Harlan Ellison

Harlan Ellison
Last night I attending a lecture by author Harlan Ellison. Ever since I saw him at a writers conference during college I've loved his work. His screenplay for the original Star Trek episode 'City on the Edge of Forever' is considered by most to be the high water mark for that show and has been named one of the top 100 TV episodes of all time. But more then the 1000s of stories, screenplays, and awards, he is probably most famous for his mouth. He loves to talk and will say just what he thinks. He pisses off a lot of people but in the end he was probably right and they just didn't want to hear it. He talked for 3 hours, mostly stories and memories of his 50 or so years in sci-fi (a term he hates because he has written so much more then that). At one point he started a story about working at Disney for only 4 hours but somehow ended up talking about insulting (inadvertently of course) a former KGB agent at a Swedish gala. At one point late in the talk, he was try to hold a microphone and a water bottle. Moments later a lady in the audience yelled out "You're talking into your water bottle!" Harlan lost and we all laughed.

Ellison's books are hard to find because I believe he controls the distribution but if you ever find one of his short story anthologies, they are some of the wittiest and smartest you will read.