Harlan was fifteen years older than me.\u00a0 He was part of a generation of writers who emerged in the late 50s and early 60s, a generation that included such giants as Robert Silverberg, Roger Zelazny, Algis Budrys, Ursula K. Le Guin, and Samuel R. Delany. \u00a0 They were the New Wave generation, and they remade the genre in their own image, none more so than Harlan, whose anthology Dangerous<\/em> Visions <\/em><\/strong>and its sequel Again, Dangerous Visions <\/em><\/strong>not only outraged and delighted tens of thousands of readers, but had an enormous influence on the writers of the generation that followed, my own generation.\u00a0 Those books blew the doors off the hinges in ways that might seem incomprehensible to those who did not live through those times; they opened doors to worlds and worlds of possibilities, to lands of the imagination that John W. Campbell and H.L Gold never dreamt of, and I rushed on through, together with most of my contemporaries.\u00a0\u00a0 Writers of the Golden Age wanted to impress JWC; writers of my youth wanted to impress Harlan.\u00a0\u00a0 He was a hero to us.<\/p>\n The first time I met Harlan in person was at 1972 Lunacon at the old Commodore Hotel above Grand Central Station.\u00a0\u00a0 He read “The Whimper of Whipped Dogs,” a powerful story made even more powerful by his reading (no one read better than Harlan, ever),\u00a0 and gutted the entire audience. \u00a0 A few hours later, he moderated the New Writers Panel.\u00a0\u00a0 The new writers in question included Gardner Dozois, Jack Dann, a couple of Haldemans (I think), and Geo. Alec Effinger.\u00a0\u00a0 Harlan did the panel as if it were the old tv show Queen for a Day<\/em><\/strong>, and had the whole ballroom howling with laughter.\u00a0 I’ve seen half a dozen panels as funny as that one in the half century since, but never one that was funnier.\u00a0\u00a0 Laughter and tears; he could evoke them both.<\/p>\n I was a new writer myself in ’72, with maybe four or five sales under my belt, but nowhere near the stature to be invited to be on any panels.\u00a0\u00a0 (I would have to wait another three years for that.\u00a0 I actually won my first Hugo before being asked to be on my first panel.\u00a0 In those days, you were expected to pay your dues before they put you on stage).\u00a0 Nonetheless, I screwed up my courage enough to approach Harlan in the hall and introduce myself.\u00a0 To my surprise, he knew who I was; he’d seen the handful of stories I had published by that point.\u00a0\u00a0 But when I asked him if I could submit a story to him for The Last Dangerous Visions<\/em><\/strong>, he shot me down quickly and firmly.\u00a0 The book was done, he said, and would be out that Christmas.\u00a0\u00a0 (Years later, Harlan did write me and ask me to send him something.\u00a0 I sent him an early draft of my story “Meathouse Man,” the darkest and most dangerous story I had in me at the time.\u00a0 He rejected it almost by return mail, with a scathing letter that ripped it to shreds.\u00a0\u00a0 He was completely right about everything he said.\u00a0\u00a0 So I gnashed my teeth, muttered curses under my breath, and rewrote the story from beginning to end, making it four times as long and a hundred times as good.\u00a0\u00a0 When I sent it back to him… he rejected it again.\u00a0\u00a0 He was not<\/em> easy to please.\u00a0\u00a0 Eventually I sold the story to Orbit… <\/em><\/strong>but though Damon Knight published it, it was Harlan who edited it, and helped me make it what it is, for good or ill).<\/p>\n GRRM & HE at WFC 1983<\/p><\/div>\n Of course, I ran into Harlan many times in the decades that followed, at cons and awards banquets, and even at his fabled house in Sherman Oaks, which I visited for the first time when Lisa Tuttle was living there.\u00a0\u00a0 Lisa was only one of a succession of young writers that Harlan welcomed into Ellison Wonderland; Edward Bryant, James Sutherland, and Arthur Byron Cover preceded and followed her, and no doubt others I’ve forgotten.\u00a0 They paid no rent.\u00a0 All that Harlan demanded of them was that they write<\/em><\/strong>.\u00a0\u00a0 These days they’d call it mentoring, I suppose.\u00a0 Things were less formal in those days, but the bottom line was, very few people ever went as far as Harlan when it came to encouraging and supporting young writers.\u00a0\u00a0 He taught at Clarion almost every year in those years, and when he found a talented newcomer, he went above and beyond the call of duty in promoting him or her.<\/p>\n Harlan Ellison was also deeply entwined in my own beginnings in television, as it happens.\u00a0 It was Phil DeGuere, the executive producer and showrunner of the Twilight Zone<\/em><\/strong> revival of 1985-86, who first took a chance on me and gave me my first script assignment, but it was Harlan who suggested that I be given the rewrite of “The Once and Future King,” the Elvis episode that landed me a place on staff.