"Harlan Ellison" Topic

Harlan Ellison, the science fiction author is dead at 84

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RIP Mr. Ellison.

A great author, a great editor and a major critic. He changed the genre.

RIP Harlan Ellison

"Never frighten a little man. He will kill you"
Lazarus Long

Rest in peace.

Ron

I completely disagree with 20thmaine's characterization. Based on my decades of exposure to the deceased, I would instead say that he was an author of no great volume, an occasional editor who never finished his short series of collections, a critic of nearly everything (according to those who knew him), who had very little if any effect on the genre.

Rest in peace, Harlan Ellison, you were just a guy who wrote science fiction. Not a great guy, but no schmuck, either.

I'm going to put my vote somewhere in the middle.

A lot of what he wrote was middling, or obvious, and nearly all of it was irredeemably bitter. But a handful of things he wrote changed the world. On the other hand, City On The Edge Of Forever was awesome. On the other, other hand, reading the wikipedia entry for that episode (recommended) shows that Ellison was kind of a jerk and a lot of other writer and editors corrected a lot of very serious problems with his script.

We're better off for his contributions, no question. He made his mark.

was not the first go back in time and change things story. It's A Wonderful Life had the same formula – go back, try to make the world a better place, get back to the future and discover it was a terrible mistake, go back a second time and set things as they were. But COTEOF made it a sci fi staple – now every sci fi, fantasy, superhero, every show, book series, and movie series uses this. Harry Potter uses it. They haven't done it a Star Wars movie, I guess, but that's the only franchise that hasn't. COTEOF made it part of the vocabulary, a template.

A Boy

An obiturary column is probably not the best place to get into an argument, however I'd never read anything quite like 'A boy and his dog' before – and I see its influence all over the place.

The Dangerous Visions anthology series were groundbreaking short story collections for the New Wave of SF writers.

Was he a good critic? Entertaining.

And he spoke unhappy truths- YouTube link , not a big fan of the "gig economy"

YouTube link

I gave up on Ellison halfway through 'Repent, Harlequin..'

Never read anything else he did – my loss, of course…

I grew up reading SF as Harlan was writing it, so I never, ever felt like his anthologies "… almost single-handedly […] changed the way readers thought about science fiction."

The New Wave was already a thing, it wasn't his thing, he didn't start it or make it big or otherwise improve it (in what I could read at the time, or since then).

And if I'm wrong, and he was an important guy in the New Wave, it wouldn't matter. I was not a fan of the New Wave (as I was no fan of similar sentiments in History, Philosophy, Anthropology, and Archaeology when I was forced to read them years later in university. Too much of the 1960s/1970s struggle against older systems was absolute tosh foisted on us by well-meaning yutzes who thought they had discovered new ways who were just plain wrong).

Were his collections really "… groundbreaking short story collections for the New Wave of SF writers?" Reading up on the collections, I see that he commissioned new stories, but apparently the real dangerous visions were in his intros and other parts written by him. No wonder this collection bounced off me without leaving a mark… schoolkid/high-schooler me knew that the meat was the stories, and rightly ignored the puffery around each story in favor of the stories themselves, which were NOT, for the most part, particularly Dangerous.

And "A Boy and his Dog" was just another spin on way too many post-apocalyptic stories I read in that period. The twist at the end, that's all I remember about it. I would rather read "Hiero's Journey" again, or "A Canticle for Liebowitz."

Was he a good critic? He had a reputation that colored every opinion I had of his work, and his criticism didn't dispel that. You might pick a reviewer because they are unbiased, or you might pick a reviewer because they ARE biased and serve as a good yardstick for that bias (either because you agree, or because you oppose that bias). I've read reviewers who are fair, I've enjoyed reviewers I agreed with, and I've made use of reviewers I hate, because if they hate something I'll probably like it. AT BEST, Harlan might have reached that third group. I just didn't find him funny or engaging in the way others have.

And because of his well-established rep, I paid no attention to his unhappy truths. Because other folks I DO appreciate could and did make similar comments, so I didn't NEED Harlan Ellison (who I thought was dead anyway) to speak truths to me.

Rest in peace, Harlan Ellison, you were just a guy who wrote science fiction. Not a great guy, but no schmuck, either.

Oh, and passionate : YouTube link

especially when he was winning.

RIP

He had some good stories and some other.

Found most of the Dangerous Visions anthologies to not even be SF let alone good SF.

Well Ellison didn't ask for Sci-Fi stories for that anthology. He wanted speculative fiction that pushed the boundaries of 1960's writing. And the stories in Dangerous Visions did pick up quite a few awards and nominations.

Here is a nice retrospective look back at DV:

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