Harlan Ellison Sues For "Star Trek" Episode
Miracle Jones writes "The ever-quotable speculative fiction writer Harlan Ellison has launched a lawsuit against Paramount and the Writer's Guild West for rights to residuals surrounding his famous and award winning 'City on the Edge of Forever' episode for the original Star Trek series. Ellison, recently featured in the documentary 'Dreams with Sharp Teeth,' said that 'The Trek fans who know my City screenplay understand just exactly why I'm bare-fangs-of-Adamantium about this.' Regarding his lawsuit, he had this to say: 'The arrogance, the pompous dismissive imperial manner of those who "have more important things to worry about," who'll have their assistant get back to you, who don't actually read or create, who merely "take" meetings, and shuffle papers — much of which is paper money denied to those who actually did the manual labor of creating those dreams — they refuse even to notice... until you jam a Federal lawsuit in their eye. To hell with all that obfuscation and phony flag-waving: they got my money. Pay me and pay off all the other writers from whom you've made hundreds of thousands of millions of dollars... from OUR labors... just so you can float your fat asses in warm Bahamian waters.'"
Your copyright should have expired anyway...
Yes, but if the money has go somewhere, I would far rather see it go to the actual writers and actors, and the studios and suits.
Shut the fuck up. Harlan is a pioneer, and he stands head and shoulders with the founding fathers of the genre: Heinlein, Clarke, Asimov, to speak nothing of Verne et al before them. It's about time one of the living legends of speculative fiction made some noise about just how badly publishers and their lackeys screw authors.
Thank you and good night.
Not A Jew