Harlan Jay Ellison (May 27, 1934 – June 28, 2018) was an American writer, known for his prolific and influential work in New Wave speculative fiction and for his outspoken, combative personality. His 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.
Some of his best-known works include the 1967 Star Trek episode "The City on the Edge of Forever", which is regarded as one of the best episodes in the Star Trek franchise - he subsequently wrote a book about the experience that includes his original teleplay - his A Boy and His Dog cycle (which was made into a film), and his short stories "I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream" (later adapted by Ellison into a video game) and "'Repent, Harlequin!' Said the Ticktockman". He was also editor and anthologist for Dangerous Visions (1967) and Again, Dangerous Visions (1972). Ellison won numerous awards, including multiple Hugos, Nebulas, and Edgars.
Ellison was born to a Jewish family in Cleveland, Ohio, on May 27, 1934, the son of Serita (née Rosenthal) and Louis Laverne Ellison, a dentist and jeweler. His older sister Beverly was born in 1926. Some time after Beverly's birth, his family moved to Painesville, Ohio, but returned to Cleveland in 1949, following his father's death. Ellison frequently ran away from home. In an interview with Tom Snyder, he would later claim it was due to discrimination by his high school peers. Throughout Ellison's childhood, antisemitism was widespread throughout America, which led to his early life spent in isolation. According to Ellison, by age 18 he had completed a series of odd jobs as a "tuna fisherman off the coast of Galveston, itinerant crop-picker down in New Orleans, hired gun for a wealthy neurotic, nitroglycerine truck driver in North Carolina, short-order cook, cab driver, lithographer, book salesman, floorwalker in a department store, door-to-door brush salesman, and as a youngster, an actor in several productions at the Cleveland Play House". In 1947, a fan letter he wrote to Real Fact Comics became his first published writing.
Ellison attended Ohio State University for 18 months (1951–53) before being expelled. Famous for self mythologizing, he claimed in interviews he was expelled for verbally or physically abusing a creative writing professor who excoriated the science fiction genre and Ellison's writing. He also claimed to have sent the professor a copy of every story he published. A biography published about him (Weil and Wolfe), however, found that he was expelled for having a “a reported grade point average of .086.”
Ellison published two serialized stories in the Cleveland News during 1949, and he sold a story to EC Comics early in the 1950s. During this period, Ellison was an active member of science fiction fandom. He published his own science fiction fanzines, such as Dimensions, which had previously been the Bulletin of the Cleveland Science Fantasy Society and later Science Fantasy Bulletin. Ellison moved to New York City in 1955 and lived with Robert Silverberg as they both pursued writing careers. Over the next two years, he published more than 100 short stories and articles. The short stories collected as Sex Gang — which Ellison described in a 2012 interview as "mainstream erotica"—date from this period.
He served in the U.S. Army from 1957 to 1959. His first novel, Web of the City (originally titled Rumble), was published during his military service in 1958, and he said that he had written the bulk of it while undergoing basic training at Fort Benning, Georgia. He served in the Public Information Office at Fort Knox, Kentucky, where he wrote articles and reviews for the post's weekly newspaper.
After leaving the army, he relocated to Chicago, where he edited Rogue magazine.
Ellison moved to California in 1962 and began selling his writing to Hollywood. Ellison sold scripts to many television shows: Burke's Law (4 episodes), Route 66, The Outer Limits, The Alfred Hitchcock Hour, Star Trek, The Man from U.N.C.L.E. (2 episodes), Cimarron Strip and The Flying Nun.
Ellison's screenplay for the Star Trek episode "The City on the Edge of Forever" is often considered the best of the 79 episodes in the series.
He co-wrote the screenplay for The Oscar (1966), starring Stephen Boyd and Tony Bennett.
In 1965, he participated in the second and third Selma to Montgomery marches, led by Martin Luther King Jr.
In 1966, the journalist Gay Talese wrote a profile of Frank Sinatra for Esquire, which the magazine later named as the best magazine piece ever written. The article, entitled "Frank Sinatra Has a Cold", briefly describes a verbal clash between Sinatra and Ellison, in which the crooner took exception to Ellison's boots during a billiards game Ellison was playing with Omar Sharif, Leo Durocher, and Peter Falk.
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.
Ellison continued to publish short fiction and nonfiction pieces in various publications, including some of his best known stories. "'Repent, Harlequin!' Said the Ticktockman" (1965) is a celebration of civil disobedience against repressive authority. "I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream" (1967) is a story where five humans are tormented by an all-knowing computer throughout eternity. The story was the basis of a 1995 computer game; Ellison participated in the game's design and provided the voice of the god-computer AM. Another story, "A Boy and His Dog", examines the nature of friendship and love in a violent, post-apocalyptic world and was made into the 1975 film of the same name, starring Don Johnson.
In 1967, Ellison edited the Dangerous Visions collection, which attracted a "special citation at the 26th World SF Convention for editing 'the most significant and controversial SF book published in 1967.'" In his introduction Isaac Asimov described it as epitomising a "second revolution" in science fiction as "science receded and modern fictional techniques came to the fore."
From 1968 to 1970, Ellison wrote a regular column on television for the Los Angeles Free Press. Titled "The Glass Teat", Ellison's column examined television's impact on the politics and culture of the time, including its presentations of sex, politics, race, the Vietnam War, and violence. The essays were collected in two anthologies, The Glass Teat: Essays of Opinion on Television followed by The Other Glass Teat.
Ellison served as creative consultant to the 1980s version of The Twilight Zone science fiction TV series and as a conceptual consultant for Babylon 5. As a member of the Screen Actors Guild (SAG), he had voice-over credits for shows, including The Pirates of Dark Water, Mother Goose and Grimm, Space Cases, Phantom 2040, and Babylon 5, and made an onscreen appearance in the Babylon 5 episode "The Face of the Enemy".
A frequent guest on the Los Angeles science fiction/fantasy culture radio show Hour 25, hosted by Mike Hodel, Ellison took over as host when Hodel died. Ellison's tenure was from May 1986 to June 1987.