Harlan Ellison Dead at 84

Watching the aired version of "City" is a pretty weird way to honor Ellison, since he was on record as not having liked it. It'd be more appropriate to read his original script or even the comic book version that was adapted from it.

 

I'm going to dig my copy out tonight!

 

Sorry; it's all I had.

 

I just read another article that said he was 5' 2".

My wife is 5' 1" and I am 6' 2". Although my wife is 44, she looks VERY young for her age....literally like she is still in her teens (and just naturally, not through any kind of effort to look younger). I am 51, but if I didn't keep up on shaving my beard would be mostly white. Had a guy last year who initially thought we were father and 12-year-old daughter! If I had not been clean-shaven, he probably would have thought I was the grandfather.

 

I have no mouth and I must scream

 

Watch one of his episodes of Burke’s Law. He seemed genuinely fond of those when I saw him talk about his TV output here in Los Angeles a year or two before his stroke.

 

You've spoken to him do you get a gut feel he secretly was a bit proud of City even though it wasn't (arguably for some) as good as his version. I thought a lot of his beef was Gene lying about some aspects of the conflict to justify his position.

I know Ellison's public opinion was that Star Wars was rubbish Star Trek wasn't as meaningful as it thought it was while Dr Who was fantastic etc I can't tell how much of his public declarations were real and how much was rhetoric.

 

If he were that upset about what was done to his Star Trek script, he wouldn't have consented (for any amount of money) to appear at Star Trek conventions, such as the one I saw him at in January 1975, Americana Hotel, NYC. After all, it's not as though his version wasn't recognized - it won the Writers Guild of America-West hourlong drama script award for 1967. It wasn't until decades later that he saw fit to write a 100-page essay about how he was wronged during script revisions (the first part of his 1995 CoTEoF book).

The most hilarious and pointed takedown of a SF movie I ever read is worth seeking out: his critique of Peter Hyams' Outland (1981), which I think appeared first in Omni.

 

He certainly made things interesting and scored some valid points.

 

I will have to read that. I confess to having enjoyed films like Outland, Meteor, and Saturn 3.

 

His version was acknowedged by the WGA, which most fans would have zip clue about. His mere attendance at cons would be less important than what he SAID at them. He could have been there to do what he often did: tell everyone if they loved the aired episode they shoulda seen the original.

 

Maybe he did say that at the panel he was on; it's been an awfully long time since January 1975. My clearest memory is shaking Jimmy Doohan's hand (he was seated behind a table) and hearing his natural voice - the most accent-free voice imaginable, quite a surprise. Somewhere I have the program book and a few correct-looking uniform patches.

As for how many fans would have known about the WGA award, wasn't it mentioned in Gerrold's The World of Star Trek a year or two earlier?

 

WGA actually published a fairly small number of copies of the script, with their logo on it. I had a copy, a number of years ago.

I'm fairly certain that various fanzines back in the day....which often doubled as newsletters....mentioned his award from the WGA.

This paperback was published in 1975 and I believe the WGA award is mentioned in it:

 

Most fans didn't get fanzines. I remember those days as a fan in the 70s. Such information was far harder to come by then, especially to casual (i.e most) fans.

 

So let it be written, so let it be done.

 

Loved his take on God. Great clip on YouTube

 

Thanks, Yul.

 

About the same time, Ellison was hired by a video game magazine, Video Review, to review Parker Brothers' The Empire Strikes Back game for the Atari 2600. His review for that was amazing. He compares the game of the myth of Sisyphus -- like many games of that era, there's no "ending" and you play until you lose -- and he eviscerates it on pretty much every level. It was reprinted in An Edge in my Voice. Worth seeking out.

 

I think I had that game.

 

He also wrote a nice preface to several Doctor Who novels. But how his preface got included into "Revenge of the Cybermen" is anyone's guess (and doing a drinking game just before that wouldn't help...)

You can find the preface here, with Hannah's input:

https://hannahgivens.wordpress.com/...-harlan-ellison-on-doctor-who/comment-page-1/

Caution: It's not a safe read. It's wondrous, with proverbial treasures to satiate desires both subtle and gross. But it's not for the timid, as he slags on other sci-fi fantasy properties that have the word "Star" in their titles before praising DW...

As much as I love his prose, one has got to love his feisty take on life. But anyone who creates - deep down - is going to feel a little something unsavory if it's altered or edited significantly. Can't blame him. But it's also inevitable; television has various restrictions. Edits are inevitable. Given Trek was a mature sci-fi show for the time, it's still momentous that his craft got onto the show. Something most of us would never get as far in attempting or even have the ability to do.

And his take on the Atari 2600 game "The Empire Strikes Back" was indeed a rich, lush read. His unabashed feistiness is admittedly refreshing. And I had the game back in the day as well. And it did get boring, regardless if you played it linearly or figured out how to slow the herd and score big big points. I bet he didn't care the cartridge ROM was only 4KB in size...