Unca Harlan's Art Deco Dining Pavilion

Archive - 5/28/2004 to 7/20/2004

Unca Harlan's Art Deco Dining Pavilion

Uh, sorry Abe, you get an "F" and that doesn't stand for anything gratifying or pleasurable.

Cookie actually = Cool beyond your ken, buddy o' mine. In FACT Cookie is probably the coolest most secure person who posts here next to HE.

Don't be talkin' smack about my pal, big guy-- she's revered in these parts. I'm not tryin' to be a smart ass, I'm just telling you for your own good.

Be sweet! We respond to that so warmly!
:)
Cindy

Violet monkeys are sliding down the refulgent moon as the cows watch and applaud. The clackclackclack of their hooves irritate the lemon yellow pringle tingles who flingle lit sparklers at the horned bovines who trample the rocking horse people as they flee from what they think are falling stars.

Peter Max shouts, "HUMM-HA-HUMM! HUMM-HA-HUMM!!" as the pringle tingles ruin yet another virtual painting he was slathering on the burbling LCD screen. "WHAT HO!" he shouts as he dances the fandango and tramples the melting picture.

Tumbling starfishmen sing out rainbow sprays of color, cooling down the overheated artist as they shout, "HUP-HO! HUP-HO! HUP-HO!" and toss lemon heads at the lemon yellow pringle tingles who trudge away, muttering, "Misp, misp, misp."

Brought to you by the Magic Mushroom Council.

Void where prohibited. Some restrictions may apply. Adults prohibited unless accompanied by a child. Some side effects such as a mild rash and extreme flatulence may occur.

The Mark of the Beast may be upon us.
This is a copy of an email I sent just now to some friends. As I know most of them only online, I thought it just as well I'd send it to an old book-writer I used to like, the quickest way I could find possible, and I see now he has a chat place here, and he is amongst much of his worshippers who have constructed an idol in his name. So this is addressed foremostly to you, Mr Ellison, as I hope you keeping abreast of the startling, and as I see it, utterly frightening pace of technological adoption by common folk, which most of us indeed are, including you and I:



The following video frightens me and I wish to share it to you all in an act of goodwill in the hope that you'll take the information seriously, read between the lines in concerning what it is talking about, and more importantly in what manner it is talking of it, and think on your own by the likelihood of the diabolical consequences of a microchipped population on the rise in which powerful and typically unknown persons have magnificient access to your daily lives like never before:

http://prisonplanet.tv/articles/july2004/200704abcmicrochips.htm

Thinking of me as a mad-man now, are you? Well I will make it clear now that I do not mean this email in jest, nor as hyperbole. I mean this as RED ALERT. What can I say? It is Peter Jennings himself in this video here, who addresses and concludes the topic, with utter phoniness and madness, as if he had just shown a video of some good news about dairy farms in Idaho, or a boom in the stock market, or some other such idle talk.

Well this is a serious matter. Not only are a mexican immigrants getting microchipped, and not only did weirdo conspiracy theorist whackos say this would happen some years ago, like as early in the 60s and the 70s with their blabber of Manchurian Candidates and Aliens from planet X, but now we have the TOP NATIONAL TV NEWS giving a broadcast TO THE WORLD that it is okay and wonderful and even GOOD that people are now becoming microchipped en masse. This is serious, cultural upheaval business here. We're not talking some obscure reference in the "New Age" or "Political Science" section of Barnes and Noble.

I am a Christian now, I wish to make that clear to some of those I'm sending this to who may not understand. Or at least I am trying to be one now, but by no means am I insinuating that this email is an "act of lovingkindness" exemplifying some good works or somesuch. I would've said such things even before as an atheist, or an agnostic. And my reference in the header to the Book of Revelation in our Bible is not to be regarded flippantly either.

