Harlan Ellison dies at 84

[yewberry]

Source: CBR.com

Harlan Ellison, one of the most influential sci-fi writers of the twentieth century, passed away today in his sleep. He was 84 years old.

Christine Valada, the widow of the late Len Wein and a friend of Harlan and his wife Susan, officially announced the author’s passing on Twitter.

“Susan Ellison has asked me to announce the passing of writer Harlan Ellison, in his sleep, earlier today,” Valada wrote. “For a brief time I was here, and for a brief time, I mattered.”—HE, 1934-2018. Arrangements for a celebration of his life are pending.

“If there’s an afterlife, Harlan Ellison and @LenWein will have a hell of a time. Thanks for the laughter.”


Read more: https://www.cbr.com/harlan-ellison-dies-84/

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Rest in peace.

[First Speaker]

1. A great writer. He'll be missed.

[lagomorph777]

47. His tastes were a bit creepy for me, but I did like his Star Trek episode.

...and I know he was very influential.

[Coventina]

2. RIP sir!

K&R

[still_one]

3. He will be missed

[bluedigger]

4. One of the best.

[Solly Mack]

5. :(

[nocoincidences]

6. He was truly one of a kind.

A great man who lived his conscience.

He will be sorely missed.

[peekaloo]

7. RIP

Nooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!

I really loved his writings.

[Bernardo de La Paz]

8. A veritable giant has passed, and will be greatly missed. . . . nt

[exboyfil]

9. All my SF/comic heroes

of my youth are dying in a short time. I went through a real Ellison fan boy phase when I was in high school/college. Again Dangerous Visions was one of my first SF Book Club books. I remember my college research paper on The Deathbird.

Len Wein was one of the greats as well.

[MurrayDelph]

45. I was talking about Len about two hours ago

His death broke the Internet (It took over Twitter) and NPR (It was the closing story of most hours).

His funeral broke Forest Lawn (there was not enough room for all of the cars).

His widow, Christine, told the story of how, when he realized that he wasn't going to survive this illness (he'd been deathly ill, and others expected him to not pull through many, many times), he told her that he wanted a Jewish funeral (despite not being observant). When she asked where he wanted to be buried, he answered "In the dirt ."

[byronius]

10. That man significantly altered my existence.

Which explains my sig line.

RIP, Harlan. You were a goddamned Giant.

[Hekate]

11. There were giants in those days. RIP.

[certainot]

12. bummer. RIP. i have a glass teat autographed by him

ellison came to a comic store to sign books a while back and i brought an old tube TV ("the glass teat" - great scathing criticism of TV then) and a hammer and asked him to whack it.

he thought it was a good idea but the hammer just bounced of, leaving it chipped.

we figured it was getting dangerous so he quit there and autographed it.

[Aristus]

13. I'm shattered.

What an extraordinary man and writer.

I met him at a fantasy literature convention in Bellevue, Washington in 2006. I also had the astounding privilege of having dinner with him and his wife, Susan.

It's a story I hope to be telling my great-grandchildren someday. One of the highlights of my life.

He was a staunch leftie politically. He was active in the civil rights movement, and wrote more on the struggle for human rights than almost any other modern writer.

He had been in poor health for nearly twenty years, so it shouldn't be a surprise. But I'm wondering if seeing Trump as President had something to do with it. Trump embodies everything that Ellison spent his eventful lifetime opposing: crassness, mediocrity, selfishness, cruelty, unearned acclaim, pettiness, venality, etc.

I wish he had lived long enough to see Trump do the perp walk.

[Dave Starsky]

14. He was one of my greatest writing heroes.

He was an asshole, but I think he meant well.

[LudwigPastorius]

24. He was certainly one of the most litigious authors of all time.

I loved his writing, but I wouldn't have wanted to live next to him.

[Aristus]

42. He was only an asshole to people who deserved it.

I met him in real life. There's no doubt that he was cranky, and didn't suffer fools gladly. Which is just a polite way of saying he didn't suffer fools at all.

But to his gathered fans, he was funny, charming, and an incandescent speaker.

I was lucky enough to have dinner with him, and he was a wonderful dining companion, and very charming to the waiter.

[bluescribbler]

15. One of my favorite writers. RIP

I met him a few years ago at a talk in Boston. He, rightly, didn't like being called a science fiction writer, because SF was not the only genre in which he wrote. His mastery of the language was phenomenal. We will not see his like again.

[nolabear]

16. PAY THE WRITER!

Love you, you old curmudgeon. You changed my life. I will certainly raise a glass to you tonight.

[sarge43]

17. I know one thing; he's not going to hell

He'd scare the crap out of the devil.

Peaceful passage, sir. You did mattered. You do matter.

[Dave Starsky]

38. Maybe he's going down there to help us out.

Because he will shame the devil into nothing.

[sarge43]

39. If anyone could, he'd be the one.

He seemed to be fearless.

[cannabis_flower]

18. Great writer but

a snide, rude creepy little man.

[hunter]

21. He might not disagree...

[More_Cowbell]

23. Yeah I met him at a bookstore signing in the 80s

You are not wrong.

[cannabis_flower]

29. Met him at a science fiction convention

I had never met him and he walked into the room and right away started insulting me for no reason at all.

[SansACause]

35. I met him once; he hit on my wife.

But he was honestly the greatest writer/artist influence in my life. Sometimes genius comes with baggage.

[bitterross]

41. Not really surprised he hit on your wife.

I don't think you write like he did without living a lot and making mistakes and pushing the boundaries.

[Codeine]

19. One of the greatest English-language essayists

of the 20th century. Too often he was ghettoized as a science fiction (or worse, “sci-fi”, as in this article) writer, when in point of fact he was so much more versatile and literary. Easily my favorite writer, bar none.

