Harlan Ellison

A true giant has passed. A Boy and His Dog was one of the first books that, upon reading, really filled me with amazement. He will be sorely missed, and we are all a bit poorer on this day.

RIP. Another one down.

Harlan's advice to one particular writer:
https://youtu.be/Rp9NIZo-OZM

A giant is no more, thank you, Mr Ellison, for all the joy and thought provocation your writing brought me and no doubt others.
I still shiver when I think of ”I have no mouth, and I must scream”.

I read his book on City on the Edge of Forever. Talk about pettiness on all sides. Harlan himself had to point out himself he was breaking the cardinal rule of not speaking ill of the dead by calling out Rodenberry (Throughout Ellison never realized it would have been Nimoy who nixed Spock's logically allowing Edith Keeler to die. Leonard turned the Vulcans into a race of pacifists in the name of logic much to the confusion of writers then and now.)

I preferred the works of Cordwainer Bird



but I guess we'll never get a sequel or a remake now.

Uh. I just wished I was THAT productive ...

He was one of the greats but had a very dark side that sometimes surfaced, like holding his friends at gunpoint in the late 50s when he lost a bet. He matured enormously in later years I'm sure but sometimes that dark side re-surfaced. A non-fan once wrote him a flippant one sentence comment about his short physical stature, so he tracked her down and terrorized her in a phone call. I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream came from that same dark place, I'm sure, and it is absolutely brilliant and seminal. It was probably the first thing I read from him in the mid-70s, and it was impossible not to become a fan after that. It seems to have been the same for so many others. If that was the first Ellison you read, you were hooked. R.I.P Mr Ellison

Just wanted to relate one of my favorite Harlan stories.

Harlan once used the word "midget" in one of his stories or essays. A fan who we'll call "Mr. Mann" wrote him and said something like: "Dear Mr. Ellision. I am 3' 5" tall and I take great umbrage of your use of the term "midget." We are not midgets… the correct term for what we are is "little person!" Please refrain from your use of the aforementioned very offensive term in the future."

Ellison's reply:

"Dear Mr. Mann. I am 5' ft 5". I'm a little person. You're a MIDGET!"

I've never like the term "little person." I think if I were a "little person," I'd prefer to be called a midget.