Harlan Ellison
 Harlan
Ellison (born May 27, 1934) is a prolific American writer of short stories,
novellas, essays, and criticism. His literary and television work has received
many awards. He wrote for the original series of The Outer Limits and Star Trek,
edited the multiple award-winning short story anthology series Dangerous Visions
and served as creative consultant to the science fiction TV series The New
Twilight Zone and Babylon 5.
Ellison's most famous stories were published within the science fiction genre,
and he has won multiple Hugo and Nebula awards. He was also very active in the
science fiction community (he was a founder of the Cleveland Science Fiction
Society and edited its fanzine as a teenager) and gives colorful and
confrontational talks at science fiction conventions. He served as the Science
Fiction Writers of America's first vice president, in the 1960s. He prefers not
to place his works in a genre, but will use the term "speculative fiction" to
describe his work.
Ellison's fantasy work, however, is usually better aligned with surrealism or
magical realism than space opera-type science fiction. There is also a strong
ethical current that runs through his work, half of which is nonfiction, which
includes social activism and criticism of the arts.
He is fiercely protective of his work and has sought (and won) legal action
against copyright infringements. He occasionally uses the pseudonym Cordwainer
Bird.
Harlan Ellison was born in Cleveland, Ohio. His Jewish-American family
subsequently moved to Painesville, Ohio, but returned to Cleveland in 1949
following the death of his father. Ellison frequently ran away from home, taking
odd jobs — including by the time he was eighteen, by his own account, "a tuna
fisherman off the coast of Galveston, itinerant crop-picker down in New Orleans,
hired gun for a wealthy neurotic, dynamite truck driver in North Carolina, short
order cook, cab driver, lithographer, book salesman, floorwalker in a department
store, door-to-door brush salesman, and spent ten years as an actor (off and on)
with the Cleveland Play House".
In 1957, Ellison decided to write about youth gangs. To research the issue, he
joined a street gang in the Red Hook, Brooklyn area, under the name "Cheech
Beldone". His subsequent writings on the subject include the novel Web of the
City/Rumble and the collection The Deadly Streets, and comprise part of his
memoir Memos from Purgatory.
Harlan Ellison was drafted into the army and served from 1957 to 1959.
Afterwards, living in Chicago, Ellison wrote for William Hamling's Rogue
magazine. As a book editor at Hamling's Regency Books, he published novels and
anthologies by such writers as B. Traven,
Kurt Vonnegut,
Robert Bloch and Philip
José Farmer.
Also, early in his career, in the late 1950s, Ellison wrote a number of soft
porn stories, such as "God Bless the Ugly Virgin" and "Tramp", later reprinted
in Los Angeles based girlie journals. This was the beginning of his use of
Cordwainer Bird as a pseudonym. This name was later used in July and August of
1957, in two journals each of which had accepted two of his stories. In each
journal, one story was published under the name Harlan Ellison, the other under Cordwainer Bird. Later, as discussed in the Controversy section below, he used
the pseudonym on material when he disagreed with its use or editing.
He moved to California in 1962, and subsequently began to sell scripts to such
television shows as Burke's Law, Route 66, The Outer Limits, Star Trek and
Cimarron Strip. His Memos from Purgatory was adapted into an episode of The
Alfred Hitchcock Hour. Ellison's scripts "Demon with a Glass Hand" (for The
Outer Limits) and "The City on the Edge of Forever" (for Star Trek) won Best
Original Teleplay awards from the Writers Guild of America; both are often cited
as one of the best of their respective series.
During the late 1960s, Harlan Ellison wrote a column about television for the
Los Angeles Free Press. Titled "The Glass Teat", the column addressed political
and social issues and their portrayal on television at the time. The columns
have been reprinted in two collections, The Glass Teat and The Other Glass Teat.
 He continued to publish short pieces, fiction and nonfiction, in various
publications, and some of his most famous stories were written in this period.
""Repent, Harlequin!" Said the Ticktockman" is a celebration of civil
disobedience against repressive authority. "I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream"
is an allegory of Hell, where five humans are tormented by an all-knowing
computer throughout eternity. "I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream" was the basis
of a 1995 computer game, with Ellison participating in the game's design and
providing the voice of the god-computer AM. "A Boy and his Dog" examines the
nature of friendship and love in a violent, post-apocalyptic world. It was made
into the film A Boy and His Dog in 1975 starring Don Johnson.
Harlan Ellison has won ten Hugo Awards, four Nebula Awards, and five Bram Stoker
Awards (presented by the Horror Writers Association) including the Lifetime
Achievement Award in 1996.
He has also been honored with the Edgar Award of the Mystery Writers of America
twice, the Georges Méliès fantasy film award twice, and the Silver Pen for
Journalism by International PEN, the international writers' union. He was
presented with the first Living Legend Award by the International Horror Guild
at the 1995 World Horror Convention. He is also the only author in Hollywood
ever to win the Writers' Guild of America Award for Most Outstanding Teleplay
(solo work) four times, most recently for "Paladin of the Lost Hour" in 1987.