SO ANYWAY, IF MY MESSAGE IS NOT CLEAR, HERE IS THE CAPSULE SUMMARY: DON'T YOU EVEN DARE GET ONE OF THESE CHIPS, NOR BEGIN ENDORSING THE IDEA, AND JOKING OF IT AMONG YOUR FRIENDS. THOUGH MANY CHIPS PEOPLE ARE GETTING NOW ARE JUST MEDICAL RECORDS, COURT RECORDS, VOTING RECORDS, AND OTHER RELATIVELY UNSCARY THINGS, THESE CHIPS WILL INDEED BE USED FOR HARM, FOR DEADLY HARM TO YOU, OR YOUR LOVED ONES, SOMEDAY IN THE FUTURE, WHEN THIS HAS TRANSCENEDED ITS FADDISM, AS CELL PHONES AND VIDEO GAMES HAVE ALREADY, AND JUST ABOUT EVERYONE HAS ONE OF THESE DEVICES IN THEM AND TAKES THEM FOR GRANTED. DO NOT EVEN BE ONE TO GET ONE IN THE FIRST PLACE.

Love, really, love,

Matthew

In his essay "How to Justify a Private Library," Umberto Eco answers the query and statement "What a lot of books! Have you read them all?" in different ways. One way is "I haven't read any of them; otherwise, why would I keep them here?" Eco also recommends Roberto Leydi's "And more, dear sir [or madam], many more."

I don't recall anyone ever asking me if I've read everything on my shelves. Most people just say something like "Geez, you sure have a lot of books." And I say "that's because they make my life immeasurably more enjoyable."

I love to read, and I love to collect and read books in my areas of interest: science and nature, atheism, weird fiction, mystery, history, biography, SF, and more. So, I have lots of books by Aldiss, Asimov, Ballard, Beaumont, Bloch, Bradbury, Caidin, Ramsey Campbell, Phil Dick, The Durants, Loren Eiseley, HE, Richard Feynman, Martin Gardner, Gould, Robert E. Howard, Robert Ingersoll, Shirley Jackson, S.T. Joshi, Steve King, Paul Kurtz, Lansdale, Leiber, Lovecraft, Matheson, Mencken, Bill Pronzini (Nameless Detective series), Spider Robinson, Bertrand Russell, Sagan, Sheckley, Silverberg, George H. Smith, Dan Simmons, the weird and wonderful Klarkash-ton (Smith), Robert Anton Wilson, Gene Wolfe, etcetera, ad infinitum, adios.

I've often thought that my ideal job would be as live-in caretaker of a large university or public library. If you're offering, I'm available. I don't need much space and I'd be really quiet, honest.

(Before I forget, a great essay on the value of books and reading is Harlan's "Revealed at Last! What Killed the Dinosaurs! And You Don't Look so Terrific Yourself.")

IN OTHER NEWS,

We celebrate the anniversary of the Eagle's landing on the moon. Do y'all remember what Nixon said in his congratulatory call to the astronauts?

"THIS IS THE GREATEST WEEK IN THE HISTORY OF THE WORLD SINCE THE CREATION."

Ugh. Just plain ugh.

Frank,

On what planet is that an insult? None.

Ted Nugent's board banned me. lol.

Too Many Books
Harlan's pat response (which is also Gaspar's), is no damn good in my case, since I accumulate books faster than I read them and indeed DO have many shelves of books I haven't already read.

However, I did come up with a good response to a related question, a bunch of years ago, when an idiot co-worker (one of many, unfortunately), found out I was a writer and began attacking me on the grounds that books were a waste of time. Why would anybody stick his nose in a book? Weren't people who read books nerds? The only thing worse than somebody who reads books is somebody who writes them...etc, etc, etc.

I swallowed this for a long time, refusing to respond.

Until one day, I was observed lugging around my latest reading material, and this person started in on the theory that nobody of worth reads anything.

THIS time there was a substantial audience.

Her rant ended with, "Whenever I go to somebody's home and see bookshelves all over the place, it's a great sign they don't have a life!"

"Really," I said. "Well, when I go to somebody's house and don't see any books anywhere, it's a great sign they're not worth talking to."

Exeunt.

