Harlan Ellison

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Harlan Ellison

Pseudonym:	Cordwainer Bird, Nalrah Nosille
Born:	May 27, 1934 Cleveland, Ohio
Occupation:	Author, screenwriter
Nationality:	American
Genres:	Science fiction, fantasy
Literary movement:	New Wave
Website:	Ellison Webderland

Harlan Jay Ellison (born May 27, 1934) is a prolific American writer of short stories, novellas, essays, and criticism. His literary and television work has received many awards. He wrote for the original series of both The Outer Limits and Star Trek; edited the multiple-award-winning short story anthology series Dangerous Visions; and served as creative consultant to the science fiction TV series The New Twilight Zone and Babylon 5.

Ellison's most famous stories were published within the science fiction genre, and he has won multiple Hugo and Nebula awards. He was also very active in the science fiction community (he was a founder of the Cleveland Science Fiction Society and edited its fanzine as a teenager), and gives colorful and confrontational talks at science fiction conventions. He served as the Science Fiction Writers of America's first vice president, in the 1960s. He prefers not to place his works in a genre, but will use the term "speculative fiction" to describe his work.

Ellison's fantasy work, however, is generally better aligned with surrealism or magical realism than space opera-type science fiction. There is also a strong ethical current that runs through his work, half of which is nonfiction, including social activism and criticism of the arts.

He is fiercely protective of his work and has sought (and won) legal action against copyright infringements. He occasionally uses the pseudonym Cordwainer Bird for reasons explained in the "Controversy" section, below.

Contents 1 Biography 1.1 Early life and career 1.2 Hollywood and beyond 2 Cordwainer Bird 3 Controversies 3.1 Account of sexual encounter in 1962 3.2 Star Trek 3.3 Civil Rights 3.4 The Last Dangerous Visions 3.5 Assault on Charles Platt 3.6 Back to the Future 3.7 alt.binaries.e-book lawsuit 3.8 Hugo Awards Incident 3.9 Lawsuit Against Fantagraphics 4 Short story collections 5 Novels 6 Published screenplays and teleplays 7 Nonfiction 8 Anthologies edited 9 Selected short stories 10 Computer games 11 Audio recordings (selection) 12 Awards won 12.1 Bradbury award 12.2 Bram Stoker Award 12.3 Hugo Award 12.4 Locus Poll Award 12.5 Nebula Award 12.6 Additional reading 13 Parodies and pastiches of Ellison 14 References 15 See also 16 External links

[edit] Biography

[edit] Early life and career

Ellison was born in Cleveland, Ohio. His Jewish-American family subsequently moved to Painesville, Ohio, but returned to Cleveland in 1949, following the death of his father. As a child, he had a brief career performing in minstrel shows. He frequently ran away from home, taking an array of odd jobs — including, by the time he was eighteen (by his own account), "tuna fisherman off the coast of Galveston, itinerant crop-picker down in New Orleans, hired gun for a wealthy neurotic, dynamite truck driver in North Carolina, short order cook, cab driver, lithographer, book salesman, floorwalker in a department store, door-to-door brush salesman, and as a youngster, he appeared in several productions at the Cleveland Play House".^[1]

Ellison attended Ohio State University for 18 months before being expelled. He has said that the expulsion was a result of his hitting a professor who had denigrated his writing ability, and that over the next forty-odd years he had sent that professor a copy of every story he published. ^[2]

Ellison moved to New York City in 1955 to pursue a writing career, primarily in science fiction. Over the next two years, he published more than 100 short stories and articles. In 1957, Ellison decided to write about youth gangs. To research the issue, he joined a street gang in the Red Hook, Brooklyn area, under the name "Cheech Beldone". His subsequent writings on the subject include the novel, Web of the City/Rumble, and the collection, The Deadly Streets, and also comprise part of his memoir, Memos from Purgatory.

Ellison was drafted into the army, serving from 1957 to 1959. Afterwards, while living in Chicago, Ellison wrote for William Hamling's Rogue magazine. As a book editor at Hamling's Regency Books, he published novels and anthologies by such writers as B. Traven, Kurt Vonnegut, Robert Bloch and Philip José Farmer.

In addition, in the late 1950s Ellison wrote a number of erotica stories, such as "God Bless the Ugly Virgin" and "Tramp", which were later reprinted in Los Angeles-based magazines. That was the beginning of his use of the name Cordwainer Bird as a pseudonym. The name was later used in July and August of 1957, in two journals, each of which had accepted two of his stories. In each journal, one story was published under the name Harlan Ellison, and the other under Cordwainer Bird. Later, as discussed in the Controversy section below, he used the pseudonym on material when he disagreed with its use or editing.

