Well... I liked milkshake duck, too, for those precious few seconds before I found out.
As a kid, I never really knew much of anything about the people who produced what I consumed for entertainment, and didn't really care. TBH, the stuff he made after Ren and Stimpy is not as good, probably because there weren't as many people telling him what not to do, or a dearth of people powerful enough to make those recommendations stick.
Monsters can make nice things. You just can't sacrifice the people of the village to them. When the artist is incapable of working well with others, they are limited in the art they can produce. They can write books, and mail the manuscript to their editors. They can make animated shorts and publish on the web. They can't make feature films or television series. They can't be the "face" for the publicity campaign. There's too much human interaction, and not enough corporate lawyers to hold their leash and give it the occasional tug. And you can't put them in charge of the project.
If life was fair, the traits that would make Harlan Ellison a "social outcast" would be more socially acceptable than the polite phoniness that is the norm...
I met him once, when I was a student at RPI, around 1980 (I don't remember exactly which year he visited). He was full of fire and anger, and told great stories. I only wish I had been smart enough then to seize some of his passion and irreverence and make it my own.
One of the truly greats. Perhaps my favorite short-story writer along with James Tiptree, Jr. Here are three stories you need to read right now if you haven't: 1. "Repent Harlequin," said the Ticktockman., 2. Jeffty is Five, and 3. I have no mouth and I must scream, which contains one of the most memorable similes that still sticks in my mind: "the sliding cold horror of a razor blade slicing my eyeball." I'm doing this from memory but I think it's pretty close. And Isaac Asimov, who couldn't have been a more different writer from Ellison, really seemed (from his writings) to love the guy.
Although it's classified as French, I think of it as a Spanish movie because of who made it: a 1929 silent surrealist short film by Spanish director Luis Buñuel and artist Salvador Dalí.
It's worth pointing out that "James Tiptree, Jr." was the pseudonym of Alice Sheldon, who adopted a masculine pen name in order to get her work past editors who wouldn't otherwise have accepted/published submissions from a female author.
Jeffty is Five was my first exposure to Ellison and I still remember the feeling of mundane horror I got. Such a great story. My other favorite was Eidolons.
My second earliest memory of Ellison was Bruce Willis playing the main character in Shatterday when Twilight Zone got revived!
I remember reading Asimov talking about his early relationship with Ellison. Ellison was the super smart way too young guy always showing up at the sci-fi conventions, hanging out with the grown ups, who everyone knew was gonna make it some day. (That's my recollection from many years back—pretty sure the gist is accurate though.)
He said, "Are you Isaac Asimov?" And in his voice was awe and wonder and amazement.
I was rather pleased, but I struggled hard to retain a modest demeanor. "Yes, I am," I said.
"You're not kidding? You're really Isaac Asimov?" The words have not yet been invented that would describe the ardor and reverence with which his tongue caressed the syllables of my name.
"Well, I think you're—" he began, still in the same tone of voice, and for a split second he paused, while I listened and the audience held its breath. "—a nothing!"
Having recently read that piece on the group that solved an unsolved who an unknown suicide was, I'm curious if anyone ever found a record of his second bit. Quick search didn't find anything. Not that I think he's lying, just curious.
I was told about Ellison back in college, maybe 2001/2002, by a woman who worked the desk in the office I worked in. I think she lent me Dangerous Visions and then I slowly picked up most of his books.
As of late I was disappointed that he didn't do much in the way of new stuff, instead releasing compilations of his older works.
I so loved that essay. I think it was in Stalking the Nightmare? My favorite was the story with the girl going nuts because he was standing on her mother's white carpet.
"Grail" is probably my favorite story from that collection.
My favorite Harlan Ellison cameo, from Gay Talese's famous "Frank Sinatra Has a Cold" (someone alludes to it in TFA's comments):
Frank Sinatra, leaning against the stool, sniffling a bit from his cold, could not take his eyes off the Game Warden boots. Once, after gazing at them for a few moments, he turned away; but now he was focused on them again. The owner of the boots, who was just standing in them watching the pool game, was named Harlan Ellison, a writer who had just completed work on a screenplay, The Oscar.
Finally Sinatra could not contain himself.
"Hey," he yelled in his slightly harsh voice that still had a soft, sharp edge. "Those Italian boots?"