(The main problem with this retort, I'm told by friends who read but don't accumulate, is that it assumes aliteracy on the part of those who obtain all their reading from the library...or who don't have the collecting bug that prompts them to hold on books they've already completed. And it's also true that I know some total non-readers who are nevertheless fun folks to be around. But strict accuracy was not the objective, here.) A-TC

Book lovers and questions for Harlan
The best response to the phrase "Have you read all these books?" I've yet seen or heard comes from Harlan's character Gaspar: "Hell no. What's the use in reading books you've already read?" Well, that's the gist of it anyway.

Harlan, I hate to combine questions, but I'm trying to abide by Rick's one post a day edict. First off, a couple of weeks back you recommended a great place to eat at the Marriott for those of us gathering for Dragon*Con, and I was wondering if you have ever eaten at The Varisty and what you thought of it. Also, I was browsing the Books A Million Website for titles of yours that they carried and happened upon an item called Children of the Streets, to be released in August. Is this a combination of of Memos From Purgatory/The Deadly Streets? Can you give us a taste of what this book is?

"You have too many books!"

Yep, and not enough time to read them.

"You have too many books!"

The shelves help hide the holes in my walls where lie within the bones of my ex-friends.

"You have too many books!"

Sorry, did you say something? I'm trying to finish this last chapter.

"You have too many books!"

I try to give them away, but no one I know has the intelligence to want to read.

"You have too many books!"

Yeah, thanks, so what's good on TV Land Network tonight?

"You have too many books!"

Yeah. Someday I'll learn to read.

"You have too many books!"

Those aren't books. Those are thousands of pages of bound paper. I like paper.

"You have too many books!"

Books? Did you say books? Slooowly I turned....step by step.....

"You have too many books!"

Fuck you.

-TODD

Hear, hear, on the recommendation of Tom Reamy. Brilliant stuff, though sadly not enough of it.

Damn the turdpedoes and fill your space with books


Damn straight, Georgie. Having too many books is akin to having too many good friends. What a pouchful of dark matter.

The only problem I run into with all these books (besides moving them--which I ALWAYS do myself) is duplication of titles. I haven't catalogued my library, so that is a frequent mistake; one that my bookloving friends benefit from.

Have I read them all? What the heck kind of a question is that? hell no, I only read Harlan and John D. MacDonald. (With a little gene wolfe and richard grant and jack cady and james tiptree, jr. and pkd and sturgeon and bradbury and george rr martin and raymond chandler and richard brautigan and charles bukowski and john fante and geoff cooper and caitlin r kiernan and neil gaiman and john mcphee and alan grant and joseph conrad thrown in now and again for good measure.) So kiss my asphalt proboscis.

The rest of these books?.....ballast.

And, hey, if anyone wishes to read a couple authors who Harlan adores, check out Robert Stallman and Tom Reamy.

Who was looking for the Edgeworks volume containing "Love Ain't Nothing..." and "The Beast..."? I'll help ya find a copy. I am the BookSleuth ("B.S." to my fiends). Someone gave me that book for Valentine's Day once, how cool is that?

[i've been wondering if it is bogus to swap Harlan titles here? i would never want to detract from the Man's sales. Harlan, is it kosh to let Webderlanders know that I have an extra copy of one of yours to give to a good home? forgive me if this is a dumb question, please.]


good golly! this entry has grown Rob-like appendages!

respectfully,

Neal

Smartass answer to booklover georgie
Tell them to suck your poop chute.

The only way you can have too many books is if you're struggling to keep them above water after having abandoned ship, and that's a R-E-A-L judgement call that could go either way.

-Keith

re: Science Man Blusters On!
> To experience loss, you have to lose. No delusions are allowed to mitigate the pain.

I've got a bit bleeding-heart-whatever in me and so I tend to allow people all sorts of ways of coping, or mitigating the pain...and I confess to being called on the carpet decades ago in a Boston bookstore by ah, someone who I'm sure has forgotten it, for trying to allow moral space for delusions and other bad habits. But, I agree, and I work to deny them for myself (particularly those chemical forms), because many of them do stop thought in their blunting of the experience of loss.