[edit] Hollywood and beyond

Ellison moved to California in 1962, and subsequently began to sell scripts to such television shows as "Burke's Law," Route 66, The Outer Limits, Star Trek and Cimarron Strip. His "Memos from Purgatory" was adapted into an episode of The Alfred Hitchcock Hour. Ellison's scripts "Demon with a Glass Hand" (for The Outer Limits) and "The City on the Edge of Forever" (for Star Trek) won Best Original Teleplay awards from the Writers Guild of America; both are often cited as one of the best of their respective series.

During the late 1960s, Ellison wrote a column about television for the Los Angeles Free Press. Titled "The Glass Teat", the column addressed political and social issues and their portrayal on television at the time. The columns have been reprinted in two collections, The Glass Teat and The Other Glass Teat.

In 1966, in an article that Esquire Magazine would later name as the best magazine piece ever written, the journalist Gay Talese wrote about the goings-on around the enigmatic Frank Sinatra. The article, entitled "Frank Sinatra Has a Cold," briefly describes a clash between the young Harlan Ellison and Frank Sinatra, when the crooner suddenly took exception to Ellison's boots during a billiards game. At the time, Ellison was working on a screenplay for a film called "The Oscar" ultimately released in 1966.

Ellison continued to publish short pieces, fiction and nonfiction, in various publications, and some of his most famous stories were written in this period. ""Repent, Harlequin!" Said the Ticktockman" (1965) is a celebration of civil disobedience against repressive authority. "I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream" is an allegory of Hell, where five humans are tormented by an all-knowing computer throughout eternity. "I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream" (1967) was the basis of a 1995 computer game, with Ellison participating in the game's design and providing the voice of the god-computer AM. "A Boy and his Dog" examines the nature of friendship and love in a violent, post-apocalyptic world. It was made into the film A Boy and His Dog in 1975 starring Don Johnson.

Ellison has won ten Hugo Awards, four Nebula Awards, and five Bram Stoker Awards (presented by the Horror Writers Association) including the Lifetime Achievement Award in 1996.

He has also been honored with the Edgar Award of the Mystery Writers of America twice, the Georges Méliès fantasy film award twice, and the Silver Pen for Journalism by International PEN, the international writers' union. He was presented with the first Living Legend Award by the International Horror Guild at the 1995 World Horror Convention. He is also the only author in Hollywood ever to win the Writers' Guild of America Award for Most Outstanding Teleplay (solo work) four times, most recently for "Paladin of the Lost Hour" in 1987.

In March 1998, the National Women's Committee of Brandeis University honored him with their 1998 Words, Wit, Wisdom award. In 1990, Ellison was honored by International PEN for continuing commitment to artistic freedom and the battle against censorship.

The story for a rather famous and popular film can also be credited to Ellison, though he had to go to court to get the credit. Some aspects of the story for The Terminator were sufficiently similar to two episodes ("Soldier" and "Demon with a Glass Hand") of the TV series The Outer Limits — both written by Ellison — that Ellison sued James Cameron. Ellison settled for several hundred thousand dollars, and the film's end credits now include the simple statement: "Acknowledgement to the works of Harlan Ellison."

He also edited the influential science fiction anthology Dangerous Visions (1967), which collected stories commissioned by Ellison, accompanied by his commentary-laden biographical sketches of the authors. He challenged the authors to write stories at the edge of the genre. Many of the stories went beyond the traditional boundaries of science fiction pioneered by respected old school editors such as John W. Campbell, Jr. As an editor, Ellison was influenced and inspired by experimentation in the popular literature of the time, such as the beats. A sequel, Again Dangerous Visions, was published in 1972. A third volume, The Last Dangerous Visions, has been repeatedly postponed (see Controversy).

The screenplay for his projected television series The Starlost was also given a Writers Guild Award, though the actual series, produced in 1972-73, was so altered by the producers that Ellison had his name removed from the credits. Ellison was the first writer to win this award three times.

Ellison served as creative consultant to the science fiction TV series The Twilight Zone (1980s version) and Babylon 5. As a member of the Screen Actors Guild (SAG), he has voiceover credits for shows including The Pirates of Dark Water, Mother Goose and Grimm, Space Cases, Phantom 2040, and Babylon 5, as well as making an onscreen appearance in the Babylon 5 episode "The Face of the Enemy".

For two years, beginning in 1986, Ellison took over as host of the Friday-night radio program Hour 25 on KPFK-FM, Los Angeles, after the death of Mike Hodel, the show's founder and original host. Ellison had been a frequent guest on the long-running program.

