On June 28, 2018, Harlan Ellison passed away.
I feel little sorry for whatever entity has to deal with him now 🙂
He was one of the first writers (I won’t call him an SF writer, he didn’t like it 🙂 ) I had ever read.
To give some of you younger people some context. He was the writer for the script for the classic Trek (think Kirk) ep called, “The City on the Edge of Forever”. Considered one of the best Trek ep’s ever made.
He worked on consultant on the 80’s revival of The Twilight Zone, and had stories submitted for and was involved in a a magazine of the same title back then also. He was also a consultant on the SF TV series Babylon 5.
He wrote a story a long time ago called “Soldier” that was the basis for the movie “The Terminator” (the “I’ll be back” one)
He’s written a ton of stuff. Most of his books don’t get reprinted because they are mainly short stories and short story collections tend not to get re-printed unless they are from a very popular writer (Stephen King being the only one I can think of offhand).
He’s won pretty much every major writing award.
The very first story of his I read was “Along the Scenic Route”. I also read “Doomsman” and I don’t remember liking that very well. It turns out that novels weren’t really his forte. Short stories and TV screenplays were.
He was on the leading edge of what they were calling back then “new wave SF”. He edited a book of SF short stories called “Dangerous Visions”. That anybody is a real SF fan has probably heard of AND has a copy of.
He is one of few writers whose books I will pick up unseen. I would add Richard Matheson, the big 3 (SF, look it up) to that list.
One of my favourite quotes is from Harlan Ellison himself:
“You are not entitled to your opinion. You are entitled to your informed opinion. No one is entitled to be ignorant.”
So yeah, that elminates 95% of the people who post on Facebook. Hmm, I think I’ll also post this blog there.
vented spleen 
He also was the originator of one of the worst tv shows ever, Starlost. Ironically he won an award for the original script. The show concept was quite intriguing, but was extremely slow paced and boring from what I recall watching in decades ago. It was aired on Saturday afternoons on CTV which was likely the only reason I watched it. There was likely little else on at the time to choose from.
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Yeah, he was duped on Starlost. the concept itself was’t bad, but then the started with budget stuff, and you have what it is now. what you saw on screen wasn’t his fault… 🙂
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One more note on The Starlost. Given that I watched it decades ago and it was extremely boring it still had the drawing interest to be memorable. Obviously the concept was solid, the budget and subsequent retooling along with the dumbing down hurt what could have been an excellent series.
Unfortunately the American public prefer their tv dumbed down and with little original content. The longer a series runs the more vacuous a key character becomes.
I only learned that Ellison was the founder when I took the effort in the past few years to find that Canadian space show from many years ago.
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There is a Starlost channel on Canadian Roku boxes. I’ve added it but have yet to start watching it. Stars Keir Dullea (who as in 200: A Space Odyseey)
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