Harlan Ellison says he is dying

[Ghrakh]

God bless the man. He's worth ten times ten thousand of his "critics" - and all the fanbois on the Internet who've used his name in vain are doomed to die anonymous failures.

I'm sure all the fanbois who praise him and shit on internet posters they don't agree with will meet a similar fate, so what's your point?

 

[A.V.I.A.F.]

It really is a shame to hear that he is dying. I never got a chance to meet him but I have seen many of his interviews. Here's a link to one with him and several cast members of TOS with Tom Snyder in 1976. For the most part he pans the show for not going far enough and for conforming to a formulaic television show pattern. The whole interview is in 5 parts but this is the first part with Ellison in it. The whole show is great because you get to see and hear DeForest Kelley, James Doohan and Walter Koenig smoking and cutting up about the show.
Enjoy!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3yaY98GTCYM

 

[M'Sharak]

Death is probably more in dread of being upbraided for what a lame and amateurish job Ellison thinks it's been doing.

You're probably right.

 

[A.V.I.A.F.]

It really is a shame to hear that he is dying. I never got a chance to meet him but I have seen many of his interviews. Here's a link to one with him and several cast members of TOS with Tom Snyder in 1976. For the most part he pans the show for not going far enough and for conforming to a formulaic television show pattern. The whole interview is in 5 parts but this is the first part with Ellison in it. The whole show is great because you get to see and hear DeForest Kelley, James Doohan and Walter Koenig smoking and cutting up about the show.
Enjoy!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3yaY98GTCYM

Here is the link for part 5 with more Ellison

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EE0L9zqwfqY

 

[Procutus]

Agreed. That's the way it should be, too.

Mark me on the 'Agreed' list as well. Though I will never achieve what Harlan has, I can understand the connection between the writer's own thoughts and materials and not wanting others to bring their own vision into it. What you create is yours, and yours alone (and I'm not talking about sharing it with others, I mean in terms of unfinished works).

 

[Sir Rhosis]

Report and photos from Madcon (couple different entries on various parts of the page). He looks better than I thought he would after having heard him describe his apperance as resembling Gollum, but he clearly has lost a lot of weight. By this account, he was still as entertaining as ever, though.

http://www.maggiethompson.com/search/label/Harlan Ellison

Sir Rhosis

 

[TorontoTrekker]

Report and photos from Madcon (couple different entries on various parts of the page). He looks better than I thought he would after having heard him describe his apperance as resembling Gollum, but he clearly has lost a lot of weight. By this account, he was still as entertaining as ever, though.

http://www.maggiethompson.com/search/label/Harlan Ellison

Sir Rhosis

Wow, he really has lost a lot of weight. For the purpose of comparison, here's a picture I took of him at the 2006 Worldcon during his autograph session:

He had decided that he didn't want to sit behind a table, and was moving down the line, signing as he went. This was about ten minutes before he called me a dwarf. He'd signed the two books I'd brought, and moved past me. I took my backpack off and knelt down to put the two books back into it, and a few seconds later I felt a hand on my shoulder. I looked up into Harlan's face, and he said, "My God, a real dwarf! I know you like to be called 'little people', but I'm five-foot-five, and you're a dwarf!"

I'd had the good fortune to speak to him on the phone twice the previous year (we were trying to get him as a guest here - unfortunately we couldn't afford him). Our first conversation went something like this:

*phone rings*
Me: (tired, after getting about eight telemarketer calls that day) Hello?
Harlan: *quick stream of words which I didn't catch*
Me: I'm sorry, could you repeat that?
Harlan: I'm going to speak very slowly. You're going to listen very carefully. This is Harlan Ellison.
Me: Oh, I'm sorry. I've gotten eight telemarketer calls today, and when the phone rang, I was expecting it to be another one on the line.
Harlan: In that case, would you like to buy a combination storm window/bidet?
Me: No, I don't think so, thanks.
Harlan: Are you sure? It's a really good combination storm window/bidet.
Me: (thinking, "oh, it's going to be like this, is it?") Well, you see, I live in a twelfth-floor apartment, and sticking my ass out the window to clean it would probably be dangerous.
Harlan: Oh, you live in a high-rise? What's that like?

So I spent the next five minutes telling him what it's like to live in an apartment building.

If he truly is dying - and this is the first I'd heard that he was even ill - then the world will lose an enormous talent when he does pass away.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

Harlan: I'm going to speak very slowly. You're going to listen very carefully. This is Harlan Ellison.
Me: Oh, I'm sorry. I've gotten eight telemarketer calls today, and when the phone rang, I was expecting it to be another one on the line.
Harlan: In that case, would you like to buy a combination storm window/bidet?
Me: No, I don't think so, thanks.
Harlan: Are you sure? It's a really good combination storm window/bidet.

 

[Amaris]

I do feel a little bad. For a long time I believed all the anti-Ellison rhetoric and figured he was just a loudmouth with nothing going for him after "City" and so he fought to hold onto that one ray of creativity. I was wrong, and I hope he lives a long time and writes many more stories.

 

[Mysterion]

*sigh* Gonna be really bummed when he goes.

If you've not seen it, go buy/rent the DVD Dreams With Sharp Teeth. It is an excellent documentary about Ellison that any fan of his should see at least once, preferably twice to make sure that you caught it all.

 

[Doug Otte]

Harlan: Are you sure? It's a really good combination storm window/bidet.
Me: (thinking, "oh, it's going to be like this, is it?") Well, you see, I live in a twelfth-floor apartment, and sticking my ass out the window to clean it would probably be dangerous.

Nice rejoinder!

Doug

 

[Admiral Buzzkill]

Of course, the argument for not burning all of Ellison's unfinished/unpublished work is Franz Kafka's last request:

Everything I leave behind me . . . in the way of diaries, manuscripts, letters (my own and others’), sketches and so on, to be burned unread.

Now, which of these Kafka classics were found among the work he wanted burned, and published posthumously:

• The Trial
• The Castle
• Amerika

?

 

[M'Sharak]

^ So I wasn't the only one who thought of that.

 

[Captain Robert April]

Well, Harlan did specify the unfinished stuff is to be destroyed...

 

[ManOnTheWave]

Well, one might also think of many of Michelangelo's unfinished works which are still studied and imitated to this day.

 

[Admiral Buzzkill]

Yeah, these kinds of last wishes are best left unhonored.

OTOH, any instructions left behind for the disposal of porn are probably best carried out. Ask the ghost of Phillip Larkin.

 

[ManOnTheWave]

 

[kkozoriz1]

I'm a firm believer that final wishes should be carried out as specified. If harlan doesn't want them released and has instructed that hey be burned then burn them. It'll be a shame but it's up to him. If you don't want your unfinished work destroyed, that's up to you.

 

[Captain Robert April]

It's probably best to figure than if Harlan didn't finish it, then it's been deemed a creative dead end and isn't worth finishing. After all, the man is not only inhumanly creative, he's also insanely fast; if he wanted it finished, he'd have finished it by now.

If something's not finished, there's probably a good reason.

 

[Jonesy]

On his unfinished work
"My wife has instructions that the instant I die, she has to burn all the unfinished stories. And there may be a hundred unfinished stories in this house, maybe more than that. There's three quarters of a novel. No, these things are not to be finished by other writers, no matter how good they are.

This comment impressed me the most.

I can understand this, and would probably feel the same way.

I do know that this was much the same with Stanley Kubrick. Apparently, he had all of the uncut material from his films burned. His feelings were along those lines. I don't think he wanted his work to be messed around with, any more than Harlan does.