Harlan Ellison

Harlan Jay Ellison (27 May 1934 – 28 June 2018) was an American short story writer, essayist, screenwriter, and professional provocateur whose work — incandescent, angry, formally inventive, and relentlessly personal — earned him more awards than any other writer of speculative fiction and made him the most feared and admired figure in the American science fiction community for over half a century. He was also, by universal agreement, one of the most difficult human beings ever to have walked through a convention hall.

Early Life

Ellison was born in Cleveland, Ohio, to a Jewish family. He attended Ohio State University briefly before being expelled (for punching a professor who told him he had no writing talent, according to the Ellison legend — the precise circumstances varied with each retelling). He moved to New York, where he joined a street gang to gather material for his first novel, and began selling stories to science fiction magazines in the mid-1950s.

By his mid-twenties he was publishing at a furious pace — stories, novelettes, television scripts, essays, criticism — and had established the persona that would define his career: a small, combative, ferociously articulate man who took no prisoners, suffered no fools, and litigated against anyone he believed had stolen his work.

The Major Stories

Ellison was primarily a short story writer — he believed the short form was the natural medium for speculative fiction — and his best stories are among the finest in the genre.

“Repent, Harlequin! Said the Ticktockman” (1965) is a darkly comic fable about a rebel who disrupts a time-obsessed totalitarian society by being persistently, deliberately late. It won the Hugo and Nebula Awards and became the most reprinted short story in the English language.

“I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream” (1967), about the last five humans alive, kept as playthings by a malevolent supercomputer (AM) that tortures them for eternity, is one of the most viscerally horrifying stories in science fiction — a nightmare about helplessness, rage, and the perversion of intelligence into cruelty.

“A Boy and His Dog” (1969) is a post-apocalyptic tale of a telepathic bond between a young man and his dog — savage, blackly funny, and morally appalling in exactly the ways Ellison intended.

“The Whimper of Whipped Dogs” (1973), “Jeffty Is Five” (1977), “Paladin of the Lost Hour” (1985), and “The Man Who Rowed Christopher Columbus Ashore” (1992) demonstrate the extraordinary range and consistency of his short fiction over four decades.

Dangerous Visions (1967)

Ellison’s anthology — and its sequel, Again, Dangerous Visions (1972) — were landmark publications in the history of American science fiction. Ellison commissioned stories from the genre’s best writers and instructed them to write without regard for taboos: the results included work by Philip José Farmer, Samuel R. Delany, Norman Spinrad, and many others that pushed the boundaries of what science fiction could address. The anthologies were a declaration of war against the conservatism of the science fiction establishment and a key document of the American New Wave.

The never-completed The Last Dangerous Visions became the most infamous unpublished book in science fiction — promised for decades, never delivered, and the subject of Christopher Priest’s devastating essay “The Book on the Edge of Forever” (1994).

Television and Film

Ellison was a prolific screenwriter whose credits include the classic Star Trek episode “The City on the Edge of Forever” (1967) — widely regarded as the finest episode of the original series — and scripts for The Outer Limits, Burke’s Law, and The Alfred Hitchcock Hour. His relationship with Hollywood was tempestuous: he was hired and fired repeatedly, sued studios for credit and compensation, and maintained a permanent state of war with the entertainment industry while continuing to work in it.

The Combative Persona

Ellison’s personality was inseparable from his work. He was litigious (he sued, among others, James Cameron for plagiarising The Terminator from an Ellison story), combative (he physically assaulted people who annoyed him at conventions), generous (he championed younger writers and gave away money), and impossible (no one who knew him could tolerate him indefinitely). He was banned from multiple conventions, walked out of award ceremonies, and maintained feuds that lasted decades.

This persona was partly performance, partly genuine pathology, and partly protective armour for a writer of extreme emotional vulnerability. The best Ellison stories are acts of self-exposure — raw, confessional, angry — and the combative public persona was the shell that made such exposure possible.

Legacy

Ellison won eight and a half Hugo Awards, four Nebula Awards, five Bram Stoker Awards, two Edgar Awards, and a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Horror Writers Association. He is one of the most decorated writers in the history of speculative fiction, and his best stories — savage, humane, technically brilliant — remain unsurpassed.

Collecting Ellison

Ellison’s collectibility is high. I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream (1967, Pyramid Books, paperback original) is the key title. Dangerous Visions (1967, Doubleday) in first edition with dust jacket is also highly sought. Ellison signed extensively but was particular about the process — his inscriptions are often personalised, lengthy, and entertaining. His papers are extensive and much sought.