Ellison's 1992 novelette "The Man Who Rowed Christopher Columbus Ashore" was selected for inclusion in the 1993 edition of The Best American Short Stories.

Ellison was hired as a writer for Walt Disney Studios, but was fired on his first day after being overheard by Roy O. Disney in the studio commissary joking about making a pornographic animated film featuring Disney characters. He recounted this incident in his book Stalking the Nightmare, as part 3 of an essay titled "The 3 Most Important Things in Life".

He does all his writing on a manual Olympia typewriter, and has a substantial distaste for personal computers and most of the internet.

Ellison has provided vocal narration to numerous Audiobooks, both of his own writing and others. Ellison has helped narrate books by authors such as Orson Scott Card, Arthur C. Clarke, and Terry Pratchett.

Ellison lives in Los Angeles, California with Susan, his fifth wife. In 1994 he suffered a heart attack and was hospitalized for quadruple coronary artery bypass surgery.

In 2006, Harlan Ellison received the title of SFWA Grand Master from the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America. The Board of Directors and past Presidents of SFWA inducted Ellison as the newest Grand Master at the Nebula Awards Weekend in May of that year.

[edit] Cordwainer Bird

Ellison has on occasion used the pseudonym Cordwainer Bird to alert members of the public to situations in which he feels his creative contribution to a project has been mangled beyond repair by others, typically Hollywood producers or studios. (See, e.g., Alan Smithee.) The first such work to which he signed the name was "The Price of Doom," an episode of Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea (though it was misspelled as Cordwainer Bid in the credits). The "Cordwainer Bird" moniker is a tribute to fellow SF writer Paul M. A. Linebarger, better known by his pen name, Cordwainer Smith. The origin of the word "cordwainer" is shoemaker (from working with cordovan leather for shoes). The term used by Linebarger was meant to imply the industriousness of the pulp author. Ellison has said, in interviews and in his writing, that his version of the pseudonym was meant to mean "a shoemaker for birds". Since he has used the pseudonym mainly for works he wants to distance himself from, it may be understood to mean that "this work is for the birds". Stephen King once said he thought that it meant that Ellison was giving people who mangled his work a literary version of "the bird" (given credence by Ellison himself in his own essay titled "Somehow, I Don't Think We're in Kansas, Toto", describing his experience with the Starlost television series).

[edit] Controversies

Ellison has a reputation for being abrasive and argumentative. {Cit. source: Theodore Sturgeon, in his Introduction to "i have no mouth and i must scream", Pyramid Paperback, April, 1967, final paragraph, in which he describes H.E. as: "...a man on the move, and he is moving fast. He is, on these pages and everywhere else he goes, colorful, intrusive, ABRASIVE... and one hell of a writer".) He has generally agreed with this assessment, and a dust jacket from one of Ellison's own books includes a passage that described him as "possibly the most contentious person on Earth". Ellison is also well known for being fiercely litigious and his numerous grievance filings and lawsuit attempts have been characterized as both justifiable and possibly frivolous. These traits have attracted some controversy, especially among science fiction and fantasy fans. His friend Isaac Asimov noted that, "Harlan uses his gifts for colorful and variegated invective on those who irritate him — intrusive fans, obdurate editors, callous publishers, offensive strangers."

His outspoken reputation earned him frequent appearances as a panelist on Politically Incorrect, and a regular spot on the fledgling Sci-Fi Channel where he was given an opportunity to express his views on whatever he chose to talk about. Ellison's segments, of which some transcripts are available, were broadcast from 1994 to 1997. Some found this ironic, as Ellison has derided the term "sci-fi" as a "hideous neologism" that "sounds like crickets fucking." (Forrest J. Ackerman, who coined the term, responded by producing buttons bearing the slogan, "I love the sound of crickets making love.")

Ellison is also sometimes credited for inventing the phrase "Bugfuck!", which is used to describe somebody being or acting totally bouncing-off-rubber-walls crazy.^{[citation needed]}

[edit] Account of sexual encounter in 1962

In 1978 Harlan Ellison recounted as if telling a factual story^[3] how in 1962 he had ended a consensual sexual encounter, after tying his partner in the living-room of her parents' house so that she was naked and unable to move or release herself, by leaving her there to be discovered by her parents. The veracity of his own account cannot be determined: it resembles a common urban legend.^[4]

