Sci-fi master remembered for his writing and attitude
Pugnacious author garnered nearly a dozen Nebula, Hugo awards for his work
LOS ANGELES— Harlan Ellison, the prolific, pugnacious author of A Boy and His Dog, and countless other stories that blasted society with their nightmarish, sometimes darkly humorous scenarios, has died at age 84.
Ellison’s death was confirmed Thursday to The Associated Press by Bill Schafer, an editor with Subterranean Press, the author’s publisher.
During a career that spanned more than half a century, Ellison wrote some 50 books and more than 1,400 articles, essays, TV scripts and screenplays. Although best known for his science fiction, which garnered nearly a dozen Nebula and Hugo awards, Ellison’s work covered virtually every type of writing from mysteries to comic books to newspaper columns.
He was known as much for his attitude as his writing. His targets were anyone or anything that offended him, from TV producers to his own audience.
“I go to bed angry and I get up angrier every morning,” he once said.
“Harlan Ellison: There was no one quite like him in American letters, and never will be,” author Stephen King tweeted on Thursday. “Angry, funny, eloquent, hugely talented. If there’s an afterlife, Harlan is already kicking ass and taking down names.” One of the best-known, A Boy and His
Dog, portrays a world devastated by nuclear war and fought over by vicious gangs. The hero, a young thug whose travelling companion is a mutant, telepathic dog, is lured to an underground community but rebels against its sterility.
The novella was the basis for a 1975 movie starring Don Johnson.
Ellison recently expanded the story into a full-length novel, Blood’s A Rover, that Subterranean is publishing this month.
Some of his most popular works were surrealistic fantasies set in grisly worlds run by totalitarians and conformists. Some were humorous; many were shockingly graphic for their time.
He once said he wanted his stories “to grab you by the throat and tear off parts of your body.”
He was born on May 27, 1934, in Cleveland. His youth in nearby Painesville was lonely — he and his older sister, Beverly, were among the only Jews in town and were rejected. His loud mouth and small size — as an adult he stood about five-feet-five — also made him a target of bullies.
He attended Ohio State University but left after punching a professor who said he lacked writing talent. After he was drafted, he served in the Army and then embarked on a writing career.
Ellison was fiercely protective of his work and was not shy about going after those he believed had stolen or tampered with it.
Throughout his career he maintained a love-hate relationship with the TV and motion picture industry, scripting episodes for such series as The Outer Limits and the original Star Trek. He was also a conceptual consultant for the 1990s popular syndicated science-fiction series Babylon 5.
Ellison also wrote from experience. For his first novel, about 1950s street gangs, he ran for 10 weeks with a Brooklyn gang.
He is survived by his wife, Susan.