefer not to hear the one about whether he threw a fan down an elevator shaft -- answer: he didn't -- again. "That will follow me to my grave," he mutters.) And he strongly encourages fans to attend.

"This is gonna be the biggest fucking science-fiction convention ever," Ellison says, "because no con has ever had a guest of honor drop dead while performing for the goddamn audience. The only comparison is the death of Patrick Troughton, at a Doctor Who convention. And I don't think he was even onstage."

The legendarily opinionated author says there is no question he will not answer.

"So about The Last Dangerous Visions..."

If nothing else, it's encouraging to know he's going down with the same crusty attitude towards life; a kinder gentler Ellison is kinda unimaginable.

Nice of him to warn 2011 deadpool players.

Lawsuits keep this guy alive:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2011/sep/16/harlan-ellison-justin-timberlake-movie

he's a hack

with lawyers

I like his 2 volumes of tv criticism.

Repent Harlequin! Said the ticktock man is such a terrible title. I bet that director has read the story, though, the same as he probably read time out of joint some time before writing the Truman show.

Watched Boy & His Dog last night. Enjoyable movie, and as proto-Fallout material. Funny how Ellison has written followup material from it, too.

http://blogs.laweekly.com/stylecouncil/Harlan02.jpg

Harlan Ellison, Lunatic Genius, Rambles About Lusting After Sally Field, Wields a Knife, Accosts 'Assholes' at Cinefamily

LA Weekly OTM by the way. Wasn't there in person (saw the live stream), but wish I was... Ellison was revved up to 200mph and sounding more like vintage Carlin and Lenny Bruce than a cranky old man hating the future.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=54xi24FtVYY

So, my kid wants to try some Ellison after seeing the Scooby Doo episode. He's already given Lovecraft a try, even though it's a little above his paygrade. I might have read a couple essays by Ellison, but probably none of his fiction, so I downloaded I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream. I read the title story and loved it to an extent but was kinda put off by some of the misogyny/sexuality.

When AM had altered Benny, during the machine's utterly irrational, hysterical phase, it was not merely Benny's face the computer had made like a giant ape's. He was big in the privates; she loved that! She serviced us, as a matter of course, but she loved it from him. Oh Ellen, pedestal Ellen, pristine-pure Ellen; oh Ellen the clean! Scum filth.

I see a lot of people on this thread were reading Ellison at 10 or 11. I should probably just give him the damn book, huh? Or is there a better place to get into Ellison for young minds? I mean, I guess my kid's just a year away from when I was reading Stephen King writing about prepubescent gangbangs in IT, so what the hell.

I met Harlan Ellison and his wife when I was 18 at the Superman 50th anniversary convention in Cleveland. I was up there having a booth with a couple of friends selling comics. He was cool as hell and really nice then invited me over to have a hot dog at the commissary at the convention and just I picked my brain a bit. I had read the Deathbird stories by that point and knew about some of his TV work. Meeting Ellison and then bumping into and getting to have a five minute chat with Kurt Vonnegut in the back of the IU Student Union are my only encounters with literary figures. Vonnegut was a very nice man and a definite hero to me.

I think Angry Candy is the best collection of Ellison I have read. That was a good collection of stories.

Still looking for input on my revive from last night, btw.

started reading ellison at abt the age in question, 11 or 12 or so. definitely inappropriate, but so long as it came from the sci-fi aisle, people seemed to figure it was okay. thank you from the bottom of my heart, mr. farmer.

http://www.crowsnbones.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/farmer-1.jpg

From https://www.facebook.com/groups/4586629500/

My dearest of dear friends Harlan Ellison had a stroke last week. A lot of people are asking, so here’s the deal - He’s comfortable, and resting in hospital. If one was going to have a stroke, this was the one to have.

I was with him the day before yesterday when the specialist who checks verbal and memory impact was there, and it was like an SNL skit. She’s checking for slurring and loss of memory, and he’s being quintessential Harlan - talking a mile a minute, and throwing out more obscure references per minute than anyone can possibly keep up with. (He did, at one point, forget the name of an actor with a wooden leg who played a supporting part on one of his favorite radio shows back in the forties, but last time I talked to him, he couldn’t remember the name of the key grip on Passage To Marseilles, so it's probably safe to say that’s nothing to worry about. )
I can’t say he’s fine, because he’s had a stroke... but he’s as well as well can be under the circumstances, and had all of the nurses laughing. And he complained a lot. So, you know... Harlan.

