Harlan Ellison = Perpetual Badass
Winner of 10 Hugos and five Bram Stokers, Harlan Ellison is one of the most under-appreciated writers in contemporary literature, and through his confrontational demeanor, has been one of the most verbal (and violent) warriors in establishing sci-fi as a legitimate form of literature. Now, this is the Bloglin, so I don’t have to argue about the legitimacy of sci-fi, but the above interview from 1980 got me legit pumped up. Ellison is arguably the greatest and most consistent writer to emerge from the New Wave era, and in the above interview he explains how he just “wants the same arena” as other writers and how those “two words” could bury a writer.
October 22nd, 2009 at 12:11 am
i took me forever to realize he wasn’t shirtless
October 22nd, 2009 at 2:34 am
as well as i
October 22nd, 2009 at 9:22 am
If you’ve never read ellison then you’re missing out on one of the greats. But I would like to point out that he’s not exclusively a sci-fi writer. Check out “love ain’t nothing but sex misspelled” and his various books / papers about television (“The Glass Teat”). A good place to start is the 1200+ page collection “The Essential Ellison: A 50-Year Retrospective”. Check out the section on Amazon http://www.amazon.com/Harlan-Ellison/e/B000APZU8C/ref=ntt_athr_dp_pel_pop_1
October 22nd, 2009 at 11:16 am
I love the Essential Ellison. Keep that shit on my nightstand. His nonfiction in “Slippage” is really good too.
October 22nd, 2009 at 1:48 pm
Wikipedia got it right – ‘principally science fiction’ – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harlan_Ellison