I have no eyes and I must weep
A nice long life.
May he rest peacefully.
Course he certainly had some nasty attitudes such as groping a woman and getting pouty when called on it.
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
Yeah, I'm a bit bemused by the amount of whitewashing going on in these obituaries. Ellison was always brutally honest in his fiction and in his interviews, and I don't think he'd be particularly impressed by people tiptoeing around his darker side.
The fact was that he was a very complicated and self-contradictory man. He was incredibly generous and helpful to young writers, but only if he deemed that they'd show him a significant amount of deference and respect. If they hadn't, he'd tear them to shreds (stories abound of him reducing fans and admirers to tears because they caught him in a bad mood, or at a wrong moment, but also being incredibly funny and generous if they caught him in a lighter mood). He also had a violent side, and several times got into physical altercations with other authors and one of his university professors.
He was completely fearless. Once he stopped his car whilst taking a "short cut" through a very dangerous part of South-Central LA in the mid-1980s to give a homeless woman money. He stood up to Frank Sinatra in his own club when Sinatra started bullying him over his footware, and called him a liar for criticising a movie that Ellison had written which hadn't even come out yet (Ellison's friends dragged him out).
Ellison stood up for writers, getting angry when he'd heard that friends had written articles or stories for free or "for exposure". He always ensured that he got paid, and tried to make sure that all writers stood up for themselves (this is one thing I did take to heart from Ellison, and I've always made sure that my articles and reviews have been paid for by the venues that asked for them).
Unfortunately, he did come to enjoy his "bad boy of SF" and "enfant terrible of spec fic" labels a little too much. He became a character known for being irascible, cranky and a bit of an a&+$&&~$, and he played into that a lot in later life. He also became an increasingly bitter and angry figure, and stopped going to SFF conventions not just due to ill health, but because increasingly fewer and fewer people knew or cared who he was. The nadir of his career was effectively sexually assaulting Connie Willis - a long-term friend and sometimes apologist of his - on stage at the Hugo Awards in 2006, after which he was effectively persona non grata in fandom.
It was a bit of a sad end to a career which had many highs. He wrote several sublime works of short fiction, including "I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream", which he even helped turn into a PC game despite not having a PC, or any idea on how games were made, and "'Repent, Harlequin!' said the Ticktock Man." His most influential story was "A Boy and His Dog", which was not only turned into a 1975 movie but also heavily inspired the FALLOUT video game series (I'm guessing no-one ever told him, as he failed to sue anyone involved). He also wrote the best two episodes of THE OUTER LIMITS ("Soldier" and "Demon with a Glass Hand"), the best episode of STAR TREK ("The City on the Edge of Forever") and closely advised J. Michael Straczynski in the creation of BABYLON 5, on which he served as creative consultant and occasional co-writer. He gave George R.R. Martin his big break in television, hiring him to work on THE NEW TWILIGHT ZONE in the 1980s (Ellison promptly got fired, allowing Martin to take his place). And of course he edited arguably the two most influential science fiction anthologies of all time, DANGEROUS VISIONS and AGAIN, DANGEROUS VISIONS (and failed for 45 years to publish the long-promised third volume).
He was a complex, colourful and not always very nice man. I sincerely doubt we will quite see his like again.
Also Dreams with Sharp Teeth.
Also he was known for working just 4 hours for Disney before getting fired for a crude joke.
Don't F++* with the Mouse.