"No," Ellison said.
"Spanish?"
"No."
"Are they English boots?"
"Look, I donno, man," Ellison shot back, frowning at Sinatra, then turning away again.
Yes, and the fragment makes no more sense in context. The full story is, I read, notable for style, in some way that fails to be very current; I'm sure that it was a big change from Cronkite. However, it meanders more slowly than a lazy river, and seems to have been padded by anecdote to disguise the author's failure to actually interview Sinatra. But, I could be mistaken, so I may as well ask about why other people consider this significant.
I very much appreciate your response, and I'm sure I hope my reasons for asking a question may meet with your approval.
>Yes, and the fragment makes no more sense in context.
What sense should it make? It's not some part of the plot in an epic saga, it's a random casual exchange between two patrons at a bar. The idea wasn't to mean something, but just to convey a part of Sinatra's personality -- which it does well.
>The full story is, I read, notable for style, in some way that fails to be very current; I'm sure that it was a big change from Cronkite.
The subject matter and wording might not be "current", 50 years on, but this work (and others, e.g. Tom Wolfe, and the like) is part of the basis of modern long form writing, and has many traits that modern journalists use.
Besides, if one is interested in learning about Sinatra, the person, and how thing were with his entourage, this story remains gold.
When I was a teenager, a long time ago, when there was one phone per floor and it was on a long ass cord so you could take it into any bedroom in the house... I got a call from Harlan Ellison. At 2am. I was a awake, but everyone else in the house was asleep. Including the person he wanted to talk with. Martin H. Greenberg and family were staying at my parent's house, because Martin was going to some SciFi convention in Lake Tahoe. I guess Harlan wanted to talk about that. I mentioned that it was 2am and everyone was asleep, but he said "wake him up." I did!
Same trip, I got to drive Martin to Robert Silverberg's house (in Oakland). I took a bunch of my Silverberg books and he signed them. Got to shake his hand, be intimidated by his very large dogs, and longly look at his very young and beautiful girlfriend. She was probably a few years older than me. He had to be 50+ then, I'd guess.
I remember watching at least some of it when it first aired. I was 8 at the time. I've subsequently seen some of it on DVD. The effects were impressive for TV at the time, but are incredibly dated-looking now, but the premise was great.
Harlan Ellison has been hugely influential on fantasy writers including but not limited to J.K. Rowling and Neil Gaiman.
According to Neil, he mostly decided to become a fiction writer after reading one of Harlan's collections of short stories.
Rowling's Death Eaters seems to me to be a direct lift from Ellison's Flop Sweat but as they say, it's the highest form of flattery
Excerpt: Figures in long black garments, with drawn cowls that covered their faces. And strange, sickly purple light, the faintest, most terrible glow, shining out from beneath the cowls. They stared in at her. She could see no eyes: but they were staring in at her.
Dementors, not death eaters. I've been reading through these books again and wondering how the heck J.K. came up with all this stuff and that makes a lot of sense.
Does this mean The Last Dangerous Visions will finally be released? Harlan sat on this since the 70s, holding rights to all the stories to be included but never actually publishing it.
This Variety piece doesn't do him justice in the least. For instance, the paragraph about his marriages is snarky and I suspect that the writer was unaware that, per Wikipedia, his final marriage ran ~32 years until death did them part. I expect that more knowledgeable pieces will be forthcoming.
Harlan Ellison was one of a kind, and although I never had any contact with him[1] I really feel this loss. Even though his works are still with us (I have a bunch of his books, and so many of the stories are etched into my brain), he won't be challenging us the way he did.
[1] Unless you count the time when in a crowded corridor I heard someone behind me saying "Wheelchair. Wheelchair." and moved out of the way – and it turned out to be Ellison walking with a young woman who was horribly embarrassed.
I saw him give a talk once. He told outrageous lies about himself. Half the audience believed him, and the other half really wanted to. He looked like he was enjoying himself.
I considered him such a great writer that I went around telling people that I'd be willing to read anything he wrote, even his laundry list. Which led to the idea of asking to buy his laundry list and creating a website called "Harlan Ellison's Laundry List". I suspect it would have been magnificent. Sadly I never got around to it - too late now. Probably would not have worked anyway as he was said to be notoriously anti-computer in his life.
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