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Harlan Ellison

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Harlan Jay Ellison (May 27, 1934) is an American science fiction writer.

Born in Cleveland, Ohio, Ellison is a prolific writer of short stories who has written for several science fiction television series, including the 1980s revival of The Twilight Zone, the original Outer Limits series, and Star Trek. He has received many awards for both his fiction and television work. In addition to his writing he served as creative consultants to the science fiction TV series The Twilight Zone and Babylon 5. The screenplay for his projected television series The Starlost was given a Writers Guild Award, though the actual series was so altered by the producers that Ellison had his name removed from the credits.

One of his most famous stories is '"Repent, Harlequin!" said the Ticktockman', a celebration of civil disobedience against repressive authority. He has also written large amounts of non-fiction, including a book about his experience joining a gang (as research for a novel) in the late 1950s, Memos from Purgatory (that was adapted as an episode of the Alfred Hitchcock Hour in the early 1960s), and several collections of essays about the TV and film industries. For many years media studies classes have used The Glass Teat in television criticism classes.

He also edited the extremely influential science fiction anthology Dangerous Visions (1967), which collected stories commissioned by Ellison, accompanied by commentary-filled 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 broke past the traditional Campbellian form, influenced and inspired by the experimentations in the popular literature of the time, such as the Beats. This was followed up by Again Dangerous Visions (1972).

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, ISPs 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. The case is currently being tried in US Circuit Court.

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

Short Stories

  • A Boy and his Dog (made into a film)
  • Soldier - filmed as a Twilight Zone episode. The film The Terminator had sufficient story element similarities Ellison filed a lawuit against Cameron. Later prints of the film acknowledge the debt to Ellison.

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