Still, it's a marvellous thing too to watch what the human mind will invent to protect itself. Much of our best mythologies come from dealing with death and loss; these I can admire without danger of converting. And, I think, if I keep experiencing, and thinking, and watching, I'll learn something just as marvellous that I would have missed if I'd been stopped by some premature ghost.

As a concrete example of the inventiveness of coping, I like Paul Barber's _Vampires,_Burial,_and_Death_
http://catalog.loc.gov/cgi-bin/Pwebrecon.cgi?Search_Arg=vampires%2C+burial+and+death&Search_Code=TALL&PID=24188&SEQ=20040720160503&CNT=25&HIST=1
although it probably won't impress chicks at parties--based on my reaction, and I've never been a "chick".


But! I do have a question which I thought would be safe to ask here, since I guess that some here are similarly challenged: what's a good response when friends tell you,

"You have too many books!"

(It's one thing if I've asked them to help me move them, and then the only thing I can do is smile sheepishly and thank them for helping, but sometimes it's just offered upon a visit. They're all on shelves, mostly, well, except for the one or two under my pillow for bedtime reading. The followup question of, "Have you read them all??" I think I finally have a good rejoinder for: "No, no, there's some I don't ever intend to read!")

Proteges of Harlan
Harlan,

As someone who is about to become a father for the second time, the subject of leaving a legacy is on my mind a lot lately.

While you have influenced multiple generations of writers, I was wondering if there were any writers you, and the people who post to this board, consider to be proteges of yours.

I apologize if this question has been answered in a previous posting, I searched the archives for an answer, but the closest I could find was the 1992 list of most admired writers.

Thanks,

Mark

Science Man Blusters On!
Eric,

Thank you for that complimentary e-mail. Yes, I do find the universe and reality far more beautiful than the things human beings make up out of painfully limited knowledge.

But I will tell you what scares me most: the silence that all the great ideas are falling into. No astrologer ever imagined the cosmos we have seen through the Hubble. No religioso ever imagined deep time and the endlessly varied processes of evolution.

You think believing in superstition gets you chicks? Makes them think you're the sensitive, mystical type? Well, go for it, guy. Nothing's more important than getting laid--not truth, not beauty, not justice.

You may rut as much as you like, Eric. I give you full permission. And you--in the haze of your latest orgasm--can rest easy afterward knowing that you have personally advanced civilization by your rutting. Or to quote Spenser, "Let Grille be Grille."

However, people can also love you for honesty and for poetry. Shelley was an atheist. Tell me he didn't get laid. How about all those French Symbolists and existentialists? You think Rimbaud, Sarte, and Camus didn't get laid? You mistakenly assume that participating in the vacuousness of American culture is the only way to get a girl to drop her knickers. Others have solved this problem in far better ways.

Lastly, if I may be honest. When you watch your mother waste away with colon cancer, as I did--watch her spit up coffee grounds and die weighing 56 lbs--you're just not too scared by vampires, ghosts and goblins anymore. They don't have any power over you.

Nor would I ever let the religious fantasists rob me of the sacred truth of my mother's death, nor blaspheme her passing with their vain and hollow promises of consolation.

To experience loss, you have to lose. No delusions are allowed to mitigate the pain.

Steve Dooner

again and again and again
Fifty tedious years of these snipe artists. It is truly a wonder to me that Harlan's head doesn't explode sometimes. The only thing of genuine interest to me was the timing. Harlan secures a promise from another snipe artist of some 20 years to cease and desist and low and behold, a week later two new ones take that persons place. New anonymous posters. Two more cowards with keyboards. Like frogs from swamp water they manifest.

TLDV wasn't the only hot button word. Let's try substantive and Stalin. Since Hitler comparisons are now passé and since "Abe" and "Ezra" know exactly what they are doing, by all means let's trot out the other famous despot of the 20th century famous for outliving friends and enemies alike. Ah, what clever clever swordplay. Is that you Vivian? 2002 seems just like yesterday.