If you’re the type who prays, it’s probably not worth it, because he doesn’t believe in that shit. That said, it will annoy him, so go ahead. He’s resting and cantankerous, and completely Harlan.

®

He got his own YouTube channel! He sure could excel with this format.

lol this oughta be fun

looks like it's been around for a while and is basically Angrier Andy Rooney tho

Rant upthread led me to:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RZvcKB9vQO0

Asimov, Ellison and Gene Wolfe too.

Moderated by Studs Trrkel and Calvin Trillin.

Would live to see HE face to face with Lou Reed.

Tempted to repost that video on another thread if not its own thread.

http://i274.photobucket.com/albums/jj242/donaldparsley/GlassTeetssm_zps7d6e4d26.jpg

For my senior yearbook "statement" that would appear under my picture, I wanted to mention readings/music that was important to me so I wrote "Read Kafka and Ellison, Saw King Crimson LIVE November 81".

By the time the yearbook came out I was embarrassed to have mentioned Ellison, who in a few months had come to seem more like a bad joke, and wished I had mentioned new hero J.G. Ballard instead. A friend who later became an attorney said, "everyone will think you meant Ralph Ellison." "Yeah but I haven't actually read Ralph Ellison." "Nobody is going to know."

Later, Invisible Man became a genuine favorite, but here I'm coming clean. Harlan Ellison and Elvis Costello, golden cranks of my teenage years, I give it up to you.

Dick Cavett said in the NYT Book Review a few weeks ago that The Glass Teat was the best book on TV he'd read... except he couldn't get the title right, readers had to supply it.

I remember loving the Glass Teat when I was a young Ellison fanatic, but I would strongly suspect it hasn't aged well

Yeah, feel the same.

My brother read both not long ago and he thought they were both great.

in that there teat-boat w/ ray tabano & james redd, but it's been so long, who knows

Purged off quite a few Ellison paperbacks years ago and the two Glass Teat books were among the few* that I kept. They have aged somewhat OK, but that era of television hasn't.

*the other two were Watching and Stalking The Nightmare.

I've watched half the youtube videos so far and its been a lot of fun. I've heard quite a few of the topics on his public speaking audio discs.

Among them are his complaints about repeated superhero deaths as sales gimmicks. Trading card collector bullshit being bad for kids and everybody else. Disney being terrible to authors.

A series of rants about old science fiction authors who aren't getting lifetime achievement awards in time before they die (he shows all their books in huge piles).

There is a series of videos about female SF/fantasy authors. Various items and obscure authors he tries to sell to us. A reading of his story about his wife.

One I found very interesting is his naming of writers he refused to blurb because he felt their new books weren't good enough and sometimes losing friends for doing that.

On the jazz video he tells a good story about Charles Mingus and some other jazz heroes he has encountered.

He also talks about someone briefly deleting his YouTube channel.

Finished them all except the q&a sessions and Ray Bradbury tribute.

A lot of the computer and videogame luddite stuff looks pretty bad but even though he uses the internet for years now and directed his own videogame, he's still a little bit like that.

I learned the correct pronunciation of "Jeykll" and "Neanderthal". Also that "have your cake and eat it" is supposed to be "eat your cake and have it".

I understand why Lassie not being credited on cover to the creator is bad but what's so wrong with a kids picture book adaptation when he's fine with comic adaptations?

videogame luddite stuff

MAY GOD BLESS

I think he hated videogames like he hated tv, he saw good potential in the mediums but perhaps inevitably they get used in ways that are dispiriting. Ellison's videogame was considered very innovative by many.

There's a video about him and Bradbury being horrified about a Forbidden Planet remake (but Ellison believed he could write a good sequel).

Also his mocking Last Action Hero being advertised on a space rocket.

Hell of a run.

https://variety.com/2018/tv/people-news/harlan-ellison-dead-dies-star-trek-1202861048/

Elvis T was right to remind us of this, though:

https://www.adweek.com/galleycat/at-long-last-harlan-have-youleft-no-sense-of-decency/3778

I guess I have a real "it's complicated" with this guy.

I bet he'd just LOVE his obit leading with his lone Star Trek episode lol

xpost About the only honest reaction. As I said in the other thread, he made sure Octavia E Butler got the boost she needed; I will be forever grateful for that.

