Harlan Ellison (1934 - 2018)

Photo by Beth Gwinn/Getty Images. 

Harlan Ellison's death on June 27, while hardly unexpected, hit me hard. His was the latest in a series of deaths of men around my father's age, writers and artists whose work I had grown up with since my teens. Philip Roth, Tom Wolfe, Steve Ditko, and Harlan Ellison -- large parts of the verbal and visual accompaniment to to my life. None of them were as omnipresent and life changing as the words that Harlan sometimes characterized as his "reporting in." His urgent, unique voice makes me want to thank him even after he is no longer here to receive those thanks. Neither of us believed in an afterlife, but I'll say this anyway. Thank you, Harlan, for your stories and essays and books that helped me get through adolescence. Thank you for the wisdom and passion I continue to find in your work in my adulthood. Thank you for the kind words and encouragement you occasionally offered me on your website, Harlan Ellison's Art Deco Dining Pavilion. I sincerely doubt I would have broken through into being a published writer without your hard-headed but sympathetic noodging. I regret I didn't have the guts to approach you at Lincoln Center where they were showing the terrific film about your life, Dreams with Sharp Teeth, when I saw you chatting with your wife and some friends in the alcove before the film. I didn't want to bother you, and frankly, what could I say except what I'm saying now, only it would probably have come out sounding much worse then. Still, I wish I'd walked over and said hi. Thank you for living a life of unimpeachable integrity and the pursuit and achievement of artistic excellence. Thank you for being one hell of a raconteur, a brilliant writer, and someone who made this world a more exciting during the years you walked upon it. Thank you for making me laugh and think and realize that it's essential to give a damn.

I cheered myself up during the last week reading Blood's a Rover, the last book to be published in Harlan's Lifetime and one he held in his hands not long before he died.  It was a kick to see Vic and Blood's adventures continued after all these years of wondering what became of them. The book's short stories and snippets and teleplay, written over the course of several decades, may not quite add up to a novel, but they provide a good idea of what the novel would have been if Harlan had lived to complete it. I suspect it might have become the Huckleberry Finn of speculative fiction, and probably been banned in just as many libraries as Twain's classic. Reading "A Boy and His Dog" as part of this longer narrative caused me to realize how much your work is in the main tradition of American literature, particularly according to critic Leslie Fiedler's theory that the classic American story is about the relationship between the friendship between a white man and a non white man (African American, Native American, an alien, or, in this case a telepathic dog), and their efforts to escape being "civ'lized," as Huck Finn famously says. But like Twain, Harlan believes the romance between outsiders can ultimately lead to a greater and more truly humane civilization than the one that previously existed. Moreover, Blood's a Rover demonstrates even more clearly than before how artfully Harlan drew on his experiences running with a gang in Brooklyn and brought those insights to create a new kind of SF. Few people can write about the turf wars between gangs, whether in the 1950s or the near future, as well as Harlan did. And it's obvious to me now that there's more than a little of you in both Vic and Blood -- Vic, the classic Ellisonian man struggling to survive in an uncaring and dangerous universe, and Blood, the wise-cracking and wise-headed mentor who cares about the proper use of grammar in one's speech as much as in sheer survival. Finally, the book dispells the absurd notion that the story is in anyway misogynistic, a notion which Harlan attributed to the influence of the 1970s movie of his story. The teleplay in the last section of the book introduces us to Spike, a very different woman from the Quilla June of "A Boy and His Dog." Spike's resourceful, tough, street-smart and a good shot, with ultimately a good heart. She's a heroine that any feminist could be proud of in 2018. The book reaffirmed that despite the darkness in Harlan's work, he was a humanist who believed in the potential of our too-often misguided species. For most of his 84 years he successfully instructed, guided, chivvied, emlightened, and most of all entertained us. His many books on my shelves are a constant reminder that he's going to continue doing that for me for years to come. What can I say? I miss the guy.