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Harlan Ellison

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Harlan Jay Ellison (born May 27, 1934, Cleveland, Ohio) is a prolific writer of short stories, novellas, essays and criticism. His literary and television work has received many awards. He wrote for the original series of Star Trek, edited the award-winning short story anthology series Dangerous Visions and served as creative consultant to the science fiction TV series The Twilight Zone (1980s version) and Babylon 5.

A great deal of Ellison's career has been spent within the science fiction genre and community. Most of his most famous stories have been published within that genre, and he has won multiple Hugo and Nebula awards. He was also very active in the science fiction community (he was a founder of the Cleveland Science Fiction Society and edited its fanzine as a teenager), and has made appearances at science fiction conventions. However, Ellison is disdainful of the label, explaining that his fiction is closer to surrealist fantasy than science fiction per se.

Biography

Ellison was born in Cleveland, Ohio, United States, on May 27th, 1934. The family subsequently moved to Painesville, Ohio, but returned to Cleveland in 1949 following the death of Ellison's father. Ellison frequently ran away from home, taking odd jobs-- including, by his own account, "a tuna fisherman off rhe coast of Galveston, itinerant crop-picker down in New Orleans, hired gun for a wealthy neurotic, dynamite truck driver in North Carolina, short order cook, cab driver, lithographer, book salesman, floorwalker in a department store, door-to-door brush salesman, and spent ten years as an actor (off and on) with the Cleveland Play House" by the time he was eighteen.

Ellison briefly attended Ohio State University. In 1955, Ellison moved to New York City to pursue a writing career, primarily in science fiction. Over the next two years, Ellison published more than 100 short stories and articles.

In 1957,Ellison decided to write about youth gangs. To research the issue, he joined a street gang in the Red Hook section of Brooklyn, under the name "Cheech Beldone." His subsequent writings on the subject include the novel Web of the City/Rumble, the collection The Deadly Streets, and comprise part of his nonfiction memoir Memos from Purgatory.

Ellison was drafted into the army and served from 1957 to 1959. Afterwards, living in Chicago, Ellison edited Rogue magazine. As a book editor at Regency Books, Ellison published novels and anthologies by such writers as B. Traven, Kurt Vonnegut, Robert Bloch and Philip Jose Farmer.

He moved to California in 1962, and subsequently began to sell scripts to such television shows as Burke's Law, Route 66, The Outer Limits, Star Trek and Cimarron Strip. His novella Memos from Purgatory was adapted into an episode of Alfred Hitchcock Presents. Ellison's scripts "Demon with a Glass Hand," (for The Outer Limits) "The City on the Edge of Forever," (for Star Trek) won Best Original Teleplay awards from the Writer's Guild of America.

During the late 1960's, Ellison wrote a column about television for the Los Angeles Free Press. Titled The Glass Teat, the column addressed political and social issues and their portrayal on television at the time. The columns have been reprinted in two collections, The Glass Teat and The Other Glass Teat.

He continued to publish short pieces, fiction and nonfiction, in various publications, and some of his most famous stories were written in this period. "'Repent, Harlequin!' said the Ticktockman", a celebration of civil disobedience against repressive authority. "I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream" is an allegory of Hell, where five humans are tormented by an all-knowing computer throughout eternity. "A Boy and his Dog" examines the nature of friendship and love in a violent, post-Apocalypse world.

He also edited the extremely influential science fiction anthology Dangerous Visions (1967), which collected stories commissioned by Ellison, accompanied by his commentary-laden biographical sketches of the authors. He challenged the authors to write stories at the edge of the genre, and Dangerous Visions is widely considered the greatest and most influential SF anthology of all time. Many of the stories went beyond the traditional boundaries of science fiction pioneered by respected old school editors such as John W. Campbell, Jr. As an editor, Ellison was influenced and inspired by experimentation in the popular literature of the time, such as the beats. A sequel, Again Dangerous Visions, was published in 1972. A third volume, "The Last Dangerous Visions," has yet to see print, and the delay has created some controvery (see below).

The screenplay for his projected television series The Starlost was also given a Writers Guild Award, though the actual series was so altered by the producers that Ellison had his name removed from the credits. Ellison was the first writer to win this award three times.

More recently, Ellison has served as creative consultant to the science fiction TV series The Twilight Zone (1980s version) and Babylon 5.

He was hired and worked very briefly as a writer for Walt Disney Studios, but was fired on his first day after being overheard by Roy O. Disney in the studio commissary joking about making a pornographic animated film featuring Disney characters.