[47of74]

20. RIP Harlan Ellison

[calimary]

22. Rest In Peace, Harlan Ellison.

He was involved in two of my favorite sci-if entities: Star Trek and Babylon 5. He was a conceptual consultant on Bab and wrote the wistfully beautiful “City I the Edge of Forever” episode of the original Star Trek series. We called it the “Edith Keeler one”, that featured a fetching young Joan Collins as Kirk’s girl-du-jour.

I saw him on a picket line during one of the writers’ strikes, back while I was still working.

[AllyCat]

25. I have no mouth and I must scream

First story I ever read of his. Safe passage to you sir.

[SonofDonald]

26. "A boy and his dog"

I read it in a years best anthology at a time I had never read anything like it.

Eye opener it was, he was one of the best.

[OilemFirchen]

27. I met Ellison at Dayton's Living Arts Center in 1970.

His remarkable experience there is chronicled in "The Glass Teat".

Click here and do a search for "2 JANUARY 70".

He was a great man, a great writer, and a fucking riot. RIP, Harlan.

[lunatica]

28. A boy and his dog

The title doesn’t give a clue about what the story really tells. It certainly made an impression on me.

[Dave Starsky]

30. All of his stories are that way.

You only get to the meaning of the story after you've read it. Then you might get the relationship to the title.

[marble falls]

32. And the movie was actually pretty good, too.

[marble falls]

31. I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream

[lapfog_1]

33. for decades I've heard about the bar bet between Robert Heinlein and L. Ron Hubbard

and Harlan was the witness and the "holder of the money".

Supposedly the bar bet was "Could you really create a fake religion?" as Heinlein had written a short story (the Sixth Column) postulating a "fake religion" as the potential resistance to a foreign power taking over America.

According to the story, as related by Harlan, Heinlein took the position that this is actually impossible... whereas L. Ron said "sure, there are enough stupid people here to do it".

And Scientology is the result.

I heard the story about this decades ago... and have often wondered if it was true.

[SansACause]

34. He was such an influence on me.

I was a kid living in the South in the 1970s and reading everything he wrote. I even learned a few words in Yiddish. I'm grieving in a way that most people will never understand.

[scarletwoman]

36. Harlan Ellison certainly mattered.

An amazing writer. He will be missed.

[BumRushDaShow]

37. I have been trying to get in this thread to say BIG R.I.P.

I forgot he was still around. So many great sci fi writers are leaving us. Of course he was the writer of the famous Trek episode (not really my favorite but the favorite of many - "City on the Edge of Forever" with Joan Collins).

His works will always be with us. Condolences to his family and R.I.P. in the stars.

[bitterross]

40. So sad. I love his work. The Deathbird is one of the greatest stories.

That story was a real eye-opener when I was a teen reading it. Certainly helped me to start questioning everything that was accepted as "truth" just because everyone seemed to believe it.

[ChazInAz]

43. Ave atque vale.

I first met the man at Worldcon '69 in St. Louis, after reading his work for years. We actually hit it off fairly well, he introduced me to Robert Silverberg and Fritz Leiber.The three of them became tremendous influences on me both as a human being and as an artist. I attended one of the early science-fiction writer's workshops, cementing my friendship with Fritz and making me a virtual acolyte of Silverbob, who was one of the nicest men who ever pounded typewriter keys. Can't say that Harlan and I were ever friends, but I admired the hell out of him. My career as a writer was short and when I ran dry of things to say, I followed Harlan's advice to all writers in the position and stopped writing.
He was one of the most insanely brave persons I have ever known. He was exasperating and exhausting, and I treasure the memories of every minute I was in his presence.
His Jiminny Cricket and Mickey Mouse impersonations had to be heard to be believed!

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

44. He was at best a jerk. He pissed off many, many people.

He held stories that had been submitted to him for Dangerous Visions 3 for DECADES. He famously groped Connie Willis at an awards ceremony. While I am friends with Connie, and at a recent s-f event the topic of men being jerks came up, and while she didn't name him by name, I'm pretty certain she was referring to him.

I've read a fair amount of his work. Personally, I think he's been overrated, but that's just my opinion.

More to the point, he's been controversial and out there. I suppose his writing should stand on its own (and I personally have been underwhelmed by his supposedly best work) but in my opinion, you cannot divorce his writing from his behavior.

[MicaelS]

46. I wish I had written this.

He was such a nasty person, I did not read much of his work, compared to other writers.

I remember him carrying a baseball bat at some event he attended.

Now, having said that he did write some good television. And he had some pretty funny anecdotes, when he appeared on the old Tomorrow show on NBC with Tom Snyder.

[hunter]

48. My wife and I both had encounters with Ellison before we met.

Mine were largely positive, hers were not.

I reluctantly broached the subject of Ellison's death with my wife over the morning newspaper and she said he was a brilliant mind.

"A dark and creepy mind..."

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

49. Here's something else related to him.

Several years ago I attended the Taos Toolbox, a two week long writing workshop taught by Walter Jon Williams, and Nancy Kress, both well published and well respected writers in the field. Aside from critiquing our stories, giving us lots of information about how to write and how to manage our careers, Walter one day said that to have a successful writing career you need three things: be a good writer, be a reasonably fast writer, get along with others especially editors. Any two of those three and you'll do just fine. Somewhere in that conversation he mentioned that Harlan Ellison had none of those three traits, which was why he wasn't being published any more.

I never met him myself, in part because by the time I entered the field and started being published and attending cons, he'd disappeared from the scene. But he was still talked about somewhat.