Posted on 07/02/2026 5:04:56 PM PDT by nickcarraway
Most stories one reads about the legendary sci-fi author Harlan Ellison tend to be about how cranky and/or litigious he was. Harlan Ellison hated Hollywood. The stories about his dissatisfaction with "Star Trek" are legendary, and he often took other writers and/or studios to court, claiming they had ripped off his idea. He once sued the makers of the obscure 1970s sci-fi cop show "Future Cop," and he famously (and successfully) sued James Cameron over "The Terminator." He sued the movie "In Time" for "borrowing" one of his ideas. And in interviews, Ellison remained cantankerous. A notable 1979 interview with the Comics Journal revealed the man's open hatred for studios' habit of stealing other authors' ideas and claiming them as their own.
In 1989, Ellison published a book of reviews and essays called "Harlan Ellison's Watching," which compiled 25 years of his ancillary nonfiction writing output. He weighed in on various pop sci-fi films and TV shows, adding his two acidic cents to the otherwise genteel conversation. It was never a secret that Harlan Ellison hated George Lucas' 1977 sci-fi opera "Star Wars," as he would make passing mention of it in ancillary interviews, but in "Watching," he got to lay his opinions bare in an essay entitled "Luke Skywalker Is A Nerd And Darth Vader Sucks Runny Eggs." As one can tell, Ellison was not about to launch into a paean about the glories of Lucas' Skywalker saga. He was about to lay out, in explicit detail, just how much he hated "Star Wars" and why.
In brief, Ellison felt that "Star Wars" was shallow and thoughtless, not interested in anything complex or adult. Because it was a mere adventure, it didn't fully exploit the depths of its own genre.
(Excerpt) Read more at aol.com ...
Dear FRiends,
We need your continuing support to keep FR funded. Your donations are our sole source of funding. No sugar daddies, no advertisers, no paid memberships, no commercial sales, no gimmicks, no tax subsidies. No spam, no pop-ups, no ad trackers.
If you enjoy using FR and agree it's a worthwhile endeavor, please consider making a contribution today:
Click here: to donate by Credit Card
Or here: to donate by PayPal
Or by mail to: Free Republic, LLC - PO Box 9771 - Fresno, CA 93794
Thank you very much and God bless you,
Jim
The Outer Limits has aged well.
Some of these bread-and-ciruses vendors take themselves far too seriously.
Couldn’t have futuristic trappings because it was set in a galaxy “a long time ago.”
Harlan had no shortage of opinions. The funny thing was that he praised The Terminator and said everyone should see it and he sued Cameron. He won too. He was an egomaniac, but also created the Dangerous Visions series to give lesser known writers the spotlight.
Given the behind the scenes drama, it’s amazing how well “City on the Edge of Forever” came out.
And everything else.
Who gives a Schiff what an envious nobody says ?
Sounds like my kind of guy.
At best, Star Wars is silly. An embarrassment to SciFi
Technically he didn’t “win” the lawsuit in regard to the Terminator. The studio settled.
“I don’t take a piss without getting paid.”
I like this guy.
Envious or not, Ellison was certainly not a “nobody” in the field of science fiction.
I skipped my last day in High School for the opening night of Star Wars, the audience loved it. When we were filing out somebody said “I was so tired of meaningful movies.”
“In fairness, James Cameron said publicly he used Outer Limits episodes as the basis for the movie, and said to other people that he has copied Harlan Ellison specifically. What did he expect?”
Screen credit, which he eventually got. Lip service is nice and doesn’t cost anything. Writers deserve to be paid.
Read this one in the 60's and like a tune you can't get out of your mind...
I thought he did get some kind of settlement?
Isn’t that one of the stories James Cameron ripped off?
That was part of the settlement. His name was added to the credits.
Thats cool, he had self awareness with some humor with it :)
I liked Star Wars for the fantasy and I knew that the story was sort of cheezy. Yet even as a thinking 16 year old kid I thought that pretty soon we would be seeing much better science fiction stories with super special effects, not the old 50’s and 60’s stuff. I remember hoping for a better Star Trek series or movies. Then Alien came out..hard sci fi and scary to boot...I was thrilled..science fiction starting to come into its own on the big screens. Close Encounters was brilliant I thought, clever little history twists , family friendly and barry the cute little boy though i didn’t like the Aliens taking the boy and scaring his mother...not cool. TV sc fi was hoaky though special effects were better than the 60’s. The Big Beginning for Battle Star Galactaca was cool but the show sort of fell off and lost vision after a while.(The reboot was much better in the early mid 2000’s). So I think Star Wars really opened the door for better sci fi films and yes some dogs. I think the best star wars film dramatically was The Empire Strikes back. Rogue One had the same Vibe in the 2000s but the dramatic vibe of the ESB movie was what I hoped all the Star Wars movies should have shown. The Return of the Jedi was good, great special effects, and the audience snickering at the sort of ewww factor when Leia was revealed as Luke’s sister and everyone in the theater, I just knew it because I was thinking it too, were thinking back to that huge juicy smooch Luke’s sister gave him in the ESB. Ewww!
Then there 1982’s Blade Runner and the dam burst open for epic sci fi. Real dilemmas, real clones who had what Major Kusanaga of the Ghost in the Shell anime books and later movies, called Ghosts, Self aware selves, who wanted to live but were limited in life span and the company CEO couldn’t fix it even if he wanted to, violent movie with streaks of raw human empathy. The movie was brilliantly casted with Star War’s Harrison Ford who stood out of the way with his acting and showed he really had deep star power. He was a surprise as he was in Apocalypse Now where he played a secondary character but was humble about it. He was a surprise again in Indiana Jones: Raiders in 1981..completely different character, closer to Han Solo, but that was okay, it was what the roll called for. I thought him as being a swiss army knife actor, what ever the roll, Ford could find the “blade” for it.
So thanks to a 3rd rate sci fi movie with first rate special effects and a dynamite music score that made the movie bigger than it has a right to be, the door was open for greater and better sci fi to come!
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.