56 Facts About Harlan Ellison

Harlan Jay Ellison was an American writer, known for his prolific and influential work in New Wave speculative fiction and for his outspoken, combative personality.

Harlan Ellison's published works include more than 1,700 short stories, novellas, screenplays, comic book scripts, teleplays, essays, and a wide range of criticism covering literature, film, television, and print media.

Harlan Ellison was editor and anthologist for Dangerous Visions and Again, Dangerous Visions.

Harlan Ellison won numerous awards, including multiple Hugos, Nebulas, and Edgars.

Harlan Ellison was born to a Jewish family in Cleveland, Ohio, on May 27,1934, the son of Serita and Louis Laverne Harlan Ellison, a dentist and jeweler.

Harlan Ellison had an older sister, Beverly, who was born in 1926.

Harlan Ellison died in 2010 without having spoken to him since their mother's funeral in 1976.

Harlan Ellison attended Ohio State University for 18 months before being expelled.

Harlan Ellison said the expulsion was for hitting a professor who had denigrated his writing ability, and over the next 20 or so years he sent that professor a copy of every story that he published.

Harlan Ellison published two serialized stories in the Cleveland News during 1949, and he sold a story to EC Comics early in the 1950s.

Harlan Ellison served in the US Army from 1957 to 1959.

Harlan Ellison moved to California in 1962 and began selling his writing to Hollywood.

Harlan Ellison co-wrote the screenplay for The Oscar, starring Stephen Boyd and Elke Sommer.

Harlan Ellison was hired as a writer for Walt Disney Studios, but was fired on his first day after Roy O Disney overheard him in the studio commissary joking about making a pornographic animated film featuring Disney characters.

Harlan Ellison continued to publish short fiction and nonfiction pieces in various publications, including some of his best known stories.

The story was the basis of a 1995 computer game; Harlan Ellison participated in the game's design and provided the voice of the god-computer AM.

From 1968 to 1970, Harlan Ellison wrote a regular column on television for the Los Angeles Free Press.

Harlan Ellison served as creative consultant to the 1980s version of The Twilight Zone science fiction TV series and Babylon 5.

Harlan Ellison married five times; each relationship ended within a few years, except the last.

In September 2007, Harlan Ellison attended the Midwestern debut of the documentary about his life, Dreams with Sharp Teeth at the Cleveland Public Library in his hometown of Cleveland, Ohio.

Harlan Ellison died in his sleep, at home in Los Angeles in the morning of June 28,2018.

An episode of Burke's Law credited to Harlan Ellison contains a character given this name, played by Sammy Davis Jr.

Harlan Ellison said, in interviews and in his writing, that his version of the pseudonym was meant to mean "a shoemaker for birds".

Stephen King once said he thought that it meant that Harlan Ellison was giving people who mangled his work a literary version of "the bird".

Harlan Ellison repeatedly criticized how Star Trek creator and producer Gene Roddenberry rewrote his original script for the 1967 episode "The City on the Edge of Forever".

Harlan Ellison greatly expanded the introduction for the paperback edition, in which he explained what he called a "fatally inept" treatment.

Harlan Ellison was among those who in 1968 signed an anti-Vietnam War advertisement in Galaxy Science Fiction.

In 1993, Harlan Ellison threatened to sue the New England Science Fiction Association for publishing "Himself in Anachron", a short story written by Cordwainer Smith and originally sold to Harlan Ellison for the anthology by his widow.

Priest documented a half-dozen unfulfilled promises by Harlan Ellison to publish TLDV within a year of the statement.

Harlan Ellison was incensed by "The Book on the Edge of Forever" and, personally or by proxy, threatened Priest on numerous occasions after its publication.

Many of the stories were withdrawn, because Harlan Ellison acted like a dick.

Harlan Ellison was presented with a special committee award at the 2006 Hugo Awards ceremony.

Harlan Ellison then placed his hand on her breast during an embrace.

Harlan Ellison subsequently complained that Willis refused to acknowledge his apology.

On September 20,2006, Harlan Ellison sued comic book and magazine publisher Fantagraphics, stating they had defamed him in their book Comics As Art.

Harlan Ellison, after reading unpublished drafts of the book on Fantagraphics's website, believed that he had been defamed by several anecdotes related to this incident.

Harlan Ellison sued in the Superior Court for the State of California, in Santa Monica.

On June 29,2007, Harlan Ellison claimed that the litigation had been resolved pending Fantagraphics' removal of all references to the case from their website.

Harlan Ellison alleged that James Cameron's film The Terminator drew from material from an episode of the original Outer Limits which Harlan Ellison had scripted, "Soldier".

Three issues later, Marvel put up a letter claiming that Mantlo adapted "Soldier" for use as a Hulk story, but they forgot to credit Harlan Ellison and had it pointed out by readers.

The day the issue went to stands, he was contacted by an angry Harlan Ellison, who calmed down after Shooter admitted the error.

Harlan Ellison alleged they had failed to halt copyright infringement in accordance with the "Notice and Takedown Procedure" outlined in the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act.

Since those settlements Harlan Ellison initiated legal action or takedown notices against more than 240 people who have allegedly distributed his writings on the Internet, saying, "If you put your hand in my pocket, you'll drag back six inches of bloody stump".

Harlan Ellison won eight Hugo Awards, a shared award for the screenplay of A Boy and his Dog that he counted as "half a Hugo", and two special awards from annual World SF Conventions; four Nebula Awards of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America ; five Bram Stoker Awards of the Horror Writers Association ; two Edgar Awards of the Mystery Writers of America; two World Fantasy Awards from annual conventions; and two Georges Melies fantasy film awards.

Harlan Ellison won the World Fantasy Award for Life Achievement in 1993.

Harlan Ellison was awarded the Gallun Award for Lifetime Achievement in Science Fiction from I-CON in 1997.

Harlan Ellison won his other Nebula in the novella category.

Harlan Ellison was awarded the Silver Pen for Journalism by International PEN, the international writers' union, in 1982.

In 1990, Harlan Ellison was honored by International PEN for continuing commitment to artistic freedom and the battle against censorship.

Harlan Ellison was named 2002's winner of the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal's "Distinguished Skeptic Award", in recognition of his contributions to science and critical thinking.

Harlan Ellison was presented with the award at the Skeptics Convention in Burbank, California, on June 22,2002.

In December 2009, Harlan Ellison was nominated for a Grammy award in the category Best Spoken Word Album For Children for his reading of Through the Looking-Glass And What Alice Found There for Blackstone Audio, Inc.

Ben Bova's novel The Starcrossed, a roman a clef about Bova and Harlan Ellison's experience on The Starlost TV series, features a character "Ron Gabriel" who is a pastiche of Harlan Ellison.

In Murder at the ABA by Isaac Asimov, the protagonist, Darius Just, was based on Harlan Ellison, as stated by Asimov in footnotes to the book itself, and in his autobiographical volume In Joy Still Felt.

Robert Silverberg named a character in his first novel, Revolt on Alpha C, for Harlan Ellison, who was Silverberg's neighbor in New York City at the time he was writing the book.

Harlan Ellison appeared as himself in an episode of The Simpsons in which he meets Bart and Milhouse, and parodies his contention that the film The Terminator used ideas from his stories.