As for Stephen King, I suspect if he wanted to get that story published, that is, if his FAITH in Harlan and his judgment had lapsed, I suspect he might have just enough literary pull to get that story you pine for published somewhere. Look at it this way. Now you have something to live for.

Oh yes, "substantive". Like a Hugo nomination and his 9/11 essay and his recent Modern Library work have no gravitas. You folks feel free to ante up your substantive work 10 or 15 years from now when your 70 or in the ballpark - or at play in the fields of the Lord. Whichever. I'll be waiting.

- Barney Dannelke

*laughing*
The horse, the glue.

Alright, alright - thanks for the nose wiping. I'm good now, honest. The obsequious humours have been leeched, the leeches burned, and their ashes scattered to the four winds.

>Miss the Magellantic Cloud and the rings of Saturn and pulsars and giant gaseous star factories. Miss the complexity of the chysalis, the lightning bug, the plenarian and DNA molecule.<

Like I said, boring at parties. The bluster of Science Man, which sadly never gets the chicks. Make mine witches.

And Mr. Dooner, I'm sure we could find something that might raise your hairs, out in the dead of night.

Grateful thankings
HE wrote: "You... act as if we had stood off the world's schoolyard bullies together, as pals."

And already I'm bawling here. Oh sure, it may be because I'm so overwrought that a kind word and a harsh word reduce me to the same embarrassing state.

But it's more likely because I'm in the middle of a two-year grind-down that's unlikely to arouse much sympathy--I've been looking for work (roughly) that long and, by my estimate, as a writer, HE has been engaged in that slog since before I was born, and I'm sure others of you here can outpace me--and it gives me hope to know that these storms can be weathered.

Maybe hope should never elicit tears; I don't know. But for today, that's how it is. But tears don't drown out hope, I know that for damn sure.

Tweaker
Beyond the Ali G syntax, there is a buzzword in Ezra's post that let's you know he is intent on causing some trouble, and the buzzword is TLDV.

Mark

Pick on Frank???
It was suggested that perhaps we should try beating up on Frank, as opposed to drubbing someone who steps in for a moment and says, "You suck. You're like, totally bogus. Huh-huh. Huh-huh-huh."

What are you talking about? Beating up on Frank is our local pastime. It's like throwing rocks at a rhino. He visits the Ted Nugent web site and posts criticisms and counterpoints there, with all those black helicopter pry-my-dead-fingers-from-my-truck-bomb loonies. I swear, the guy is Iron Man.

In fact, he IS Iron Man. Forget that Tony Stark guy, he's just Frank's sponsor. How about that? Frank an armored lackey of a running-dog captialist.

Learn sumthin' new every day.

Chuck

Interpreting the Sphinx Harlan

Eric et al:

I'm not sure you folks have it right. My guess is that it's not Harlan's atheism that is the literary metaphor but rather any semblance of a theistic belief that you might interpret in his works. You see, brownies and bogilies are simply a metaphor for the spooks within our own psychology. That's how its always been, and religion, gods, demons and souls are simply metaphors, whereas death is a reality.

Life would have little meaning without death, and young people would be really pissed off at all the 164 year olds still holding the jobs if there were no death.

But folks (Eric especially), I will spend any night in a cemetery, walk under any ladder and bear what curses you may wish to throw at me before I accept superstitious beliefs as valid interpretations of the universe. And I promise you, I will not to be harmed by your voodoo dolls or your magic spells--C'mon! Throw your ju ju powder at me, right now!

What saddens me is that there are enough flat earthers out there who are still afraid of the dark. Go ahead! Miss the real show. Miss the Magellantic Cloud and the rings of Saturn and pulsars and giant gaseous star factories. Miss the complexity of the chysalis, the lightning bug, the plenarian and DNA molecule.

What life after death could not be a hell! The Struldbruggs can have their immortality. I know the end will be hard, and I will fight for my last breath even when utterly immersed in the humiliation of paper johnnies, operating tables, stainless steel bed rails, feeding tubes and hideously beeping monitors.

