Ellison is pissed

[trevanian]

I think part of that is due to the old saying from MAN WHO SHOT LIBERTY VALLANCE, which goes something along the lines of, 'when the legend is catchier than the truth, the legend BECOMES the truth.' (or 'print the legend' maybe)

As Ellison himself once wrote, there were people at a con believing the legend that he supposedly dropped a chandelier on the crowd, and another time thinking that he threw a fan down an elevator shaft. Well, people DIE when that happens, and certainly somebody would go to jail for doing it (might not do time if you have a good 'twinkie' defense.) But no, it is easier or more fun to just keep telling whoppers, which contributes ever more to the general misinformation.

 

[MadBaggins]

Re: Peter "PAD" David

Peter David is the real villain in all this, stooling out Paramount like a stooge pigeon and revealing all the plot details to his hero Harlan Ellison, hoping maybe to receive a few scraps of genius from the table of Harlan.

 

[Brutal Strudel]

Re: Peter "PAD" David

Yes, Paramount Pictures is indeed the injured party.

I'm no fan of PAD's writing but he gets high marks for loyalty to a fellow writer and a friend.

 

[Dale]

Re: Peter "PAD" David

How can anyone not like Peter David's writing? I just don't get that. His books are so much fun to read.

 

[Kegek]

David cgc said:
No, I don't think so. I remember when that stupid Nemesis rumor came out that Ashley Judd would be reprising her role as Robin Lefler (now married to Wesley Crusher), PAD found out it the same way we all did, and his only options were what we all did; Pray the rumor was false.

Yes, but that was a false rumour. I've never read anything that indicates a Judd cameo was seriously considered.

A better example for your case would probably be Captain Shelby in "You Are Cordially Invited", an offhand reference to the BOBW character that screwed up PAD's continuity so he had to explain how they weren't the same person.

Still, PAD considered the rumour serious enough to tip off Ellison, and Ellison takes it seriously enough to issue this public counterattack. I don't know if they're overracting or acting on the side of caution (just in case this plot is true and all that), but it's definitely something.

 

[Dale]

It could be that they, like James Cawley may be doing, are simply speaking out to raise their own profiles in the eyes of Trekkies who are paying more atention these days to all things Trek.

 

[Brutal Strudel]

Re: Peter "PAD" David

Dale Hoppert said:
How can anyone not like Peter David's writing? I just don't get that. His books are so much fun to read.

I wonder about that, myself. I mean, he's an easy read, his stuff goes down easy and all. I just find his voice and sense of humor to be annoying. I've often marvelled at how stuff I consider to be good writing is often much more difficult to read than what I consider to be bad.

 

[trevanian]

Re: Peter "PAD" David

^That's true, ain't it? Might explain why I was able to read SPOCK MUST DIE! four times in the span it took me to wade through HEART OF DARKNESS (weren't many trek novels back then.)

It might also explain why I have watched ACTION JACKSON 18 or 20 times, but still haven't gotten all the way through Welles' MacBeth (even though Welles is my favorite director.) You just need junk food sometimes. And some of David's stuff is VERY good, from what I recall, though I haven't read anything of his since around the time of VENDETTA (which I did not like much.)

 

[MadBaggins]

Re: Peter "PAD" David

He tries too hard to be cute and flippant and he ruined Madrox the Multiple Man.

 

[Brutal Strudel]

Steve Roby said:

trevanian said:

euphorik said:

P0sitr0nic said:
"Ellison is pissed"... that the only thing hes known for is a 40 year old Trek episode...

amen.

Methinks you'se all might want to expand your horizons a lil bit ...

He always like to say folks are entitled to their INFORMED opinions, not just to their opinions. I think some of the posts in this thread really reinforce this in my mind, since there are a helluva lot of totally UNinformed posters.

And they're so proud of their ignorance, too. It's remarkable. "City on the Edge of Forever" may have been where I first heard of Ellison, but before I was out of my teens I knew a lot more about him and his work than that. I read his magazine columns, I read Dangerous Visions, I read some of his own stories... and that was back around 1980, when you couldn't just connect to the Internet and type a person's name in Google to learn about them. It's so much easier to be informed these days, but people still can't be bothered.

And it's not as if the sad tunnel vision of the initial post hadn't been addressed numerous times, by me and other posters.

I became a huge fan of Ellison in high school, my junior year, when I read the Glass Teat books and a great many of his short stories. (This after hating him with a passion when I was 12 and 13 for saying such mean things about Trek--I grew up.) Until I read PK Dick's VALIS in my junior year of college (he was fond of Star Trek, btw), Ellison was my favorite SF writer. I'm not so terribly enthusiastic about him now, almost twenty years on, and I thought his initial drafts of "City" were just awful. I also acknowledge that, going by his self-described behavior and the accounts of people whom I deem trustworthy, he can be a world class asshole. That doesn't mean we get to ignore his awesome corpus of work or his contractual rights to share in any profits which follow from the use of his creation. It doesn't matter how many drafts there were between his version of the script and what we saw and it doesn't matter how many other writers (3? 4?) took a crack at it after him. If it were not for Ellison providing the initial framework, Trek would be without its most lauded and respected hour.

Really, everything else is so far beyond immaterial as to be embarassing.

 

[Sci]

Re: Peter "PAD" David

MadBaggins said:
Peter David is the real villain in all this, stooling out Paramount like a stooge pigeon and revealing all the plot details to his hero Harlan Ellison, hoping maybe to receive a few scraps of genius from the table of Harlan.

Peter David is not a "villain." If Paramount was planning on using Ellison's characters, then one way or the other, he is owed payment (either through the standard royalty agreement in WGA contracts that most writers get, or through his theoretical ownership of the Guardian character, whichever is true). Further, Ellison is a friend of David's.

