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Science Fiction Writer Harlan Ellison Dies At 84 (variety.com) 118

Posted by BeauHD from the rest-in-peace dept.
Slashdot readers chill and mrflash818 have shared the news of Harlan Ellison's passing. Variety reports: Speculative-fiction writer Harlan Ellison, who penned short stories, novellas and criticism, contributed to TV series including "The Outer Limits," "Star Trek" and "Babylon 5" and won a notable copyright infringement suit against ABC and Paramount and a settlement in a similar suit over "The Terminator," has died. He was 84. Christine Valada tweeted that Ellison's wife, Susan, had asked her to announce that he died in his sleep Thursday.
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Science Fiction Writer Harlan Ellison Dies At 84 More

Science Fiction Writer Harlan Ellison Dies At 84

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  • Lucky guy (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Kokuyo ( 549451 ) on Friday June 29, 2018 @03:42AM (#56864074) Journal

    Dying at 84 in your sleep seems like an absolute win in my book. Now one can only hope that his life was a happy one.

    • Re:Lucky guy (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Wizardess ( 888790 ) on Friday June 29, 2018 @03:51AM (#56864094)

      Pray tell how well did you know him or know of him? He woke up angry and went to bed angry, or so his reputation goes. He suffered fools less gracefully than the Ubuntu mailing lists. But, for friends he was always there. And his friends were there for him. He's probably somewhere akin to Heaven giving them Hell and having a grand old time doing so.

      A toast to a grand master!
      {^_^}

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Kokuyo ( 549451 )

        I fail to see where I implied knowing him at all.
        In fact I didn't. I am not aware of ever having heard of him or consumed any of his work. From the article I assume that I would have, but again, no awareness of WHAT was his contribution at all.

      • Re: Lucky guy (Score:1)

        by Anonymous Coward

        A friend of mine worked for him in the 80s and what is sus above matches with what she would tell me. I enjoyed his fiction, but not sure I would enjoy his reality.

        Look up his spat about Danny Kaye in Paladin of the lost hour.

      • I'm kind of disappointed he didn't stroke out screaming at somebody that deserved it.

    • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Not really:

      In 1994, he suffered a heart attack and was hospitalized for quadruple coronary artery bypass surgery.[102] From 2010 ("the worst, the lowest point in [his] life"), he received treatment for clinical depression.[103] On about October 10, 2014, Ellison suffered a stroke.[104][105] Although his speech and cognition were unimpaired, he suffered paralysis on his right side, for which he was expected to spend several weeks in physical therapy before being released from the hospital.[106][107]

      Seems to

      • Re:Lucky guy (Score:5, Interesting)

        by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 29, 2018 @07:48AM (#56864702)

        Not really:

        In 1994, he suffered a heart attack and was hospitalized for quadruple coronary artery bypass surgery.[102] From 2010 ("the worst, the lowest point in [his] life"), he received treatment for clinical depression.[103] On about October 10, 2014, Ellison suffered a stroke.[104][105] Although his speech and cognition were unimpaired, he suffered paralysis on his right side, for which he was expected to spend several weeks in physical therapy before being released from the hospital.[106][107]

        Seems to me that he suffered all the ravages of the standard western diet already 2 decades before. I can't imagine how much better his life would have been without all that bullshit.

        Stories about Harlan Ellison shrink in the retelling. My story is no exception.

        I was at ICON 1997, in the autograph line for Harlan Ellison. Someone well ahead of me apparently asked Ellison about his stroke and bypass surgery. Ellison showed the surgery scar -- the one on his thigh from which they took a vein. Yes, Ellison dropped his pants in front of a crowd. No, he showed not the slightest hint of giving a fsck().

        So I think he lived his life just the way he wanted to: Making just about everybody uncomfortable, disturbed, and/or freaked out.

        • So I think he lived his life just the way he wanted to: Making just about everybody uncomfortable, disturbed, and/or freaked out.

          Way too true.

          Was at Dragon*Con one year when he first started coming. I'm not sure if they didn't have an autograph table ready for him, or if he was more popular and ran out of time in the table they HAD set up.

          His solution was to take a table and chair and go sit in the lower lobby and just form a line and do it there.

