In Memoriam: Harlan Ellison

In Memoriam: Harlan Ellison

Harlan Ellison was the greatest writer I ever read.

I’m not sure if that is literally true.  I’ve read some great writers; Shakespeare, Twain, and Hemingway to name a few.  But Ellison was the only one who, after I read his work, made me say to myself, “If that’s writing, then I can’t write.”

Ellison died today at age 84.  He reportedly went peaceably, so it was possibly the first time he did anything that way.  He was notoriously combative, litigious, and confrontational.  He wrote what is arguably the best Star Trek episode of all time, City on the Edge of Forever, and then bickered with show creator Gene Roddenberry for decades.  The broadcast version of the show won a Hugo award (one of nine for Ellison); the original script won Ellison a Writer’s Guild award.  So, let’s call it a tie.

Harlan Ellison would be better known except for two things: he worked primarily in genre (science fiction, horror and mystery), and he worked primarily in short fiction, rarely going over novella length.  His short story The Whimper of Whipped Dogs, a fictionalization of the famous Kitty Genovese murder case which won the Edgar Award for best short story, is a classic.  His science fiction novella called A Boy and His Dog was turned into a moderately successful movie starring a young Don Johnson.  But most of his work was so invested in his singular imagination that it was utterly unfilmable, and most of his work is not familiar to mass audiences.

Take, for example, The Deathbird, a Hugo-award winning short story that interweaves segments about a dying planet, a son being asked to euthanize his mother, an essay about Ellison's dog dying, and a written exam being given for purposes that are not clear.  There is no clear plot line, few characters, and a narrative that shifts gears about a dozen times in 29 pages, but together it conveys something profound about death, dealing with death, what it means to go on, and also to not continue.

Much of his stuff was dark, but he had a sharp sense of humor.  His three-part essay “The three most important things in life: sex, violence and labor relations” is probably the funniest thing I’ve ever read.  Part one describes a date he had with a young woman when he was a struggling writer in Hollywood that went terribly wrong; part two is about a close encounter with death in a Times Square movie theater balcony; and part three is about his infamous tenure as a contract writer for Disney that lasted almost one entire day (Roy Disney overheard him telling other writers that he had an idea for a porno movie featuring Mickey Mouse and Tinkerbell and did not appreciate it).

He wrote a lot of cerebral stuff, but he also wrote for television (the ironic juxtaposition would not be lost on him).  He wrote two episodes for Outer Limits, called Soldier and Demon with a Glass Hand, that are not only classics, but also allowed him to successfully sue James Cameron for plagiarism when The Terminator came out (frankly, I don’t see any similarities other than time travel and robots, but whatever).  He wrote for several TV series in the 1960, most notably the aforementioned Star Trek episode whose lore is almost as famous as the episode itself.

The plot, for the unfamiliar, sends Kirk and Spock back in time to repair damage to the timeline that wiped out existence as they knew it.  They arrive in 1930’s New York and meet a social worker named Edith Keeler, played by Joan Collins.  Kirk falls in love with her (because, well, she’s Joan Collins) but then must make a choice when she appears to be the item in the timeline that caused the change.

Ellison’s script was a spec script, with no regular characters named because they hadn’t been created when Roddenberry asked for the script.  In Ellison’s version, the Chief Engineer of the Enterprise was responsible for distributing an illegal narcotic that precipitated the events leading to the change in the timeline.  Network standards wouldn’t accept a script with illegal drug use, and it was changed to an accidental overdose of a prescribed drug.  Ellison complained, loudly, about this and other changes; when Star Trek conventions became a thing, Roddenberry loved to tell audiences that Ellison’s version had “Scotty dealing drugs.”  Ellison again complained loudly, and Roddenberry promised never to say that again, a promise he broke at the next Star Trek convention.  It was too good of a line.

Ellison didn’t write much for TV after the 1960’s, but he was a consultant on the Twilight Zone revival in the 1980’s (Bruce Willis was in an effective dramatization of Ellison’s short story “Shatterday”) and Babylon 5 in the 1990’s.  He created a series called The Starlost but became so enraged at the producers that he demanded that his name not be put on the series, which was attributed to his pen name, Cordwainer Bird. 

An entertaining documentary was made about him in 2008 called “Dreams with Sharp Teeth.”  He also edited the groundbreaking anthologies Dangerous Visions and Again Dangerous Visions that pushed the boundaries of what themes science fiction could tackle, from sexuality to drug use to violence.  He also won numerous awards for a short story titled "Adrift Just Off the Islets of Langerhans: Latitude 38° 54' N, Longitude 77° 00' 13" W," which may be the longest short story title I’ve seen.

A lot of what he wrote, especially his essays, displayed a seemingly inexhaustible supply of anger.  That's okay.  To spew vitriol indiscriminately requires almost no talent; to vent one's spleen with humor, intelligence and style is genius.  Jon Stewart on The Daily Show could do it; critic Robert Hughes was a master; Harlan Ellison was the Grand High Lord of the Realm.  

Ellison won 9 Hugo awards, 4 Nebulas (including being the only writer to win three times in the short story category), two Edgar Awards for mystery short stories, four Writers Guild Awards for TV scripts, and a bunch of other awards. 

So long to Harlan Ellison.  I wish him an afterlife more pleasant that most of those he imagined in his stories.