[edit] Star Trek

Ellison has been vocal for many years in his criticism of how Star Trek creator and producer Gene Roddenberry (and others) rewrote much of his original script for the episode "The City on the Edge of Forever". Ellison's original work included a subplot involving drug dealing aboard the Enterprise and other elements that Roddenberry rejected for various reasons. Despite the award-winning, classic status of the episode (on which Ellison retained credit rather than using his "Cordwainer Bird" nom-de-plume), Ellison continued to be critical of how his work was treated by Roddenberry, decades after the fact. Ellison's original script was eventually reprinted in the 1976 collection Six Science Fiction Plays, edited by Roger Elwood. In 1995, White Wolf Publishing released Harlan Ellison's The City on the Edge of Forever, a book that included the original script, several story treatments, and an extensive introductory essay by Ellison explaining his position regarding the situation which resulted in what he called a "fatally inept treatment" of his work. Both the filmed episode and the original script won prestigious awards, the episode winning the 1968 Hugo Award for Best Dramatic Presentation and the script winning a Writers Guild of America award.

[edit] Civil Rights

As Guest of Honor at the 1978 WorldCon (Iguanacon) in Phoenix, Arizona, Ellison vowed that he would not spend a penny in a state which had not ratified the Equal Rights Amendment (interestingly, he is also said to have declared at another convention that he did not believe Mensa had any women members^[5]). During the convention, he used a recreational vehicle instead of staying in a convention hotel.

He was also a participant in the 1965 march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama, led by Martin Luther King, Jr.

[edit] The Last Dangerous Visions

"The Last Dangerous Visions", the third volume of the anthology series, has become something of a legend in science fiction as the genre's most famous unpublished book. It was originally announced for publication in 1973, but other work demanded Ellison's attention and the anthology has not seen print to date. He has come under criticism for his treatment of some writers who submitted their stories to him, of which some estimate to be nearly 150 (many of the authors have died in the subsequent three decades since the anthology was first announced). In 1993 Ellison threatened to sue New England Science Fiction Association (NESFA) for publishing "Himself in Anachron", a short story written by Cordwainer Smith and sold to Ellison for the book by his widow,^[6] but later reached an amicable settlement.^[7]

British SF author Christopher Priest has critiqued Ellison's editorial practices in a widely-disseminated article titled The Book on the Edge of Forever.^[8] Priest documented a half-dozen instances in which Ellison promised TLDV would appear within a year of the statement, but did not fulfill those promises. Priest claims he submitted a story at Ellison's request which Ellison retained for several months until Priest himself withdrew the story and demanded that Ellison return the manuscript.^[9] Ellison has a record of fulfilling obligations in other instances (though sometimes, as with Harlan Ellison's Hornbook for Mirage Press, several decades after the contract was signed), including to writers whose stories he solicited, and has expressed outrage at other editors who have acted unprofessionally.

[edit] Assault on Charles Platt

In the 1980s, there was a widely-publicized incident in which Ellison assaulted author and critic Charles Platt at the Nebula Awards banquet.^[10] Platt did not pursue legal action against Ellison, and the two men signed a "non-aggression pact" later, promising never to discuss the incident again nor to have any contact with one another. In the following years, however, Ellison has often publicly boasted about the incident.^[11]

[edit] Back to the Future

In 1985, Ellison was interviewed for Starlog magazine's 100th issue (spotlighting who they felt were the 100 Most Important People in Science Fiction) and infamously called the popular movie Back to the Future a "piece of shit," which garnered an unprecedented amount of negative fan mail for the magazine.

Ellison has commented on a great many movies and television programs (see The Glass Teat and The Other Glass Teat for television criticism and commentary; see Harlan Ellison's Watching for movie criticism and commentary), both negatively and positively. He believes that "quality" and "popularity" are not synonymous, and is well-known for his vociferous disdain for anything he believes is bad.

[edit] alt.binaries.e-book lawsuit

Ellison again came into the public eye with his April 24, 2000 lawsuit against Stephen Robertson for posting four of his stories to the newsgroup "alt.binaries.e-book" without authorization. Included as defendants in the lawsuit were AOL and RemarQ, internet service providers whose only involvement was running Usenet servers carrying the group in question, who Ellison claimed had failed to stop the alleged copyright infringement in accordance with the "Notice and Takedown Procedure" outlined in the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act. Robertson and RemarQ settled the lawsuit with Ellison, though he pressed on with his suit against AOL. The AOL suit was settled in June 2004 under conditions that were not made public.