          It was funny watching the staff being torn between "he can't

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Dying at 84 in your sleep seems like an absolute win in my book.

      Yes, but not so good for his passengers...

    • Dying at 84 in your sleep seems like an absolute win in my book. Now one can only hope that his life was a happy one.

      Maybe. Then again, here's one of my favorite jokes, which I read somewhere more than a decade ago:
      "I hope I die in my sleep like my grandfather, not screaming like the passengers in his car."

  • Respect (Score:4, Insightful)

    by oldgraybeard ( 2939809 ) on Friday June 29, 2018 @03:50AM (#56864090)
    RIP

  • Childhood Memories (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Zontar The Mindless ( 9002 ) <plasticfish@info.gmail@com> on Friday June 29, 2018 @04:31AM (#56864180) Homepage

    One of the first sci-fi books I ever read as a kid was his collection Paingod, And Other Delusions. This included the title story as well as "'Repent, Harlequin!' Said the Ticktockman". I also had the issue of IF magazine containing the first publication of "I Have No Mouth, And I Must Scream".

    And it would be a crime not to mention "The City On The Edge of Forever", which was quite possibly the very best Star Trek episode, ever.

    • I think the first real SF I ever viewed on the TV, which was severely limited in my youth as I was in an orphanage which forbade it, was the Outer Limits dual segments by Harlan titled, Demon With a Glass Hand, which was truly awesome and well worth watching today --- spoiled most future SF for me because it was at such a high level.

  • Last Dangerous Visions (Score:5, Interesting)

    by sheramil ( 921315 ) on Friday June 29, 2018 @05:27AM (#56864260)

    So, what happens to the legendary box with the stories? The one he'd been sitting on since 1973? The stories for the collection where a significant portion of the contributors had died of old age waiting for it to come out?

    I guess we'll never see it.

    • "Ellison was fiercely protective of his work and was not shy about going after those he believed had stolen or tampered with it. He instructed his fifth wife, Susan, to destroy all his notes and unfinished works after his death to avoid having them completed by some "literary grave-robber."

      When a publisher broke a contract by allowing a cigarette ad in one of Ellison's books, the writer mailed him dozens of bricks and, finally, a ripe, dead gopher."

      Source : https://phys.org/news/2018-06-harlan-ellison-scien

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by arth1 ( 260657 )

        "Ellison was fiercely protective of his work and was not shy about going after those he believed had stolen or tampered with it. He instructed his fifth wife, Susan, to destroy all his notes and unfinished works after his death to avoid having them completed by some "literary grave-robber."

        I believe that when I see it. In the US, people lose all control over their possessions when they die, and clauses and stipulations placed on them are generally void. As an heir, if she chooses to sell them and become a bit better off than otherwise, she can, no matter what she promised. And if others claim rights to inheritance, she cannot legally destroy assets at all unless a court awards them to her.

  • Harlan Williams is still alive.

  • Still relevant, in many ways.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by shanen ( 462549 )

      I would have posted about this book if Slashdot has been working properly about 10 hours ago. That was back when the story was fresh instead of now, when it's about to expire.

      It was pretty amazing that Ellison predicted Reagan's TV skills would eventually put him in the White House. Reagan was the first of the FAKE presidents, but at least he had some professional skills as an actor.

  • Ellison was a curmudgeon and often acted like a class 1 ass and a jerk. I loved everything he wrote. Rest in peace.

  • My memory of him will be tainted by (Score:5, Informative)

    by mykepredko ( 40154 ) on Friday June 29, 2018 @08:11AM (#56864782) Homepage

    "Harlan Ellison's The City on the Edge of Forever: The Original Teleplay that Became the Classic Star Trek Episode" (https://www.amazon.com/HARLAN-ELLISONS-CITY-EDGE-FOREVER/dp/B001MT932O).

    If you liked Ellison's work, make sure you DON'T read this book.

    He was one angry dude when he wrote it and I don't believe it was justified. His anger is centred on Roddenberry's temerity in changing what was submitted AND his (irrational) belief that he should get a acknowledgement/royalty of all time-travelling stories (including "The Terminator"). Included in the book is the script he originally submitted and, I think to his chagrin, what ended up being broadcast was superior. If you find a copy of the book, definitely read the original script but skip over everything else, he comes across as unreasonably bitter and entitled.