\u00a0\u00a0 As irony would have it, Harlan himself took over the short story I’d originally brought to Phil, a Donald Westlake story called “Nackles,” which proved to be his undoing when the CBS censors tried to rip the heart of his script, the first he’d been slated to direct. \u00a0 Harlan quit rather than let that happen. \u00a0 Lots of people talk the talk, especially in these sad sick days of the internet, but Harlan always walked the walk as well. \u00a0 Censorship was anathema to him.<\/p>\n Let there be no question; Harlan Ellison could be a difficult man. \u00a0 He did not brook fools gladly, and he was quick to take offense at any slight, real or perceived.\u00a0 Most people, as they go through life, make an enemy or two along the way… especially people who never learned to keep their voices down and their heads bowed, which was never Harlan.\u00a0 Harlan was the only one I’ve ever known who had so many enemies that they actually formed a club, called… of course… the Enemies of Ellison. \u00a0 But he had far more friends than enemies, as can be seen from all the heartfelt eulogies going up all over the internet. \u00a0 He was a fighter, and fighters always make enemies. \u00a0 He fought against censorship with the Dangerous Visions<\/em> <\/strong>anthologies.\u00a0 He fought for racial equality, marching with King at Selma.\u00a0 He fought for women’s rights and the ERA.\u00a0\u00a0 He fought publishers, defending the rights of writers to control their own material and be fairly compensated for it.\u00a0\u00a0 He served on the Board of Directors of the WGA.\u00a0\u00a0 He gave of himself to Clarion, year after year.<\/p>\n Did he make mistakes?\u00a0 Sure he did.\u00a0\u00a0 Was he wrong from time to time?\u00a0 Definitely.\u00a0\u00a0 Who isn’t?\u00a0\u00a0 Was he loud, opinionated, sometimes obnoxious?\u00a0 Oh, all of that… but he was also kind and caring and generous, and a relentless champion of excellence, free speech, and equal rights.\u00a0 No one goes through this life without a stumble.\u00a0 The question is not, “was he perfect in every way?” but rather “did he do more harm or good?” \u00a0 Harlan Ellison was no perfect paladin, but he left the world… and our genre… a better, richer, fairer place than he found it, in half a hundred ways… and that’s why you are seeing such an outpouring of affection for this temperamental, exhausting, relentless, raging, loving, roaring giant who lived among us for a time.<\/p>\n He was a complicated guy, a genius in his own way, and his muse was an angry harpy… but oh, he could write.<\/p>\n And that’s the thing that matters, in the end.\u00a0\u00a0 Long after the enemies of Ellison and the friends of Ellison have all followed him to the grave, long after the criticisms and the paeans of praise have faded away and been forgotten, the stories<\/em> will remain.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Harlan Ellison died in his sleep the day before last.\u00a0 He was 84. It was a gentle ending for a turbulent soul.\u00a0 Not entirely unexpected.\u00a0 Harlan had been in very bad health since a stroke laid him low a couple of years ago.\u00a0 For the world of science fiction and fantasy — he always preferred […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[58,19],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/georgerrmartin.com\/notablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4832"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/georgerrmartin.com\/notablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/georgerrmartin.com\/notablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/georgerrmartin.com\/notablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/georgerrmartin.com\/notablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4832"}],"version-history":[{"count":14,"href":"https:\/\/georgerrmartin.com\/notablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4832\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4921,"href":"https:\/\/georgerrmartin.com\/notablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4832\/revisions\/4921"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/georgerrmartin.com\/notablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4832"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/georgerrmartin.com\/notablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4832"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/georgerrmartin.com\/notablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4832"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"http:\/\/georgerrmartin.com\/notablog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/06\/HarlanGeorgeatWFC83-254x300.jpg\")