Harlan Ellison, one of the 20th century’s most influential science and speculative fiction writers, has sadly died at the age of 84.
“Susan Ellison has asked me to announce the passing of writer Harlan Ellison, in his sleep, earlier today,” Christine Valada, the widow of the late Len Wein and a friend of Harlan and his wife, wrote on Twitter. “For a brief time I was here, and for a brief time, I mattered.”
Probably best known for writing the first screenplay of Star Trek’s City On The Edge Of Forever, Ellison wrote over 1,700 short stories, novellas, screenplays, comic book scripts, teleplays, essays and critiques. Ellison also edited other sci-fi writers in the anthologies Dangerous Visions (1967) and Again, Dangerous Visions (1972).
He won eight Hugo Awards, four Nebula Awards of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, five Bram Stoker Awards of the Horror Writers Association, two Edgar Awards of the Mystery Writers of America, and many more besides.
“I would like to be arrogant enough to think that the script was so good that even butchering it couldn’t hurt it,” Ellison was rumoured to say after the filmed version won of City On The Edge Of Forever won the Hugo Award for Best Dramatic Presentation at the 1968 World Science Fiction Convention. In his 1996 book, Harlan Ellison’s The City On The Edge Of Forever, the author said he was paid a “pittance” for his work, and made light of William Shatner’s line-counting of the dialog.
Stephen King proclaimed, in his book Danse Macabre, that Ellison’s short story collection Strange Wine was one of the best horror books published between 1950 and 1980. Ellison’s best known horror offering may be the short story I Have No Mouth And I Must Scream.
Harlan Jay Ellison was born May 27, 1934, in Cleveland, Ohio. He went to The Ohio State University for 18 months before being expelled for, by his own account, hitting a professor who made fun of his writing. Ellison was first published in the Cleveland News during 1949 and EC Comics. He moved to New York City in 1955 and published more than 100 short stories and articles in two years. After serving in the US Army from 1957 to 1959, Ellison moved to Chicago and became an editor for Rogue magazine.
Ellison moved to California in 1962, where he wrote the screenplay for The Oscar, starring Stephen Boyd and Elke Sommer, and TV shows like The Flying Nun, The Outer Limits, The Man From U.N.C.L.E., and The Alfred Hitchcock Hour. He participated in the civil rights marches led by Martin Luther King, Jr., from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama, and wrote ‘Repent, Harlequin!’ Said The Ticktockman, celebrating civil disobedience, in 1965.
Ellison’s Deathbird Stories contained 16 science fiction stories. Ellison’s short story “A Boy and His Dog” was made into the 1975 film starring Don Johnson. Ellison was creative consultant to the 1980s version of The Twilight Zone science fiction TV series and Babylon 5.
Last summer, Ellison published his biography A Lit Fuse: The Provocative Life Of Harlan Ellison, An Exploration – a capstone, as it turns out, to a truly extraordinary literary career.