[edit] Hugo Awards Incident

On August 26, 2006, during the 64th World Science Fiction Convention, Ellison grabbed Connie Willis' breast while on stage at the Hugo Awards ceremony.^[12] Ellen Datlow described this as "a schtick of Harlan acting like a baby".^[13] Patrick Nielsen Hayden described this as "pathetic and nasty and sad and most of us didn't want to watch it".^[14]

Ellison did not respond until three days later when he wrote on his message board, "I was unaware of any problem proceeding from my intendedly-childlike grabbing of Connie Willis's left breast, as she was exhorting me to behave." He also posted that "I'm glad, at last, to have transcended your expectations. I stand naked and defenseless before your absolutely correct chiding." By August 31 his contrition seemed to be waning, as he posted: "Would you be slightly less self-righteous and chiding if I told you there was NO grab...there was NO grope...there was NO fondle...there was the slightest touch. A shtick, a gag between friends, absolutely NO sexual content. How about it, Mark: after playing straight man to Connie's very frequently demeaning public jackanapery toward me -- including treating me with considerable disrespect at the Grand Master Awards Weekend, where she put a chair down in front of her lectern as Master of Ceremonies, and made me sit there like a naughty child throughout her long 'roast' of my life and career -- for more than 25 years, without once complaining, whaddays think, Mark, am I even a leetle bit entitled to think that Connie likes to play, and geez ain't it sad that as long as SHE sets the rules for play, and I'm the village idiot, she's cool ... but gawd forbid I change the rules and play MY way for a change ...", and complained that Willis had not called him to discuss the matter.^[15]

[edit] Lawsuit Against Fantagraphics

On 20 September 2006, Ellison filed a defamation suit against Fantagraphics, a comic book publisher, claiming they had defamed him in their book Comics As Art (We told you so).

This book, an account of the history of Fantagraphics, discussed an event in 1980 where Ellison gave an interview with Fantagraphics. In this interview, in Ellison's typical no-holds-barred fashion, Ellison referred to comic book writer Mike Fleisher, calling him "bugfuck" and "derango". Fleisher sued Ellison and Fantagraphics for libel, but lost the ensuing lawsuit on December 9, 1986.^[16]

Ellison, after reading unpublished drafts of the book on Fantagraphics's website, believed that he had been defamed by several anecdotes related to this incident. He filed suit in the Superior Court for the State of California, in Santa Monica. Fantagraphics has attempted to have the lawsuit dismissed. In their motion to dismiss, Fantagraphics argued that the statements were both their personal opinions and generally believed to be true anecdotes.

On February 12, 2007, the presiding judge in the lawsuit ruled against Fantagraphics' anti-SLAPP motion for dismissal of the case, and the case will continue. ^[17]

[edit] Short story collections

• A Touch of Infinity
• Children of the Streets
• Gentleman Junkie and Other Stories of the Hung-Up Generation
• Ellison Wonderland, ISBN 0-312-94133-1
• Paingod and Other Delusions
• I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream, ISBN 0-441-36394-6
• From the Land of Fear
• Love Ain't Nothing But Sex Misspelled (fiction and nonfiction), ISBN 1-56504-963-2
• The Beast that Shouted Love at the Heart of the World, ISBN 0-312-94027-0
• Over the Edge, ISBN 1-56504-960-8
• Partners in Wonder (collaborations with 14 other writers)
• Alone Against Tomorrow, ISBN 0-02-019780-2
• Approaching Oblivion, ISBN 0-312-94018-1
• Deathbird Stories, ISBN 0-312-94084-X
• No Doors, No Windows, ISBN 0-515-03799-0
• Strange Wine, ISBN 0-446-30659-2
• Shatterday
• Stalking the Nightmare, ISBN 0-425-07169-3
• Angry Candy, ISBN 0-395-48307-7
• Slippage, ISBN 0-395-35341-6
• The Time of the Eye, ISBN 0-586-03935-X
• The Essential Ellison, ISBN 0-914261-01-0

[edit] Novels

• Rumble (also titled Web of the City)
• The Sound of a Scythe
• Spider Kiss (originally titled Rockabilly), ISBN 0-922890-54-4
• Doomsman
• The Starlost No. 1: Phoenix Without Ashes (adaptation by Edward Bryant of Ellison's pilot script), ISBN 0-449-03188-8

[edit] Published screenplays and teleplays

• I, Robot (with Isaac Asimov, illustrated by Mark Zug) , ISBN 0-446-67062-6
• The City on the Edge of Forever (Star Trek episode, original screenplay, with commentary), White Wolf Publishing, 1995. For an in-depth review of this book see [1]. This script was also published in Six Science Fiction Plays, edited by Roger Elwood (Pocket Books, 1976).
• Harlan Ellison's Movie (unproduced feature-length screenplay serialised in Ellison's weekly newspaper column The Harlan Ellison Hornbook and collected in the omnibus volume Edgeworks 3), ISBN 1-56504-962-4
• Flintlock (unproduced pilot teleplay for a proposed TV series based on James Coburn's character in In Like Flint, published in the retrospective volume The Essential Ellison)
• The Whimper of Whipped Dogs (teleplay produced in the TV series The Young Lawyers, serialised in Ellison's weekly newspaper column The Glass Teat and published in his volume The Other Glass Teat); unrelated to Ellison's later short story, "The Whimper of Whipped Dogs"
• The Whimper of Whipped Dogs (unfinished screenplay based on Ellison's 1974 short story of the same title as, but completely unrelated to, the Young Lawyers teleplay referenced above; three treatments of the opening sequence were published in the June 1988 issue of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction and later appeared in the volume Harlan Ellison's Watching)