Harlan Ellison stars in Gay Talese’s “Frank Sinatra Has A Cold” https://t.co/ewf6FDBwVV https://t.co/BhZ24AaFKC pic.twitter.com/iQXbht1Hxm

— Chris Barrus (@quartzcity) June 28, 2018

I read Deathbird Stories and Angry Candy and a few other collections of stories, but have almost no memory of any of them. Weird personal connection, though: Ellison dated my ex-stepmother (my dad's dead, and she and I don't talk) back in the Sixties. I met him at an in-store event when I was about 18 and mentioned this to him, thinking it was probably bullshit, but his eyes lit up and he said "Oh yeah, Peggy from Brooklyn! Tell her I say hi!"

haha i read that gay talese story for the first time a few weeks ago and burst out laughing when i got to harlan's unexpected cameo. few books would not be improved by harlan ellison showing up and trying to start a fight with the protagonist.

RIP, I saw the truculent bastard at a Trek convention when i was 13

without meaning to troll, i've never read any of his stuff and have merely had a vague but strong sense that he was a complete asshole. (and that response to the connie willis stuff doesn't make me think much of his writing, either).

so what was good about him?

he wrote some good stories, one pretty good tv episode, edited some decent collections, was a cheerleader for other (better) writers

he was def a complete asshole

Considered him a hero as I was graduated from comics to science fiction paperbacks. Had a ton of his books autographed, saw him do the "writing a short story in a bookstore in real time" schtick (the story was "On the Slab"), wrote to him to ask about the ending of "jeffty is five" and he wrote back on embossed letterhead and included a xeroxed, highlighted passage to show what I'd missed. I think he was very much a writer you grow out of; but the time I spent with him was time I desperately needed then and that did me a world of good as I grew into a writer myself, even if some of his key claims -- about the special status he afforded to writers, specifically; but, for him, this was corrective to the "writers are low-man boiler room workers who get kicked around" mentality he saw at work in the pulps & in Hollywood -- turned out to be things I have the exact opposite take on.

when I read his stuff now, it feels overwrought, unconfident sometimes; but when I read "Shattered! Like a Glass Goblin," the descriptions of the hallucinations still ring hard. And "Jeffty" will always resonate for me.

hard to overstate what he meant to me, once.

what was the story with the snot? i feel someone here will know this

As I said a few years back, Harlan Ellison and his wife were really nice to me the only time I met him. RIP.

A good obit from Cleveland (where Ellison was born).

Ellison occupied the fringe in just about every way imaginable, including talent, unless you include chutzpah as a talent. In that he was plentifully endowed.

nah, he had plenty of talent. which is not to say he always used it wisely or well. but it felt like a thrill, once, to discover someone who used language like that. i don't know where i'd recommend starting with him -- maybe just flip through "the essential ellison" if you can find it and see what grabs your interest. (it's a huge book -- when i picked it out for my, i think, 12th birthday it was definitely the biggest book i ever owned.) what sticks with me now isn't really the big stories so much as his smaller stuff: he wrote some sad, haunting stuff about his childhood -- his dad's death, running away to join the carnival, that sort of thing -- that makes me wish he'd written a book-length memoir.

did he write anything after about 1983? (not that I rate the stuff he wrote before that, either)

he wrote a lot about how he was great and other people were insufferable villains who deserved to be strangled with their own intestines, after 1983

That's what I thought. christopher priest's THE BOOK ON THE EDGE OF FOREVER about how Ellison never finished the last Dangerous Visions volume, bit kept insisting he was doing it, suing everybody who said he wasn't, and attacking authors withdrawing their stories from it after 15 years of waiting, was very entertaining.

Which is all online here under the original title THE LAST DEADLOSS VISIONS
http://web.archive.org/web/20000902203835/http://sf.www.lysator.liu.se/sf_archive/sf-texts/Ansible/Last_Deadloss_Visions,Chris_Priest

harlan ellison died? best thing he's done in decades!

this is one of those rare necrothreads where i see it pop up on sna and think "oh god, what did he do now", and "dying" turns out to be the least worst answer, which puts him in elite company (well, david brooks, mostly)

did he write anything after about 1983? (not that I rate the stuff he wrote before that, either)

The Watching comp of movie reviews was probably the last thing I read of this, but I would really like to have an audio archive of the two years he hosted Hour 25 on KPFK in '86-87

(his)

He written quite a number of short stories since 83.

