The Harlan Ellison Thread

[BAYLOR]

To correct the above comment Metaphisto in Onyx is the last story that I read by him. Great stuff.

 

[Stephen Palmer]

I've read a few of his works over the years, and my response is - vastly over-rated. :/

 

[BAYLOR]

I cannot agree with that.

 

[Stephen Palmer]

It all personal opinion. I don't like Asimov either!

But I do love Aldiss, Wolfe & LeGuin, so that balances it out...

 

[BAYLOR]

No worries , everyone has their favorites. Ellison is one of the writers that got me interested in reading.

 

[Droflet]

No worries , everyone has their favorites. Ellison is one of the writers that got me interested in reading.

Ha, me too.

 

[Guttersnipe]

"Repent, Harlequin! Said the Ticktockman"
"Jeffty is Five"
"Boulevard of Broken Dreams"
"Erotomania"
"I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream"
"Hindsight: 480 Seconds"
"I'm Looking for Kadak"
"Cold Friend"

 

[BAYLOR]

The 1986 version of the Twilight Zone did an adaptation of his story Paladin of the Lost Hour. Danny Kaye was the lead it . A wonderful adaptation and a very touching and moving story and , a testament to Harlan Ellison's talent and power as a writer . We shall never see his like again.

 

[Ashley R]

Demon with a Glass Hand was an episode written by Harlan for The Outer Limits, which inspired the Terminator series make Harlan Ellison a significant writer in the genre, though he wrote a lot more than SF.

 

[BAYLOR]

Demon with a Glass Hand was an episode written by Harlan for The Outer Limits, which inspired the Terminator series make Harlan Ellison a significant writer in the genre, though he wrote a lot more than SF.

That and the episode Solider based of Ellison's story of the same name.

 

[BAYLOR]

He penned an episode for the tv series Voyage To The Bottom Of The Sea Unfortunately , Irwin Allen reimagined Ellison's script To the point that Ellison disowned it by using the Cordwainer Bird Pen name .

 

[BAYLOR]

"Deathbird" and "Jeffty Is Five" ought not to be missed. I remember "I Have No Mouth And I Must Scream" being really good but the rest of the stories in the collection of the same name didn't do much for me. Couldn't finish Spider Kiss. Writes great intros.

Half the fun of reading Ellison is the book intros.

 

[Don]

His regional screen play for Trek episode The City at the Edge of Forever is fantastic. I prefer it to the televised version. Just recently they did a graphic novel adaptation to his screenplay.

The graphic novel runs circles around the original episode. The screen play book's pure, 200 proof Ellison snark. There's so much snark it's difficult to select a sample snippet.

[Shatner] read [the script] close, bro, very close.

Then, when he had finished it, he sat there for a few minutes, staring out through the sliding doors of the living room toward the watershed land behind my house. Contemplative. Then he picked up "City" and started reading it all over again.

This went on for a couple of hours.

And after he completed the second pass, I saw him slowly turning the pages, studying the script for something ... I knew not what.

Talk about being a Mt. Everest capacity jerk, that was me, that was I, that was the both of the not-a-kid. He was line-counting. The Great Actor was weighing the freight of lines spoken by his publicity nemesis on Star Trek, the enigmatic Mr. Spock, the excellent Leonard Nimoy, against how many Kirk shots there were. And let me not suggest that the ego of Bill Shatner influenced his opinion, but when he toted up the numbers in his head, and found that Lenny had, what, maybe half a dozen more lines ... I was on my way to an anger and a heartpunch that has lasted fro thirty-five years.

The City on the Edge of Forever (reference book)

Harlan Ellison's The City on the Edge of Forever, subtitled The Original Teleplay That Became The Classic Star Trek Episode, is a reference book written by Harlan Ellison, and first published in a limited edition hardback by Borderlands Press in 1995. The book includes the original teleplay of...

memory-alpha.fandom.com

 

[dask]

His regional screen play for Trek episode The City at the Edge of Forever is fantastic. I prefer it to the televised version. Just recently they did a graphic novel adaptation to his screenplay.

Does the script appear in one of his collections?

 

[BAYLOR]

Does the script appear in one of his collections?

Harlan Ellison The City On the Edge of Forever The original Telplay that became the Classic Star Trek Episode Borealis Legends . Whitewolf publishing . On the cover is picture of Nimoy, Ellison and Shatner .

 

[BAYLOR]

The graphic novel runs circles around the original episode. The screen play book's pure, 200 proof Ellison snark. There's so much snark it's difficult to select a sample snippet.

He's one the two writers that got really interested in reading . Ive read quite few of his stories over the years . I like to read his intros and essays too, in so doing, ive picked quite number or writers Id never read or heard of. He's a great writer.

 

[Vince W]

I recently reread I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream. I had forgotten just how disturbing this story is. The story isn't overtly graphic in the way modern stories can be, but it conjures some very graphic imagery nonetheless. Ellison was part of that generation of authors that could paint a detailed picture without overworked verbosity. I think I have to go back and read Ellison in greater detail again.

On a side note, the old PC game based on I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream is available on Steam to play again and it captures the atmosphere of the story wonderfully, I think.

 

[BAYLOR]

I recently reread I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream. I had forgotten just how disturbing this story is. The story isn't overtly graphic in the way modern stories can be, but it conjures some very graphic imagery nonetheless. Ellison was part of that generation of authors that could paint a detailed picture without overworked verbosity. I think I have to go back and read Ellison in greater detail again.

On a side note, the old PC game based on I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream is available on Steam to play again and it captures the atmosphere of the story wonderfully, I think.

Id like to have seen a film adaptation of this story.

 

[BAYLOR]

Paladin of the Lost Hour Holds up nicely with re read.

I seem recall reading that Ellison thought that one day he would be forgotten after he gone . I don't see his books anymore and I run more and more readers who don't know who he is. or what he wrote.

 

[Danny McG]

Half the fun of reading Ellison is the book intros.

One of the monthly Higgledy Piggledy poem subscribers competitions in Asimov magazine was themed for one month on SF writers, IIRC a poem about Harlan's intros was that months winner - (I'm trying hard to remember it all from the 1980s!)

"Higgledy Piggledy, hellraiser Ellison,
Writes with such passion, and fervour and strength.
39 pages of inconsequential
Intros for stories of 20 page length"

I might not have remembered it exactly but you get the gist and it got the most votes