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Posted on 03/14/2008 8:13:49 PM PDT by EveningStar
When I was about 18, I went to a science-fiction bookstore in Berkeley, Calif., to attend a book signing by Harlan Ellison. I had a couple of well-thumbed paperback collections for Ellison to sign, and was totally unprepared for the long line of fans, many of them bearing 10 or 15 pristinely preserved hardcover books. The college-age woman in front of me had just such a pile, but was carrying something else too. When she got to the front of the line, she cleared her throat and thrust something toward Ellison. "Mr. Ellison, I wrote a story and you're in it," she said. "You're an elf!"
As Erik Nelson, director of "Dreams With Sharp Teeth," a film about Ellison that just premiered at the South by Southwest Film Festival, observed when I told him the story, that woman was enough of an Ellison fan to want to include him in her literary universe -- but not enough of one to understand just how little he would be interested. Along with the other people in line, I cringed and cowered, expecting a nuclear outburst. Ellison went on signing her books, lifting his eyes from the page only to declare in a level voice, "I don't want to read your ****ing story."...
(Excerpt) Read more at salon.com ...
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In other news Francisco Franco is still dead.
"Tard" refers to the ping list members and not to the subject of the thread!
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He’s a moonbat lefty, but I have to give him credit: “Repent, Harlequin, Said the Ticktockman” is a libertarian classic and deserves a place in the library of every free person.
gee I thought this was a Howard Dean thread.
Ping for reading later.
Have you seen any of the images of him copping a feel of the writer Connie Willis at a Hugo awards? He looks like a wheezy bulldyke overdue for a wheelchair.
When I was young, I read a few of his stories, and liked the “Glass Teat” books. Now that I’m older, he’s highly over-rated.
I heard about this, of course. I thought he was brilliant in literature, but a total freak otherwise.
In my experience, his most intense fans are, not surprisingly, unrepentant 1960s radicals.
You're right about his fans. It's been a long time ago, but I once happened across his web site, and some of the people there are wince-evoking fanbois. You could almost smell their pheromones.
I met him when he gave a talk at a local college. Very voluble and filled with stories about all those ‘damn Hollywood phonies’ who have ripped him off (James Cameron, Gene Roddenberry).
LOL Priceless!
And no matter what the aging Queen says, his Trek script wasn't that great, (yet neither was the final version, for that matter. I've always thought "Forever" was highly over-rated).
I freely admit that back in the days of the Tomorrow show, (from it's debut in '73 up until NBC fubar'ed it with Rona Barrett), Ellison was always one of the best recurring guests.
He’s made a point of NOT reading anything that fans have written and submitted directly to him, simply to be sure that he’s not sued for “stealing” their stories. He’ll return manuscripts unopened.
But you’re right, he can be a jerk. But he’s also a brilliant short story author, and quite possibly one of the greatest editors of short stories of the last few decades. If not for his “Dangerous Visions” anthologies, I would have never heard of (those who have become) some of my favorite authors.
He’s also quite unabashedly hard left. But he can also be brutal to those he normally supports as well. And I don’t think that anyone’s ever written better on the Kitty Genovese murder that Harlan Ellison.
Mark
The few times I've seen him in discussions, he could really be quite a brilliant conversationalist. But he can also be such an ass.
I hadn't seen a recent photo of him in nearly 20 years, when I last saw him in person (1987, at a NYC comic/sci-fi convention) when he kept ranting and raving about "She Hulk." lol. He was great at that convention. But when I saw the photo posted earlier in this thread... Damn! The last 20 years haven't been very good to him.
As I said in an earlier post, I think that he's a good writer, but his real strength is as an editor.
Mark
banglist related.
“Dangerous Visions”
Had some creepy stuff — I’ll give him that.
Probably the creepiest was the short story advocating father/daughter incest — yuck!
Aging Queen? You do know he’s straight right? Anyway he also memorably sued James Cameron for ripping off an Outer Limits episode he wrote for the The Terminator. All home video copies of it end with the credit ‘Inspired by the work of Harlan Ellison’.
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