See also Phoenix without Ashes, the novelization by Edward Bryant of the screenplay for the pilot episode of The Starlost, which includes a lengthy afterword by Ellison describing what happened in the production of that series.

[edit] Nonfiction

• Memos from Purgatory
• The Glass Teat (essays on television, 1968-1970)
• The Other Glass Teat (essays on television, 1970-1972)
• Sleepless Nights in the Procrustean Bed edited by Marty Clark, ISBN 0-89370-270-6
• Harlan Ellison's Watching, ISBN 0-88733-067-3
• An Edge in My Voice, ISBN 0-89865-341-X
• The Harlan Ellison Hornbook, ISBN 0-89296-239-9
• "The Book of Ellison (edited by Andrew Porter, 1978, Algol Press)

[edit] Anthologies edited

• Dangerous Visions (1967), ISBN 0-575-04144-7
  • Note: This book has also been issued in a three-volume paperback edition.
• Nightshade and Damnations: the finest stories of Gerald Kersh
• Again Dangerous Visions (1972)
  • Note: This book has also been issued in a two-volume paperback edition, ISBN 0-330-25068-X
• Medea: Harlan's World (1985): an experiment in collaborative science-fictional world-building, featuring contributions by Hal Clement, Frank Herbert, Ursula K. Le Guin and others, ISBN 0-553-34170-7

[edit] Selected short stories

• "Adrift Just Off the Islets of Langerhans: Latitude 38° 54' N, Longitude 77° 00' 13" W"
• "The Beast That Shouted Love at the Heart of the World"
• "A Boy and his Dog" (made into a film)
• "The Deathbird"
• "The Diagnosis of Dr. D'arqueAngel"
• "From A to Z, in the Chocolate Alphabet"
• "I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream" Made into CD-ROM Game, circa 1995-97
• "Jeffty Is Five"
• "Knox"
• "The Prowler in the City at the Edge of the World"
• "Repent, Harlequin!" Said the Ticktockman
• "Shatterday" - adapted as an episode of the 1980s revival of The Twilight Zone
• "Shattered Like a Glass Goblin"
• "Soldier": filmed as an Outer Limits episode. The film The Terminator had sufficient story element similarities to it (and also to another Outer Limits episode, Demon with a Glass Hand) that Ellison filed a lawsuit against James Cameron. Later prints of the film acknowledge the debt to Ellison.
• "Try a Dull Knife"
• "The Whimper of Whipped Dogs"

[edit] Computer games

• I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream

[edit] Audio recordings (selection)

• On The Road With Ellison Volume 1 - released 1983, reissued 2001 on Deep Shag Records
• On The Road With Ellison Volume 2 - released 2004 on Deep Shag Records
• On The Road With Ellison Volume 3 - to be released in 2007 on Deep Shag Records

[edit] Awards won

(Paragraph repeated from above; for accompanying links, see first iteration.)

He has won the Hugo Award eight and a half times; the Nebula Award three times; the Bram Stoker Award, presented by the Horror Writers Association, five times (including the Lifetime Achievement Award in 1996); the Edgar Award of the Mystery Writers of America twice; the Georges Méliès fantasy film award twice; and was awarded the Silver Pen for Journalism by International PEN, the international writers' union. He was presented with the first Living Legend Award by the International Horror Guild at the 1995 World Horror Convention. He is also the only author in Hollywood ever to win the Writers' Guild of America Award for Most Outstanding Teleplay (solo work) four times, most recently for "Paladin of the Lost Hour" in 1987. In March 1998, the National Women's Committee of Brandeis University honored him with their 1998 Words, Wit, Wisdom award. In 1990, Ellison was honored by International PEN for continuing commitment to artistic freedom and the battle against censorship. Some of the specific occasions are listed below.

[edit] Bradbury award

The Bradbury Award was given by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America in 2000 to Harlan Ellison and Yuri Rasovsky.

