Nat Segaloff - A Lit Fuse: The Provocative Life of Harlan Ellison

A Lit Fuse

The Provocative Life of Harlan Ellison

An exploration with extensive interviews

by

Nat Segaloff

2017 by Nat Segaloff.

The Fuse Extinguished 2020 by Nat Segaloff.

The copyrighted works of Harlan Ellison excerpted herein are used by permission of their copyright proprietor, The Kilimanjaro Corporation, and may not be quoted out of context. HARLAN ELLISON and THE KILIMANJARO CORPORATION are registered trademarks. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, Internet posting, electronic bulletin board, or any other information storage and retrieval system without permission in writing from the Author or the Authors agent except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a critical article or review to be printed in a magazine or newspaper, or electronically transmitted on radio, television or in a recognized on-line journal, and with appropriate credit to the author, source, and publisher.

Excerpts from non-auctorial interviews, letters, and other material appear under a Fair Use Rights claim of U. S. Copyright Law, Title 17, U.S.C. with copyrights reserved by their respective rights holders.

Where Harlan Ellison used specific forms of capitalization and punctuation in his quoted writing, these have been preserved.

Additional copyright acknowledgments appear here, which should be considered an extension of this copyright page.

Many of the designations used by manufacturers to distinguish their products such as Oscar, Academy Award, Edgar, Emmy, Star Trek, Hugo Awards, Nebula Awards, and NESFA are claimed as trademarks or service marks. Where those designations appear in this book and the publisher was aware of such a claim, they contain the symbols , , or on their initial appearance. Any omission of these symbols is purely accidental and is not intended as an infringement.

Edited by David G. Grubbs

Legal counsel: Rick Katze & A. Joseph Ross

Second Edition

Trade edition - ISBN: 978-1-61037-323-4

Limited, numbered 1500 - ISBN: 978-1-61037-322-7

epub - ISBN: 978-1-61037-325-8

mobi - ISBN: 978-1-61037-008-0

Published by NESFA Press and printed in the United States of America.

NESFA Press is an imprint of, and NESFA is a registered trademark of,

the New England Science Fiction Association, Inc.

Post Office Box 809

Framingham, MA 01701-0809

www.nesfapress.org

It is my lot to wake with anger every morning,

to lie down at night even angrier.

All in pursuit of one truth that lies at the core

of every jot of fiction ever written: we are all in the same skin

but for the time it takes to read these stories I merely have the mouth.

You see before you a child who never grew up, who does not know

its socially unacceptable to ask, Who farted?

Harlan Ellison, Mortal Dreads

Introduction to Shatterday, 1980

Ive written it a hundred thousand times.

Im a blue-collar worker.

Im a writer, not an author.

Im accessible.

Harlan Ellison, interviewed

So theres this guy, his name is Ellison. Harlan Ellison.

He writes. Brilliantly.

He gives speeches. Brilliantly.

He sues people. They crossed a boundary.

He collects stuff. His house is a museum of culture, pop and otherwise.

He has several shelves full of awards.

Hes charming. Or he pisses people off. There is no inbetween.

Thats how most people know him.

Theres also the Phantom Ellison, the one that exists only as a vicarious golem, stalking through various literary communities and those who scamper to keep up. As Robert Silverberg once remarked, I admire Harlans ability to dominate a conversation, even from three thousand miles away.

The rumor mill has given Harlan Ellison a reputation so fabled, so storied and gloried, so remarkable that the real Harlan Ellison is a pale shadow by comparison.

Heres an example.

Once, as a joke, many years ago, I remarked, There is no truth at all to the rumor that Harlan Ellison and I once pushed a baby elephant down an empty elevator shaft to see if it would go thump or splat on a twenty dollar bet. Besides, its hard to get an elephant to climb stairs.

Today, decades later, I still get people asking me, So whats the truth about Harlan and the baby elephant?

There was no baby elephant.

Honest.

Its impossible to rent a baby elephant.

But stories get repeated, endlessly. It doesnt matter if theyre true or not. What matters is if theyre a good story. But the more a story gets retold, the more it gets embellished. The result? All of us are trapped inside a global game of Russian Telephone.

The real Harlan Ellison?

Ive met the real Harlan Ellison.

The first time was in 1969. I was flailing in an ocean of emotion, confused and desperate, and I needed advice. Ill skip the squalid details because this essay isnt about me, its about Harlan. For some reason, I assumed that Harlan was the only person I knew who might have some kind of a handle on how life works.

So I called him.

Aside from a few convention encounters, I was mostly just another ambitious young annoyance, but he stayed on the phone with me for the better part of an hour, talking me down, telling me what not to do and mostly just listening listening to me as if I were important enough for him to listen to.

Respect. He demonstrated a level of humanity and respect that stunned me. From that moment on, I understood that there was a part of Harlan Ellison that most people would never see. Call it Authentic Harlan.

Most people never meet that Harlan because most people only get to see Performance Harlan.

Performance Harlan is the same person as Authentic Harlan, just louder, faster, funnier, and a little more calculated. Both are passionate, but Authentic Harlan whispers. You have to listen harder.

The second time I saw Authentic Harlan, it was just a brief passing glimpse, but it was a profound moment. It was 1974, and I was story-editing a TV show called Land of the Lost. I went up to Ellison Wonderland to see if I could convince him to write a story for me. Ben Bova, another major force in SF, was also visiting.

Harlan declined to write a story, but Ben was eager to give it a try, so we sat and talked. Abruptly, Harlan got up and left. He charged upstairs to his office and almost immediately, the sound of frantic typing came pattering down to us like the illusion of rain. Ben and I both understood that when Maxwell the muse whaps you with his silver hammer, you must write or die, so we continued to block out the Bova episode for the series.

In the middle of that conversation, the typing paused. I glanced over my shoulder and saw a phantom. A strange little old man in bathrobe and slippers came shuffling out of Harlans kitchen carrying a glass of seltzer.

I didnt recognize him, I didnt know who he was, but he went back up the stairs and shortly after that, the typing resumed.

That was Authentic Harlan not wearing his Harlan suit just a little old Jewish man who could sit and type.

Shortly after that, Harlan came back downstairs. Harlan not the little old man. He handed me a three page outline for Land of the Lost. Page one. Page two. The first two acts were brilliant. Of course.