    Ellison had quite an interesting life, produced some excellent science fiction and viciously attacked those he felt denigrated or didn't appreciate this genius - this book is a great example of the latter.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      With all due respect to Harlan, I think if you've read his original version, Roddenberry's edits vastly improved it. Harlan of course, never forgave him. Saying that he felt he should be given rights to all time travel stories ala The Terminator is something of a distortion though. While he did sue over the Terminator, if I recall his case was largely due to the fact that Tracy Torme(STTNG writer for 'Haven', 'The Big Goodbye' and others) was an assistant on the movie and had testified specifically that Cam

    • His anger is centred on Roddenberry's temerity in changing what was submitted AND his (irrational) belief that he should get a acknowledgement/royalty of all time-travelling stories (including "The Terminator").

      I'm sure if he could have gone back in time and sued H.G. Wells for "The Time Machine" that he would have. He was one pissed off cat.

    • Gene Roddenberry took a two-dimensional, pedestrian story and turned it into a masterpiece.

      Examples:

      Ordinary criminal antagonist -> Good main character transformed into paranoid lunatic
      Guardian(s) explain everything right away -> The crew and audience have to figure out the consequences of time travel for themselves
      Edith's gotta die -> Conflict and tension of not knowing must live/must die
      Enterprise and crew turned into pirates -> Mysterious nonexistence - "we're totally alone"
      Guardians ar

      • You're forgetting that Scotty (later claimed to be a random crewman) sold drugs in the Ellison version -> McCoy gets an accidental injection of cordrazine which makes him paranoid and unhinged.

    • viciously attacked those he felt denigrated or didn't appreciate this genius

      Yeah, he was a decent writer, had some good imaginative ideas, and was a grade-A asshole. He was a consummate statist, suing everybody he could under various copyright theories.

      His writings might have been much better if he could have internalized a future where people aren't so constrained by scarcity that they'd go around seeking vengeance.

      We're better off that society is moving on from this kind of thinking.

  • Harlan was kind of a dick. (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 29, 2018 @08:12AM (#56864792)

    A great writer, but not a great human being. He sued the creators of The Terminator for copyright infringement, claiming that they stole the idea from his Outer Limits episode The Terminator.

      I recently saw The Soldier, and it's absolutely not The Terminator. The only similarities are there's two soldiers that come back in time from the future, and continue the war here. All other details are completely different. One of them is NOT a robot, the come back accidentally, they don't want to change the future, there's no AI in the future ruling humanity, they don't even speak english, there's no female character they're trying to save/kill. Most of the plot isn't even the trying to kill each other, it's about trying to convert one of the soldiers into a non-soldier.

    But yeah, Harlan sued over it, and won an undisclosed amount of money out of court, and a mention in the credits.

    He's an interesting guy, not all good. There's a good documentary about him that at least used to be on Netflix:
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dreams_with_Sharp_Teeth

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by alexo ( 9335 )

      > Harlan was kind of a dick.

      I think you're confusing him with Philip Kindred.

  • The Star Lost (Score:3)

    by maxrate ( 886773 ) on Friday June 29, 2018 @08:19AM (#56864844)
    Look up the Star lost "Cordwainer Bird"
  • Another TV series he was involved with was "Scooby-Doo: Mystery Incorporated", in which he voiced himself. It's a pretty amusing series with quite a bit targeting adults rather than kids.

  • A family connection of sorts: all in the name (Score:3)

    by haaz ( 3346 ) on Friday June 29, 2018 @09:10AM (#56865158) Homepage
    So, my wife and are geeks. Well, I'm a geek; she's a nerd. When she was pregnant and we confirmed it was a boy, thus began the question of what to name him. We were both interested in something a little archaic, or possibly iconic. An online baby name generator suggested "Steele Rod." We weren't going to name him after Isaac Asmiov, as my wife thought Isaac Haas would be a tad too close to Isaac Hayes. Meanwhile, my daughter asked if we could name him Cudahy. (A real Milwaukee joke: "That way we know he'd be musical... he'd have a lot of bars.") One night, after ticking off a list of science fiction authors, I suggested Ellison. My wife remembered Lt. Col. Ellison Onizuka, the mission specialist who died on the Space Shuttle Challenger's last mission in 1986. A few days later, our science fiction baby was born with Spock ears and bearing the name of a curmudgeonly writer and an astronaut. I hope it's a fitting name for a bright, thoughtful, and as yet un-curmudgeonly boy.