[edit] Bram Stoker Award

• The Essential Ellison (best collection, 1987)
• Harlan Ellison's Watching (best non-fiction, 1989—tie)
• Mefisto in Onyx (best novella, 1993—tie)
• Chatting With Anubis (best short story, 1995)
• Life achievement award, 1995
• I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream (best other media—audio, 1999)

[edit] Hugo Award

• "Repent, Harlequin!" Said the Ticktockman (best short fiction, 1966)
• I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream (best short story, 1968)
• The City on the Edge of Forever (best dramatic presentation, 1968)
• Dangerous Visions (special award, 1968)
• The Beast That Shouted Love at the Heart of the World (best short story, 1969)
• Again, Dangerous Visions (special award for excellence in anthologizing, 1972)
• The Deathbird (best novelette, 1974)
• Adrift Just Off the Islets of Langerhans: Latitude 38° 54' N, Longitude 77° 00' 13" W (best novelette, 1975)
• A Boy and His Dog (film--Best Dramatic Presentation, 1976; the Hugo was given to the film's producers, but Ellison complained that as the writer of the story L. Q. Jones's screenplay was based on he deserved to share in the award. But no extra Hugo statuette could be found, only the base of one which was given to mollify him, thus he calls this his "half Hugo.")
• Jeffty Is Five (best short story, 1978)
• Paladin of the Lost Hour (best novelette, 1986)

[edit] Locus Poll Award

• The Region Between (best short fiction, 1970)
• Basilisk (best short fiction, 1972)
• Again, Dangerous Visions (best anthology, 1972)
• The Deathbird (best short fiction, 1974)
• Adrift Just Off the Islets of Langerhans: Latitude 38° 54' N, Longitude 77° 00' 13" W (best novelette, 1975)
• Croatoan (best short story, 1976)
• Jeffty Is Five (best short story, 1978)
• Count the Clock That Tells the Time (best short story, 1979)
• Djinn, No Chaser (best novellette, 1983)
• Sleepless Nights in the Procrustean Bed (best related non-fiction, 1985)
• Medea - Harlan's World|Medea: Harlan's World (best anthology, 1986)
• Paladin of the Lost Hour]] (best novelette, 1986)
• With Virgil Oddum at the East Pole]] (best short story, 1986)
• Angry Candy (best collection, 1989)
• The Function of Dream Sleep (best novellette, 1989)
• Eidolons (best short story, 1989)
• Mefisto in Onyx (best novella, 1994)
• Slippage (best collection, 1998)

[edit] Nebula Award

• "Repent, Harlequin!" Said the Ticktockman (best short story, 1965)
• A Boy and His Dog (best novella, 1969)
• Jeffty Is Five (best short story, 1977)
• Grand Master Award (at Tempe, Arizona, May 6, 2006)

[edit] Additional reading

• California Sorcery, edited by William F. Nolan and William Schafer

[edit] Parodies and pastiches of Ellison

Ellison's prose style is highly regarded and distinctive; many have tried to mimic or parody it. Ellison himself is such a distinctive personality that many other science-fiction authors have inserted characters into their works who are thinly-disguised parodies of Ellison the man; some of these parodies are good-natured, while others are definitely hostile.

One of the more benevolent parodies of Ellison is the main character in a mystery novel by an author who is better known for science fiction: Murder at the A.B.A. by Isaac Asimov (The title refers to the annual convention of the American Booksellers Association). The novel's main character and narrator is an author named "Darius Just", who finds himself serving as an amateur sleuth to solve the murder of a fellow author at the convention. Asimov intended the name "Darius Just" as a pun on "Dry As Dust", and the protagonist is a slightly exaggerated pastiche of Ellison himself. Ellison has objected to the depiction: Darius Just is only five feet (1.52 m) tall, whereas Ellison is four inches (10 cm) taller at about 5 ft 4 in (1.63 m).

Ben Bova's comic-SF novel The Starcrossed was inspired by Ellison's and Bova's experience on the Canada-produced miniseries The Starlost. In Bova's novel, a 3D television projection system has been developed, and a new show is produced to encourage people to buy the new sets. The producers hire a famous writer named Ron Gabriel to write the show; the character is a thinly disguised Ellison. Although Bova is a friend of Ellison's, and his portrayal of Gabriel is admiring and sympathetic, the novel is broad comedy, and should not be read as a true roman a clef. Ellison has given his own non-fiction account of his Starlost experience in a lengthy essay titled "Somehow, I Don't Think We're in Kansas, Toto".

Ellison was paid a bizarre homage by writer Mike Friedrich and artist Dick Dillin in the May 1971 issue of the comic book Justice League of America. In a hallucinatory story called "The Most Dangerous Dreams of All," the literary efforts of a flashy, insecure writer named Harlequin Ellis somehow become reality for the members of the JLA.

