Be prolific sci fi writerThinks he was on of America's great writers of the 20th centuryWas regarded as a huge assholeVery litigious His greatest achievement was writing a Star Trek episode
>>25563512Am i supposed to be obsessed enough to know who this is without you giving a name?
That's Harlan Ellison. The Star Trek episode he wrote was "The City on the Edge of Forever". Personally, I think his greatest achievement was the short story "I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream", but he did other good stuff too, like the movie "A Boy and His Dog" and episodes of the original Outer Limits. Two of them, "Demon With a Glass Hand" and "Soldier", formed the basis for "The Terminator", and he ended up suing them for ripping him off, got a cash payout, and his name added to the credits.>Was regarded as a huge assholePassive voice by cowardly cucks.
>>25563571I've watched those TZ episodes and "formed the basis" is an overstatement. If Terminator hadn't been such a big sensation owing to Cameron's creative genius, Ellison wouldn't have cared a whit, all he wanted was money and fame.
>>25563512I read about the lawsuits. They're fine. It was just the usual character assassination. Probably pissed off someone powerful.
>>25563581Are you sure you've watched those Twilight Zone episodes? Because, as I stated, they were Outer Limits episodes. Your thinking appears to be muddled.
>>25563512he was friends with Patton Oswald, so fuck him
>>25563589Imagine thinking Harlan Ellison is important enough to white knight. Where is it morning in the world right now? India, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, parts of the ME.>>25563592Meh, I watched those episodes either way, out of curiosity on this exact subject.
>>25563596>Imagine thinking Harlan Ellison is important enough to white knighthis Dangerous Visions series changed the course of Sci-Fi forever
>>25563596Your opinion on those episodes with regard to The Terminator is irrelevant. The lawsuit was settled and Ellison got paid.>>25563604I really should get around to reading those.
>>25563604As an editor. That's an anthology that includes dozens of top flight scifi authors far better and more accomplished than Ellison ever was.>>25563613The ability of a litigious Jew to successfully sue someone in the United States is irrelevant to the question of whether Ellison was a great author.
his Kitty Genovese short story was laughably bad. mefisto in onyx is kino tho
>>25563615You're moving the goalposts. Whether he was a great author is unrelated to whether those two episodes of Outer Limits were inspiration for The Terminator.
>>25563621No, you lost the plot. OP's contention is that he was not a great author. Accomplished, but not special but for his willingness to self-aggrandize and get his fingers on everything he could. You (or who the frigg ever) cited his influence on Terminator as evidence of his greatness. Terminator is great, James Cameron is great. A genius. Harlan Ellison was a grasper.
>>25563615>As an editor.he wrote an intro to every single one of the short stories and an intro and outro to the collections as a whole, so he was also the largest contributing author
>>25563618she voted for it
Harlan Ellison himself stated he was an author of speculative fiction; not sci-fi.Additionally, I have a first-edition hardcover copy of the first Dangerous Visions. Pretty cool.
>>25563662>speculative fiction; not sci-fiit's the same as the distinction as between pornography and erotica; that being "none, I just wanted to try and make it sound respectable"
>>25563675>it's the sameGuess you simply haven't read enough Harlan yet!
>>25563676Harlan was a male feminist faggot and so were all his friends.
>>25563512He was an asshole but a funny asshole. Also his best TV script was probably Soldier.
he's shit but used to get a lot of hype, don't know if that is still the case
>>25563683my favorite part was when he got himself #cancelledhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zxd1jFDXzsU
>>25563685zoom zooms heard about I Have No Mouth and it was briefly a video essay fixation. they didn't read it of course. of the new wavers he's middling. His attempts at formal experimentation are kind of shitty and awkward (The Deathbird is alright, though) and he can't write well on a sentence level most of the time, but he can come up with some fun phrases. Better editor than author. Even still, he sucked at editing at the end of his life. Never released the last dangerous visions and was a massive prick about it the entire time.
>>25563623OP's conclusions don't flow from his premises, and neither do yours.
I agree and have always found him to be more successful as a personality than as an author. He knew how to mingle, take just enough extra credit to avoid getting called out, and how to shit stir to stay in the spotlight. Regardless, IHNMAaMS and his Star Trek episode are pretty good.Lesser known is that he was a big influence on and advisor to JMS when writing Babylon 5. In Dangerous Visions, there was a shit story about a sociopath with a time machine who kills randos. She takes a guy to her time to kill him, but he's actually Jack the Ripper and he kills her first. Ellison loved that story and actually wrote an equally shit sequel. In B5, an alien race pulls Jack the Ripper out of time to use as a torturer. It's an obvious reference or influence, and it makes me laugh that Ellison was still using another person's idea as his own while giving advice to a young showrunner.
>>25563512>hates videogames>makes a videogame of his book>it's more popular than the book>didn't write Dune>didn't make the Star Warsbasically either gigachad or beta failure entirely depending on what you consider credentialed within the world of sci-fi or if you consider those credentials a good thing.
>>25564035Sounds like he was an influencer before it became popular. Based!
>>25563534Kill yourself retard
>>25563621>whether those two episodes of Outer Limits were inspiration for The Terminator.They weren't
in the creative circles i was around he was mostly known for his “pay the writer” monologue.Which does get into a very true reality for creatives in America and capitalism in general. That is, that the people making bank off your creative work would begrudge paying you a nickel if they could get away with it.
>>25563512>asshole >litigiousHonestly just seems like he’s using copyright law, if he were a corporation nobody would even blink, but because he’s an actual person people spaz out. That’s the way they want it of course, corpos get to do whatever and fuck you peasant. The supposedly “equal” landscape of law isn’t. This is why corporations love to conspire with government about regulation. They design it, they have the stables of lawyers, competition gets strangled to death.
>>25563512>Be prolific sci fi writerSure>Thinks he was on of America's great writers of the 20th centuryNot really, he was more just an asshole. He thought his most popular works were pretty bad even.>Was regarded as a huge assholeYeah.>Very litigiousWith good reason. Don't let people walk all over you, otherwise you end up like Stan Lee who died in debt, not owning anything he made, and spending his last moments signing action figures to scrounge some extra cash. >His greatest achievement was writing a Star Trek episodeYour greatest achievement was making this thread.
>>25564035I feel like this is a jewish author archetype of its own, the guy who didn't write anything particularly impressive but knew the right people and had a decent sense for marketing his authorial persona.
>>25564627They were inspiration enough to lead to a cash settlement in Harlan's favor. Burn.
