![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Harlan Ellison, the "controversial author", is dead. Let us bury him and move on, and hope that we will never see his like again.
Ellison was the first of those authors that "you have to be very intelligent to appreciate." If you're a Star Trek fan, you may be familiar with "The City on the Edge of Forever", the one episode that he wrote... and one he later disowned. His short story, "I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream" has haunting imagery ... buried in strange magical realism, and against easy targets such as "nazis are bad" and "nuclear war is bad". "A Boy and His Dog" is another post-apoc rapey fantasy whose distinction is that it's an early entry in a genre that would become huge in the 1980s. Even his most prolific, Ellison was often writing the most obvious things, such as "Santa Claus Vs S.P.I.D.E.R.", a spy parody that name-checks many politicians of 1968 and has aged about as well as any comedy today that screams "references". A popular favorite is " 'Repent, Harlequin', Said the Ticktockman", which sets the template for many Vertigo stories to come later, where the sloppy writing is excused as part of its "experimental nature". Much of his later work would be one-page trifles tossed off for Omni Magazine, half-baked ideas that went nowhere, because Ellison was a maverick, a genius, a name.
Oh my stars, the disowning. Ellison is more famous for being an unappreciated genius. He wrote more than one auto-biography where he complained about his work at 20th Century Fox or at Disney. He would assemble a anthology project with a name like "Dangerous Visions"... of which he made exactly two, 35 years apart, but he kept teasing another one would show off, much to the excitement of some. His Dark Horse project, "Dream Corridor", has auto-biographical harangues about how he's not being appreciated enough for his work, in a strange inversion of preaching to the converted. His anthologies have names like The Top of the Volcano, Troublemakers, and Alone Against Tomorrow -- look how rebellious this writer is, who dares forward the notion that "science-fiction writers are trouble-makers."
Ellison fought to retain the rights to his work, in a period when work-for-hire was the standard, and for that, he can be commended for his commitment to artist's rights. It's unfortunate that in his later years, Ellison would spend a lot of time suing people. If you're wondering why Terminator movies spend a lot of time in development hell, Ellison successfully sued because of similarities to his story "Demon with a Glass Hand". In 2004, Ellison sued AOL for merely providing access to Use.net, where other people were circulating bootlegs of his stories. (If you're worried about copyright-strikes on Youtube or Article 13 in the EU, Ellison would have told you they don't go far enough.) Ellison saw no hypocrisy in writing a short story that name-dropped or alluded to others' work, even as he would turn around and sue a movie studio because their script might have some similarity to his own under-appreciated oeuvre.
We are already hearing phrases such as how Ellison "lived enormously", "contained multitudes", "kicked ass and took names", and the such. In a 2013 interview, Ellison self-proclaimed himself one of the "Greatest Assholes in the World". Ellison was the first of your "fans are Slans" attitude, where having a very high IQ and not falling for consumerism like the rest of the sheeple was enough. He was the role model for the Sad Puppies, who idolized his obnoxious nature and his stories that reinforced their world-view of how cishet white males are unappreciated geniuses.
If we must, we should remember the Ellison marched for civil rights in 1965... who opposed Vietnam war, nuclear proliferation, and fascism... and who insisted that creators should be compensated for their work. For now, let us bury the "controversial" men who grope women at science-fiction conventions, making loud boasts about "rebellion" from behind a wall of many hagiographic fans and a few lawyers.
Ellison was the first of those authors that "you have to be very intelligent to appreciate." If you're a Star Trek fan, you may be familiar with "The City on the Edge of Forever", the one episode that he wrote... and one he later disowned. His short story, "I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream" has haunting imagery ... buried in strange magical realism, and against easy targets such as "nazis are bad" and "nuclear war is bad". "A Boy and His Dog" is another post-apoc rapey fantasy whose distinction is that it's an early entry in a genre that would become huge in the 1980s. Even his most prolific, Ellison was often writing the most obvious things, such as "Santa Claus Vs S.P.I.D.E.R.", a spy parody that name-checks many politicians of 1968 and has aged about as well as any comedy today that screams "references". A popular favorite is " 'Repent, Harlequin', Said the Ticktockman", which sets the template for many Vertigo stories to come later, where the sloppy writing is excused as part of its "experimental nature". Much of his later work would be one-page trifles tossed off for Omni Magazine, half-baked ideas that went nowhere, because Ellison was a maverick, a genius, a name.
Oh my stars, the disowning. Ellison is more famous for being an unappreciated genius. He wrote more than one auto-biography where he complained about his work at 20th Century Fox or at Disney. He would assemble a anthology project with a name like "Dangerous Visions"... of which he made exactly two, 35 years apart, but he kept teasing another one would show off, much to the excitement of some. His Dark Horse project, "Dream Corridor", has auto-biographical harangues about how he's not being appreciated enough for his work, in a strange inversion of preaching to the converted. His anthologies have names like The Top of the Volcano, Troublemakers, and Alone Against Tomorrow -- look how rebellious this writer is, who dares forward the notion that "science-fiction writers are trouble-makers."
Ellison fought to retain the rights to his work, in a period when work-for-hire was the standard, and for that, he can be commended for his commitment to artist's rights. It's unfortunate that in his later years, Ellison would spend a lot of time suing people. If you're wondering why Terminator movies spend a lot of time in development hell, Ellison successfully sued because of similarities to his story "Demon with a Glass Hand". In 2004, Ellison sued AOL for merely providing access to Use.net, where other people were circulating bootlegs of his stories. (If you're worried about copyright-strikes on Youtube or Article 13 in the EU, Ellison would have told you they don't go far enough.) Ellison saw no hypocrisy in writing a short story that name-dropped or alluded to others' work, even as he would turn around and sue a movie studio because their script might have some similarity to his own under-appreciated oeuvre.
We are already hearing phrases such as how Ellison "lived enormously", "contained multitudes", "kicked ass and took names", and the such. In a 2013 interview, Ellison self-proclaimed himself one of the "Greatest Assholes in the World". Ellison was the first of your "fans are Slans" attitude, where having a very high IQ and not falling for consumerism like the rest of the sheeple was enough. He was the role model for the Sad Puppies, who idolized his obnoxious nature and his stories that reinforced their world-view of how cishet white males are unappreciated geniuses.
If we must, we should remember the Ellison marched for civil rights in 1965... who opposed Vietnam war, nuclear proliferation, and fascism... and who insisted that creators should be compensated for their work. For now, let us bury the "controversial" men who grope women at science-fiction conventions, making loud boasts about "rebellion" from behind a wall of many hagiographic fans and a few lawyers.
