Let me tell you a story about Harlan…
I talk to 10 people about Harlan Ellison and thats how almost every conversation starts.
If Id talked to a hundred, it wouldve been the same.
Ellison in 1995.Roddy McDowall
Because everyone has a Harlan Ellison story.
Thats a life well-lived by any measure.
Harlan marched with Martin Luther King Jr. in Selma.
He took a job with Disney and got fired on his very first day.
One story made up of a whole bunch of other stories, really.
And that isnt such a big deal, right?
The man published a hundred books in his lifetime.
Weighed against that kind of scorecard, how could one more book possibly matter?
Special in a way that only lost albums or missed connections truly can be.
It is undoubtedly the most famous sciencefictionbook never published.
And ithauntedHarlan physically, emotionally, and spiritually.
Joe to his friends.
To me, while I have him on the phone.
Joe says, Let me tell you a story about Harlan.
And then he does.
He tells me about Harlan Ellison trying to buy a fax machine.
How something so seemingly simple could, with the addition of Harlan, ultimately require a getaway driver.
He was the one guy you wanted with you if there was going to be a fight.
But if you were with him, then there was probably going to be a fight.
It was a self-fulfilling prophecy.
And it goes on like this for an hour, maybe more, because Joe has a thousand stories.
Joe has had an enormous career as a writer and filmmaker.
Before Dangerous Visions, I was a fan.
Afterward, I became a fanatic…
Some books, you read them, and its like swallowing fire.
Its like dropping acid for the first time or licking the wrong toad in the rainforest.
And it said that EVERYONE had that power.
Shibboleth, Joe says to me on the phone.
Because thats what Harlan was in the abstract, in his prime and after.
If you knew Ellison, you were cool.
That originalDangerous Visionswas legendary.
Joe included that one inTLDV, too.
And in talking with Harlans friends and fans, that word kept coming up: bravery.
She was a student of Harlans at the Clarion Writers Workshop in 1974.
He would become a mentor to her, and a friend.
He was a man who hated inequality, hated bullies, hated hypocrisy.
I remember most how utterly fearless he was, she says.
Joe again: Courage in writing was a necessity [with Harlan].
Everybody was scared, and many writers decided to just put their heads down and wait it out.
His work put him on Reagans enemies list, and likely Nixons.
The need to stand for something, and be true to that in the work.
And Harlan put his name on it.
I catch another fan of Harlans in the airport, coming off a delayed flight.
The language of it, he says, theenergyof it.
It just grabbed me.
Patton got to meet him, much later in life.
Like it was a foregone conclusion already.
Every year, hes sitting there and he warns a group of teenagers not to go up the hill.
But they go up anyway and they all get killed or whatever.
And now, were on, like, the 9th sequel.
No one ever listens to him and hes exhausted so he just goesBah!And waves them along.
He used to say, If youre cool, youre boring, right?
And Harlan was a lot of things, but never boring.
I ask him aboutThe Last Dangerous Visions.
About why it might be important right now.
And he answers fast, like its been on his mind.
Like hed been chewing it over in his head for a while.
I hope that people find it, he says.
I hope that they read it.
Hes right, of course.
Because thats exactly,specifically, whyTLDVmatters now.
Harlan Ellison was not a perfect man.
The man himself: flawed, brilliant, generous, maybe a little screwy.
Or a lot screwy.
And trapped by his own fears, his own illness, his own mortality.
Harlan resisted treatment for years.
But his flaws were not the measure of him.
Nor were they the beginning or the end of him.
They were just apartof him.
Harlan stories, for better or worse.
And now, in another very similar moment,TLDVcomes to warn us that the work is not done.
To remind us that the bastards are still out there, bolder than ever.
Its a good message, delivered from beyond the grave, half a century late.
And not a minute too soon.