If someone was planning on using a character of yours and not paying you, you'd want a friend to tip you off so that you could get the payment you're owed, wouldn't you? I mean, a friend who doesn't do that isn't much of a friend.

And, mind you, that's not to say that Paramount is trying to cheat Ellison. It's possible that David just let Ellison know about the Guardian before the check was cut, and he was just making sure Ellison was informed of the situation.

But, either way, David is not a villain. Most probably, no one is a villain.

 

[Kryton]

Re: Peter "PAD" David

Nero is the villain.

 

[trevanian]

Re: Peter "PAD" David

Sci said:

MadBaggins said:
Peter David is the real villain in all this, stooling out Paramount like a stooge pigeon and revealing all the plot details to his hero Harlan Ellison, hoping maybe to receive a few scraps of genius from the table of Harlan.

Peter David is not a "villain." If Paramount was planning on using Ellison's characters, then one way or the other, he is owed payment (either through the standard royalty agreement in WGA contracts that most writers get, or through his theoretical ownership of the Guardian character, whichever is true). Further, Ellison is a friend of David's.

If someone was planning on using a character of yours and not paying you, you'd want a friend to tip you off so that you could get the payment you're owed, wouldn't you? I mean, a friend who doesn't do that isn't much of a friend.

It is honorable behavior on his part, just as it was honorable behavior on the part of the guy Jim Warren hired to rip off HE's BOY & HIS DOG. Instead of writing it, the guy let HE know what was going on ... and found himself blacklisted on the Warren mags and I guess elsewhere. But Ellison rewarded the guy, putting him up at his house and then finding him a gig writing animated shows, which probably paid a lot better anyway. But you don't do it for the reward, you do it because you believe it is the right thing to do.

You folks ought to read some of the afterwards in Ellison's CITY volume ... by PAD, by Fontana (some serious surprises there, but those call friendship/intergrity into question), by Melinda Snodgrass (quite memorable and honest) and others ...

 

[Therin of Andor]

Scatter said:
Did the writers of the original episodes featuring Garak or Seven of Nine get residuals for every episode those characters appeared in?

Both of those characters were generated by the regular team of staff writers, IIRC, not generated from an outside pitch. However, the estate of the original writer who created T'Pau (for TOS) gets residuals for the DS9 and ENT episodes that reused that character.

 

[Therin of Andor]

Re: Peter "PAD" David

MadBaggins said:
Peter David is the real villain in all this

Saying, "Hey mate, have you heard the latest wacky Star Trek rumor?" makes you a "villain" these days?

What was Peter David supposed to do, and why should he?

 

[Lumen]

Akira Class said:

euphorik said:

P0sitr0nic said:
"Ellison is pissed"... that the only thing hes known for is a 40 year old Trek episode...

amen.

That is like saying Albert Einstein is only known for E=MC2.

Great analogy--but unlike in the case of Ellison, that is probably Einstein's greatest discovery, though it is but one piece of a great body of work.

"City on..." really isn't one of Ellison's greatest achievements--since he didn't even write the final script, and since he produced a lot of work much better than that episode--so I think it's even more apt to say that the general claim is analogous to saying that Newton is known only for being hit on the head with an apple--ignoring his important work not only outside of gravity, but in physics in general (momentum, inertia, force) as well as his work in mathematics (ie, inventing calculus) and the list goes on.

Either way, the general claim that Ellison is only known for that one episode of TOS is ridiculous.

 

[Brutal Strudel]

Re: Peter "PAD" David

trevanian said:
You folks ought to read some of the afterwards in Ellison's CITY volume ... by PAD, by Fontana (some serious surprises there, but those call friendship/intergrity into question), by Melinda Snodgrass (quite memorable and honest) and others ...

I can't fault Fontana too much for what she did. And knowing Ellison's incredible ability to hold a grudge, I can't fault her too much for keeping it from him.

 

[Steve Roby]

Lumen said:

Either way, the general claim that Ellison is only known for that one episode of TOS is ridiculous.

Yup. The people saying that aren't revealing anything about Ellison, they're revealing the depths of their own ignorance. However, some of the posts here are so obtuse and wrongheaded I suspect we're seeing a bit of performance art.

On a more general note, if Ellison is correctly interpreting the contract he signed when he wrote "City on the Edge of Forever," it doesn't matter whether he's a loud-mouthed schnook or the sweetest and humblest person alive, he's in the right. Legal matters depend on the law, not on who's the nicest person involved, or what we as people with no stake in the affair want. This appears to be beyond the comprehension of some people around here.

 

[David cgc]

Re: Peter "PAD" David

Therin of Andor said:

MadBaggins said:
Peter David is the real villain in all this

Saying, "Hey mate, have you heard the latest wacky Star Trek rumor?" makes you a "villain" these days?

What was Peter David supposed to do, and why should he?

I vote that he respects the fact that Harlan Ellison has burned his bridges with Star Trek and wants nothing more to do with it, even if Harlan Ellison won't respect the fact that Harlan Ellison has burned his bridges with Star Trek and wants nothing more to do with it.

 

[Brutal Strudel]

Re: Peter "PAD" David

David cgc said:

Therin of Andor said:

MadBaggins said:
Peter David is the real villain in all this

Saying, "Hey mate, have you heard the latest wacky Star Trek rumor?" makes you a "villain" these days?

What was Peter David supposed to do, and why should he?

I vote that he respects the fact that Harlan Ellison has burned his bridges with Star Trek and wants nothing more to do with it, even if Harlan Ellison won't respect the fact that Harlan Ellison has burned his bridges with Star Trek and wants nothing more to do with it.

There isn't enough kerosene in Madison County to negate a contractual obligation.