‘Bellicose’ author known as master of sci-fi stories
Cleveland native wrote classic 1967 ‘Star Trek’ episode
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, died this week at age 84.
Ellison’s death was confirmed by Bill Schafer, an editor with Subterranean Press, the author’s publisher. A woman who answered the phone at Ellison’s office, who declined to give her name, said he died Wednesday in his sleep.
During a career that spanned more than a halfcentury, 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 — he described himself once as “bellicose.” His targets were anyone or anything that offended him, from TV producers to his own audience. An encounter with Frank Sinatra, when the two faced off while Ellison was shooting pool, was immortalized in Gay Talese’s famous 1966 magazine profile of the singer.
“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 Thursday. “Angry, funny, eloquent, hugely talented. If there’s an afterlife, Harlan is already ... taking down names.”
Several of Ellison’s works were translated into dozens of languages.
One of the best-known, “A Boy and His Dog,” portrays a world devastated by nuclear war and fought over by vicious gangs.
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.”
Ellison disliked computers and worked on old manual typewriters, although he denied being anti-technology.
“I hate the uses that technology is put to,” he once said.
Sometimes, for promotional purposes, he would write his stories while seated in bookstore windows.
He was born 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 5-feet-5 — 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.
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.”
His 1967 “Star Trek” episode, “The City on the Edge of Forever,” was one of the series’ darkest and most brilliant. A young woman played by Joan Collins is saved from a fatal accident by the starship Enterprise’s time-traveling Dr. McCoy. Later, the ship’s Capt. Kirk and Mr. Spock learn they must return to the year 1930 and let her die or history will be changed and Nazi Germany will win World War II.
He is survived by his wife, Susan.