Following up on my earlier post about the limited shelf life of fame, I want to bring up one of my favorite writers (and I'm guessing many of yours): Harlan Ellison, who died in 2018. I was shocked to find out that almost none of his work is in print any more.
J. Michael Straczynski to the rescue. The long time FOH (Friend of Harlan) has edited a new collection called Greatest Hits featuring some of Ellison's best stories and I for one will be getting my copy today. As a bonus, Dangerous Visions, a much loved collection of sci-fi stories from 1967 edited by Ellison, is being reissued as well.
In a short profile of Ellison in this month's Los Angeles Magazine, Straczynski is quoted as saying that Dangerous Visions…
"…changed the whole form. Before Dangerous Visions, science fiction was safe. As a rule, it did not deal with contemporary issues or racism or anything else. They were about starships more than they were about the quiet turning of your conscience or the inner workings of the human heart."
(I can't provide a link — seems that LA Magazine doesn't have the article on-line.)
I knew Harlan a bit in the mid-'80s and I learned so much from him about how to think like a writer, to take yourself seriously as a writer. He was cantankerous and funny and brilliant and prolific and I've never met another person like him.
If you haven't read him before, you're in for a treat.
Thank you, thank you, J. Michael Straczynski.
