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Science Fiction Writer Harlan Ellison Dies At 84 (variety.com)
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.
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!
{^_^}
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.
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
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.
Not really:
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.
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