I imagine the long dark look will only get more bitter as the years go on. But a sterile heaven where everything is perfect and nothing grows, where we meet again Aunt Midge without her alcohism, Granddad without his wife-beating and cousin Chester without his weird sexual proclivity would be a sad waste of eternity. I can think of nothing less human.

So go to heaven all you saints. I wish it on you. I like life.

Steve Dooner

Keith Cramer


Right fucking on, man.

laughing my ass off

respectfully,

Neal

P.S. For what it's worth (not a gah-damn thing) I read Harlan's "One Life..." at a pivotal moment in my teens. Discovering that and a world of other great stories and essays and etc. has made all, and I mean ALL, the difference. Hyperbole does not become me.

Repent!
I'm still in paroxysms of laughter. I initially sought out this site out of mere curiousity. A co-worker had recently read an article that mentioned Mr. Ellison and asked if I had ever heard of him (I, in turn, loaned her my copy of "The Essential Ellison"). A couple of days later, Mr. Ellison answered a question I had concerning the editing of "Repent, Harlequin." It came full-circle today. I'm a counselor at a drug and alcohol treatment facility which is blessed by an incredible library. Unfortunately, most of our clients don't read much, preferring to spend their off-hours drooling in front of MTV or BET or reruns of "Cops." However, I do have one (very young) client who loves to read and has (blessedly) taken full advantage of our lovely library. He approached me today, eyes sparkling. "Hey, Todd! I came across a great book the other day!" My interest was piqued; although this 19 year-old is a drug addict, he's very bright and has good taste. "It's by some guy named Harlan Ellison, and it had a great story in it called, "Repent, Harlequin!" Said the Ticktockman." I'm still laughing so hard I can hardly see my monitor...

Tons of Tone

Harlan, as one you have chastised in the past, I thought your TONE came through loud and clear and with a raised brow and a swat to the back of the head. (I didn’t wash my hair for DAYS!)

ALL:

The board has been good for laughs lately, what with all the knee-jerk attacks and name-calling. It makes me think back to the unhalcyon days of elementary school, when playground bullies roamed the yard and picked on those of us who were more successful dealing with our peers. Singled out by success.

If I want to get a rise out of Harlan, I’ll ask him a question. I’ll try to ask him a question he’s never had before. Like “Hey, Harlan, do you experience weekends differently than everyone else?” Or something. But to come to the man’s dining pavilion and behave like an untrained dog is so rude it’s actually funny. Not funny in a “Ha-Ha-someone-farted-in-the-Pavilion” kind of way, but funny in a “Hey, look at the social deficient” kind of way. Like staring at a bad car wreck of a human.

Once you stop laughing you have to wonder who breeds these beasts. And then you ask: am I any more enlightened than I was prior to reading the comment? Or was I just entertained? All too often, it’s the later. At least after reading Rob or Frank or Cindy or Dorie or Eric or Brian or DTS or Elijah or Washu or ATC or Todd I feel rewarded, frustrated, enlightened or …well, you get the picture. I can’t go on enough in praise of those whose contributions here are worth reading. And then we get the human detritus, like a turd washed up on the beach. I just walk away. I do not touch it and I do not acknowledge it. It will not ruin the brief time I spend here.

-Keith

>Harlan Ellsion is not only conservative but believes in life after death as well<

Good for him. Although I'm guessing Ellison was speaking metaphorically, it's worth noting that the older you get, the more you realize that those precious little rational certainties that we all bored people with at parties are not so certain anymore. Ghosts, evil, bad karma, vengeful gods, and other assorted demons in our science-haunted world start to look possible, at least as possible as Einstein's General theory.

You can write it off as burbles from your bicameral brain, Ezra, but spend a night or two alone in a graveyard, or some ruined house were someone was murdered, and see if you ain't visited by something, even if it's just your own sense of dread.