Really loved some his energetic recorded readings and some of the stories about people he knew.

And the fact that at signings he'd pay his fans to let him rip up his own books that he didn't like.

Has anyone ever noted various resemblances between HE and Jerry Lewis?

I am curious about his recent years because until the last few (in which his energy was gone) he always said he was busy. Maybe he was writing something he never finished. He instructed his wife to burn all his unfinished work when he dies and I'm sure she will.

Any of the obits mention him sleeping with Rita Hayworth? Something he talked about when he was fondly recalling the fullness of his youth.

Apparently he wrote a book about Jerry Lee Lewis which I had forgotten the existence of.

Mark Evanier obituarises:

I'm having real trouble writing this because I knew Harlan from 1969 on and was proud to be among his many, many friends…but in the last couple decades, I came to feel that the friendship was best served by maintaining distance.

Apparently he wrote a book about Jerry Lee Lewis which I had forgotten the existence of.

― Uncle Redd in the Zingtime (James Redd and the Blecchs), Friday, June 29, 2018 6:43 PM (thirty minutes ago)

"spider kiss," yeah, tho he doesn't use JLL's name. p good, if i recall.

Vandermeer, Doctorow and more
http://file770.com/harlan-ellison-tribute-roundup/

http://georgerrmartin.com/notablog/2018/06/30/another-sadness-2/

Caitlin R Kiernan
https://greygirlbeast.livejournal.com/1393034.html

Thread

I fell hard for Harlan Ellison stories as a teenager. Not an uncommon thing. I scoured my high school library for anything with his name on it, then hunted places like Uncle Hugo's. If you wanted Ellison you had to learn a new love for used copies, yellowing pages, torn covers.

— Scott Lynch (@scottlynch78) June 29, 2018

Thread about Ellison mentioning his guy (Sandor?) he hired to frighten people

1) Well, shit.

Harlan Ellison died.

I guess I can finally tell the story about him actually planning to kill someone in a room full of fans at @DragonCon

Hard to believe he was alive when I tweeted this out yesterday. #HarlanEllison https://t.co/CDl4iQGUVd

— I Write Monsters (@IWriteMonsters) June 28, 2018

Wasn't aware he let so many writers stay at his house for so long.

honestly some of the latter-day "i have no mouth and i must scream" cash-ins were pretty good

there was a bbc radio adaptation starring david soul with ellison as the voice of AM that was nice

and the computer-game sequel was good too

i'll always remember him for the first thing of his i read, which was the introduction to us reprints of the early target novelizations. having had no prior experience of him i immediately concluded that this guy, whoever he was, was a complete fucking idiot.

which he probably was. then i read "adrift off the islets of langerhans" and concluded that this guy was obviously a genius. he was probably that too.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dr5NsTOXAyE

Well, I never had the privilege of sleeping on his sofa or had him offer me personal words of encouragement so I am still mostly tired of his shtick, sorry

Ok?

I mean, yeah, it’s made very little to me me in the last few decades whether HE was alive or not but I’m going to dragonslay haters in here sb away assholes

Yes, let’s treat HE with the same civility he would have... oh wait

Do something comparable and then hate

You mean like win more awards for genre fiction than any other living writer, like it says on the cover? Sorry, not quite up to the task, I’m afraid.

If I may, you seem a bit defensive, dude, a bit like ... hey wait

Ok please tell me why I should blah blah blah about recently dead guy to the point I should care about your fucking mediocre critique defensive defensive yeah fuck you

Fb me

This exchange seems v much in keeping with the spirit of Harlan.

If I can't get banned over HE's death then fuck you woke motherfuckers you don't know how to police your boundaries

Tipsy otm

I just think it's lol for people to diss people in an RIP thread and not expect war
Where did you grow up comfort child?

Reminds me of a certain scene in Dr. Strangelove

http://mediad.publicbroadcasting.net/p/rrr/files/styles/x_large/public/201801/Dr._Strangelove_-_The_War_Room.png

We can only blow up our dignity tho

Has this been discussed yet?

Maybe pick a better writer to get all sanctimonious about, PK

Omg @ that JLA issue

Xp

Do something comparable and then hate

― President Keyes

goddamn, why do i have to assault a woman first before i can hate on him, that seems like setting the bar a little high