  • 90% (Score:2)

    by jsepeta ( 412566 )

    "90% of all science fiction is shit. But 90% of everything is shit." - Harlan Ellison

  • My first taste (Score:3)

    by BenBoy ( 615230 ) on Friday June 29, 2018 @10:16AM (#56865560)
    My first taste of Harlan's work was an Outer Limits episode -- Demon with a Glass Hand [wikipedia.org]. I had no idea he'd written it (at that age, only a faint notion of authorship) ... no idea how it'd hold up now, but at the time it amazed me. He left behind an amazing body of work of his own, and he was a promoter of work not his own as well (Theodore Sturgeon, for example). I was sad to see he'd passed; glad it was peaceful.

  • He changed the science fiction universe (Score:4, Informative)

    by thomst ( 1640045 ) on Friday June 29, 2018 @10:41AM (#56865710) Homepage

    Harlan was such an incandescent talent. It's difficult to adequately communicate the impact he had on science fiction in the late 1960's and early 1970's. As a writer, he was a true enfante terrible, who made his mark with groundbreaking stories like I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream, but it was as an editor that he truly changed the genre.

    His breakthrough anthology Dangerous Visions was stuffed with original stories commissioned by him specifically for the volume from a phalanx of top-drawer authors. His charge to them was a simple one: don't just push the boundaries, go as far beyond them as you can. And they responded with alacrity, from Theodore Sturgeon's exploration of the social effects of mandatory incest If All Men Were Brothers, Would You Let One Marry Your Sister? to Philip Jose Farmer's hallucinatory conjuration of a future without jobs in Riders of the Purple Wage.

    It was a seismic event in SF. Today's fans have no idea what an impact it made on the field.

    The public Harlan was kind of a jerk. I witnessed him tear a teenage girl to tatters at a party at St. Louiscon for the unforgivable sin of asking him - very politely - for his autograph. She ran away in tears from the little man in the natty sports coat she so obviously idolized, while he seemed completely unaffected by the damage he'd inflicted on her.

    I despised him for years afterward - until I learned that he had given a destitute and mortally ill Ted Sturgeon a place to live out his final days, and paid for his medical care, as well.

    A great writer, a complex and often infuriating human being, and a man who left the world of science fiction a better and richer place for his having been a part of it. He will be missed ...

  • ...and the story "The Gang" which was autobiographical, not fictional. Ellison joined a juvenile street gang in the 1950's (think West Side Story) just to get background for writing about them. The initiation involved a knife-fight. Keep in mind Ellison was 5'2".

    He got a 7-inch height upgrade being played by a 24-year-old James Caan in the 1964 "Alfred Hitchcock Hour" teleplay he wrote himself. With the gang leader played by none other than Walter Koenig. Both men appeared in B5 over thirty years lat

  • At a Star Trek convention in my youth some 40 years ago, I wanted to sound as snarky as Mr. Snark himself. So I asked him, "Why do you hate everything?" to which he replied, without skipping a beat, "I don't hate everything. I just hate Star Trek fans."

    • We may have been at the same con.
      His nickname sounded vile, but truthfully, I can't think of a greater compliment
      Goodbye oh grand "inkstained scribbler"

  • While many SF works have affected me significantly (1984, Stranger in a Strange Land, Fahrenheit 451, etc), no single story has had the impact of Harlan's "Deathbird". It is a strange story that starts with the note that the chapters may be read in any order. While this may be generally true, the last chapter must be the last chapter and is really not true at all as the ordering of often almost unrelated vignettes is not random. It just seems that way. It is not a happy story as it tells about the end of th

  • In "Number of the Beast" Heinlein says of a character "It's never safe to get a little man too mad at you"
    I've wondered if that is in reference to the alleged torching of a Paramount minor executive over a rewrite of "City on the edge of forever"
    And I wonder if it even happened
    Even more, I wonder about that interaction between Ellison and Heinlein (and his double depth security system)

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