In the Ron Goulart novel Galaxy Jane, a birdman character by the name of Harlan Grzyb (author of I Have No Perch But I Must Sing and editor of Dangerous Birdcages) rages about the terrible things others have done to his script for the film Galaxy Jane.

In The Dark Knight Returns, Frank Miller featured Ellison by name as a television talking head. His only dialog is elliptical, prophesying a world where "[we'll] be eating our own babies for breakfast." Ellison and Miller are friends, the latter drawing the cover and writing the introduction for the stand-alone publication of Mefisto in Onyx.

In a somewhat less sympathetic vein, Ellison serves as a partial basis for a composite character in Sharyn McCrumb's Bimbos of the Death Sun. The novel is a satirical look at Science Fiction and Fantasy fandom and Conventions.

David Gerrold, in his 1980 Star Trek novel The Galactic Whirlpool, makes mention of "Ellison's Star," a particularly unpredictable and "angry" White Dwarf star.

In an episode of the animated television show Freakazoid! entitled "And Fanboy is His Name," Freakazoid offers Fanboy "his very own Harlan Ellison" (as a slow, slightly dischordant version of For He's A Jolly Good Fellow plays on the soundtrack) in an attempt to convince Fanboy to stop following him.

In the 1970s, students at the University of Michigan produced a narrated slide show called "The City on the Edge of Whatever," which was a spoof of "The City on the Edge of Forever." Occasionally screened at Star Trek conventions, it featured an irate writer named "Arlan Hellison" who screamed at his producers, "Art defilers! Script assassins!"

[edit] References

1. ^ Ellison, Harlan (July 23, 2002). Harlan Ellison's "I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream": A Study Guide from Gale's "Short Stories for Students". The Gale Group, 27. 
2. ^ Levy, Michael (November 2002). "Books in Review, "Of Stories and the Man."". Science Fiction Studies 29 (Part 3). Retrieved on 2007-01-04. 
3. ^ Ellison, Harlan. The 3 Most Important Things in Life (HTML). Retrieved on September 20, 2006.
4. ^ Snopes.com (HTML). Retrieved on September 20, 2006.
5. ^ Personal correspondence with anonymous convention organizer, August 18, 2000)
6. ^ (November 1993) "ConFrancisco Continued". Ansible 76. ISSN 0265-9816. 
7. ^ (December 1993) "Infinitely Improbable". Ansible 77. ISSN 0265-9816. 
8. ^ Priest, Christopher. THE LAST DEADLOSS VISIONS (TXT). Retrieved on March 11, 2006.
9. ^ Priest, Christopher. THE LAST DEADLOSS VISIONS (TXT). Retrieved on March 11, 2006.
10. ^ Cusack, Richard. BUGFUCK! (TXT). Retrieved on July 30, 2006.
11. ^ (December 1993) "The Ellison Appreciation Society". Ansible 77. ISSN 0265-9816. 
12. ^ Sanderson, Larry. Hugo Awards - Harlan and Connie - 2006 (HTM). Retrieved on September 3, 2006.
13. ^ http://harlanellison.com/heboard/archive/unca20060901.htm
14. ^ http://pnh.livejournal.com/25131.html
15. ^ Ellison, Harlan. Unca Harlan's Art Deco Dining Pavilion (HTM). Retrieved on September 20, 2006.
16. ^ The Insanity Offense (HTM). Retrieved on March 1, 2007.
17. ^ Harlan Ellison sues Fantagraphics (HTM). Retrieved on March 1, 2007.

[edit] See also

• List of horror fiction authors

[edit] External links

• Ellison Webderland Official website
• Harlan Ellison Islets of Langerhans
• The Ellison Bulletin Board Discussion forum
• Radio Interview on Comic Zone
• Darkhorse comics titles
• Harlan Ellison at the Internet Movie Database
• Harlan Ellison article at Memory Alpha, a Star Trek wiki.
• Urban Legends Reference Pages: Disney (Harlan Ellison)
• Harlan Ellison at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database
• Harlan Ellison @ Deep Shag Records

Preceded by Dennis O'Neil

Daredevil writer 1984 (with Arthur Byron Cover)

Succeeded by Dennis O'Neil

Persondata
NAME	Ellison, Harlan Jay
ALTERNATIVE NAMES	Bird, Cordwainer; Nosille, Nalrah
SHORT DESCRIPTION	American science fiction author, screenwriter, noted futurist
DATE OF BIRTH	May 27, 1934
PLACE OF BIRTH	Cleveland, Ohio
DATE OF DEATH
PLACE OF DEATH