RIP Harlan Ellison

[CitizenBBN]

the famed sci fi writer. A man of many moods, all of them bad. Pretty prolific like many of that generation of sci fi writers.

Those that don't know his work may recognize "A boy and his dog", which was made into a film with don Johnson. He also wrote the original for "City on the Edge of Forever", one of the best known and liked of the Star Trek TOS episodes.

But like everything with Ellison, there was a dispute. Roddenberry rewrote it and Ellison wasn't happy, but kept his name on it. MOstly Ellison, like many sci fi writers who submitted for TOS, were writing things too expensive to film on a TV show budget and too complex to fit in a single episode.

He also sued the Terminator owners b/c he claimed it was stolen from one of his works, "Soldier out of Time", that he then adapted to an Outer Limits episode. They settled, and if you look at the end of the movie there's an acknowledgement of him in the end, part of the deal.

But he sued just about everyone over the years, and was notably grumpy in his persona. He admitted it, famously saying "I go to bed angry, and I get up angrier every morning." A quote I've used a few times, so I'm lucky he never sued me too.

But a great writer, esp. of grizzly distopian stuff.

[bigsky]

I have “The Essential Edison” a huge paperback of start to mid-career. Selective readers of Sci-Fi get it