Harlan Ellison slams Mistake On The Lake
Harlan Ellison, the renowned science fiction writer of restricted growth, has accused the Cleveland Arts Prize, awarded to him for Lifetime Achievement by his home town of Cleveland, Ohio of being a fraud and a scam, apparently because Cleveland wouldn’t fork out for his travel expenses in going to collect it. I must say that does sound a bit cheap, but The Mistake On The Lake is no longer a wealthy city.
Ellison wrote ‘The City on the Edge of Forever’, the greatest ever episode of Star Trek. He shared Douglas Adams’s enthusiasm for deadlines, so much so that the producers had to lock him in a room until he finished the script. He took revenge by eating all the pot plants.
Years ago Thom Tessier and I went to see Ellison at his house in the Hollywood hills. He was a genial if slightly prickly host, but I wasn’t aware how sensitive he was about his height until he invited us into his study. Both Tessier and I are 6′ 2″, while Ellison’s study doorway was less than four feet high. Basically his idea was that we should enter on all fours, or at least on bended knee, in front of The Presence. I remembered a British Ambassador in Victorian times encountering a similar situation, so I copied him and crawled into the room backwards, saluting Ellison with my great arse first.
To his credit he found this hilarious. I was immediately distracted by his four sublime Quad Electrostatic loudspeakers, the finest ever made (unless you like bass lines) hanging from the ceiling. He was delighted I appreciated them, and we eventually parted on excellent terms.
Since then he appears to have specialised in being awkward and contentious. I hope Thom and I aren’t the reason.
May 26th, 2009 at 09:31
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