Controversy

Ellison has a reputation for being outspoken and abrasive, and he is fiercely protective of his work.These traits have attracted a degree of controversy, especially among science fiction and fantasy fans.His friend Isaac Asimov remarked of Ellison that, "he has no sense of tact whatsoever." As many people, including Ellison himself, have said, he does not suffer fools gladly. This reputation obtained a spot for him on the fledgling Sci-Fi Channel where he was given an opportunity to express his views on (presumably) whatever he wanted. It was eventually dropped.

As Guest of Honor at the 1978 WorldCon (Iguanacon) in Phoenix, Arizona, Ellison vowed that he would not spend a penny in a state which had not ratified the Equal Rights Amendment. He was also a participant in the 1965 March from Selma to Montgomery, led by Martin Luther King, Jr..

The Last Dangerous Visions, the third volume of the anthology series, has become something of a legend in science fiction as the genre's most famous unpublished book. Originally announced for publication in 1973, the anthology has yet to see print. Ellison himself has come under harsh criticism for his treatment of writers who submitted their stories to him, of which there are estimated to be nearly 150 (many of those authors have died in the subsequent three decades since the anthology was first announced). In 1993 Ellison threatened to sue NESFA for publishing Himself in Anachron, a short story written by Cordwainer Smith and sold to Ellison for the book by his widow, but later reached an amicable settlement. Noted British SF author Christopher Priest has critiqued Ellison's editorial practices in a widely-disseminated article titled The Book on the Edge of Forever .

In the 1980s, there was a widely-publicized incident in which Ellison allegedly assaulted author and critic Charles Platt at the Nebula Awards banquet over some critical commentary of Platt's. Platt did not pursue legal action against Ellison, and the two men signed a "non-aggression pact" later, promising never to discuss the incident again or have any contact with one another. In later years, however, Ellison often publicly boasted about the incident. This story is, of course, apocryphal and without any substantiation by those who claim it happened; i.e., court case numbers, documentation, etc.

Ellison has on occasion used the pseudonym "Cordwainer Bird" to alert members of the public to situations in which he feels his creative contribution to a project has been mangled beyond repair by others, typically Hollywood producers or studios. (See, e.g., Alan Smithee.) The "Cordwainer Bird" moniker is a tribute to fellow SF writer Paul M. A. Linebarger, better known by his pen name, Cordwainer Smith. The origin of the word "Cordwainer" is shoemaker (from working with cordovan leather for shoes). The term used by Linebarger was meant to imply the industriousness of the pulp author. Ellison has said, in interviews and in his writing, that his version of the pseudonym was meant to mean "a shoemaker for birds." Since he has used the pseudonym mainly for works he wants to distance himself from, it seems appropriate — in that it can be understood to mean that "this work is for the birds". Stephen King once said he thought that it meant that Ellison was giving people who mangled his work a literary version of "the bird."

Ellison recently gained attention for his April 24, 2000 lawsuit against Stephen Robertson for posting four of his stories to the Usenet newsgroup alt.binaries.e-book without authorization. Included as defendants in the lawsuit were AOL and RemarQ, internet service providers whose involvement was running Usenet servers carrying the group in question and for failing to stop the alleged copyright infringers in accordance with the "Notice and Takedown Procedure" outlined in the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act. Robertson and RemarQ settled the lawsuit with Ellison, though he pressed on with his suit against AOL. The AOL suit was settled in June 2004 under conditions which were not made public.

Books of Short Stories

Novels

Published screenplays and teleplays

See also Phoenix without Ashes, the novelization by Edward Bryant of the screenplay for the pilot episode of The Starlost, which includes a lengthy afterword by Ellison describing what happened in the production of that series.

Nonfiction

Anthologies edited

Selected Short Stories

  • "The Beast That Shouted Love at the Heart of the World"
  • "A Boy and his Dog" (made into a film)
  • "The Diagnosis of Dr. D'arqueAngel"
  • "From A to Z, in the Chocolate Alphabet"
  • "I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream"
  • "Jeffty Is Five"
  • "The Prowler in the City at the Edge of the World"
  • ""Repent, Harlequin!" Said the Ticktockman"
  • "Shattered Like a Glass Goblin"
  • "Soldier": filmed as an Outer Limits episode. The film The Terminator had sufficient story element similarities that Ellison filed a lawsuit against James Cameron. Later prints of the film acknowledge the debt to Ellison.
  • "The Whimper of Whipped Dogs"

Awards won

Bradbury award

The Bradbury Award in 2000 went to Harlan Ellison and Yuri Rasovsky.

Bram Stoker Award

Hugo award

Locus poll award

Nebula award

Additional reading

External links

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