In March 1998, the National Women's Committee of Brandeis University honored him
with their 1998 Words, Wit, Wisdom award. In 1990, Harlan Ellison was honored by
International PEN for continuing commitment to artistic freedom and the battle
against censorship.
The story for a rather famous and popular film can also be credited to Harlan
Ellison, though he had to go to court to get the credit. Some aspects of the
story for The Terminator were sufficiently similar to two episodes of the TV
series The Outer Limits — both written by Ellison — that Ellison sued James
Cameron. Ellison settled for several hundred thousand dollars, and the film's
end credits now include the simple statement: "Acknowledgement to the works of
Harlan Ellison." The episodes in question were called "Soldier" and "Demon with
a Glass Hand".
He also edited the influential science fiction anthology Dangerous Visions
(1967), which collected stories commissioned by Harlan Ellison, accompanied by his
commentary-laden biographical sketches of the authors. He challenged the authors
to write stories at the edge of the genre. Many of the stories went beyond the
traditional boundaries of science fiction pioneered by respected old school
editors such as John W. Campbell, Jr. As an editor, Ellison was influenced and
inspired by experimentation in the popular literature of the time, such as the
beats.
The screenplay for his projected television series The Starlost was also given a
Writers Guild Award, though the actual series was so altered by the producers
that Ellison had his name removed from the credits. Ellison was the first writer
to win this award three times.
Harlan Ellison served as creative consultant to the science fiction TV series The
Twilight Zone (1980s version) and Babylon 5. As a member of the Screen Actors
Guild (SAG), he has voiceover credits for shows including The Pirates of Dark
Water, Mother Goose and Grimm, Space Cases, Phantom 2040, and Babylon 5, as well
as making an onscreen appearance in the Babylon 5 episode "The Face of the
Enemy".
For two years beginning in 1986, Ellison took over as host of the radio program
Hour 25 on KPFK after the death of Mike Hodel, the show's founder and original
host. It has been reported that his inadvertent use of an expletive on air
caused his departure from the show.
Ellison's 1992 novelette "The Man Who Rowed Christopher Columbus Ashore" was
selected for inclusion in the 1993 edition of The Best American Short Stories.
Harlan Ellison was hired as a writer for Walt Disney Studios, but was fired on
his first day after being overheard by Roy O. Disney in the studio commissary
joking about making a pornographic animated film featuring Disney characters. He
recounted this incident in his book Stalking the Nightmare, as part 3 of an
essay titled "The 3 Most Important Things in Life".
He does all his writing on a manual Olympia typewriter, and has a substantial
distaste for personal computers and most of the internet.
Harlan Ellison has provided vocal narration to numerous Audiobooks, both of his
own writing and others. Ellison has helped narrate books by authors such as
Orson Scott Card, Arthur C. Clarke, and Terry Pratchett.
Ellison lives in Los Angeles, California with Susan, his fifth wife. In 1994 he
suffered a heart attack and was hospitalized for quadruple coronary artery
bypass surgery.
In 2006, Harlan Ellison received the title of SFWA Grand Master from the Science
Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America. The Board of Directors and past
Presidents of SFWA inducted Ellison as the newest Grand Master at the Nebula
Awards Weekend in May of that year.
Slected Bibliography
Series
- Doctor Who
- Doctor Who and the Genesis of the Daleks (1982)
with Terrance Dicks
- Edgeworks
- Edgeworks: The Glass Teat and The Other Glass Teat (1998)
- 1 Volume One: The Collected Ellison (1996)
- 2 Edgeworks 2 (1996)
- 3 Edgeworks 3 (1997)
- 4 Edgeworks 4 (1997)
- Sandman
- 4 The Sandman Vol. 4: Season of Mists (1994) with
Neil Gaiman and Kelley Jones and Mike Dringenberg
- Star Trek Universe
- Star Trek Fotonovel
- 1 The City on the Edge of Forever (1977)
Novels
- Web of the City (1958)
- The Man with Nine Lives (1959)
- The Sound of a Scythe (1960)
- Spider Kiss (1961)
- Doomsman (1967)
- Approaching Oblivion: Road Signs on the Treadmill Toward Tomorrow
(1985)
- Phoenix Without Ashes (1985) with
Edward
Bryant
- Night and the Enemy (1987) with Ken Steacy
- All the Lies That Are My Life (1989)
- Vic and Blood: The Continuing Adventures of a Boy and His Dog--A
Graphic Novel (1989) with Richard Corben
- The Ultimate Werewolf (1991)
- Mefisto in Onyx (1993)
- Mind Fields : The Art of Jacek Yerka, the Fiction of Harlan Ellison
(2006) with Jacek Yerka
- Run for the Stars (2006)
Return from Harlan Ellison to Bibliographies
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