Cookie = defending someone she admires, which is not the same thing as "defensive". A lot of us do that, Abe. Sure we all know that of everyone here, Harlan is least in need of a champion, but it's kind of a reflex. I expect Cookie jumped in and said something because she would have felt remiss if she hadn't. It's the thought that counts :)

Well, Cookie, CJ, I don't see how Ezra is "skewering" HE. He obviously admires him enough to be familiar with the Dangerous Vision books and wants to see more things published by this author. I think he meant something substantive, not the odd magazine piece. As for the political thing Frank Church goes on and on about leftism & liberalism so much that one would get the impression that HE is the reincarnation of Joseph Stalin. So why not pick on Frank? Same goes for atheism. I'm familiar with the citations Ezra brings up and they were not "literary" and if they were then HE's "atheism" could be said to be "literary" as well. As for The Last Dangerous Visions, this book was supposed to be published YEARS ago, so it is not "erroneous" to think it never will be published.

Cookie = Defensive & Insecure.

Que?
Who out there said "Solaris" was better than the Russian version? My God that was one of the dullest remakes I've ever seen, I tried to watch it on a plane and looked out the window instead. At least I could sit throught the Russian one.
And "Bad Santa"? Nearly puked. Skewering beloved icons does not make for cleverness.

I'm glad to see I'm not the only one who didn't like "Blade Runner". Put me to sleep. Dull! Dull! Dull!

And I liked "Van Helsing"! Sue me!

-Steve

I know it's wrong to feed a troll with attention, but the first line of "Ezra's" screed belies an idiot who didn't *even* read halfway down the Pavilion's first page. I see that TODAY (today!) DTS points out that a NEW (new!) HE story will be published in a newly revived AMAZING STORIES.

After the first sentence, which was so erroneous as to be laughable, I just skimmed through to see what the rest of the paragraph said. It was more laughable. People, of course, don't have to fit neatly into "liberal" or "conservative" categories. Many people who don't literally believe in "the other side" make literary references to such.

And why does it matter anyway? I honestly don't understand people who seem to make skewering Harlan Ellison (or any other person they don't *really* know) their hobby. It's pathological. If not sick, it's just plain lame.

There was a similar post to this a few days back and I let it pass, but the one today was just so stupid I had to respond.

"Ezra"=putz. Now go away.

hey ezra
what? is there some kind of point in your post that i am missing here?

who cares if harlan beleives in the afterlife or not? what difference does it make?

same goes for harlan as a conservative or liberal. until he becomes a lawmaker, his political leanings have no bearing on anyone's lives.

as for his creative juices...i wouldn't count on them being dried up.

Harlan Ellison hasn't published any thing new in a long time has his creative juices dried up? I really want to read the Stephen King story "Squad D" that's trapped inside The Last Dangerous Visions manuscript, apparently forever. Harlan Ellsion is not only conservative but believes in life after death as well. Read the dedication to the book Mind Fields or Harlan Ellison's Dream Corridor, when he's ruminating about his friends who have died recently. "They're waiting for us on the otherside" he says.

Frank moving to Phoenix?

Say it ain't so, Joe! Say it ain't so. I knew I was in trouble when Napalitano was voted in as Governor less than one month after my arrival.

Debbie has her mace ready, and I'm checking my ammo for expiration dates.

-TODD

Bolivia just nationalized its natural gas industry. I expect an American Coup any minute now.

------------

Harlan, that's a big chunk of change you gave back fella. There aint no way in hell this man is conservative. Conservatives usually sleep with their change purses under their pillow at night.

You are a good man Mr. E.

------------------

Todd, I may be moving to Phoenix. Yes, your best buddy will be within earshot of you and the lovely Debbie. No, don't reach for that trusty hand gun, I aint there just yet. Hold on, just wanted to give you advance warning. Maybe we can go out for a drink or something. Kisses.

Maybe I will give you a Chomsky book as a gift.

>the coming war against the rich

K.B.I.S.F.B.

M. Ellison:

Since apologies seem to be the theme of the day, I'm sorry.

As to the reason, well, your choice. Please us this apology as you will, to abet some small or large misdeed on my part anon or hence. There will be no refunds or exchanges, all apologies must be used as is.

Rose: Think of my interpretation of your comments as this; often, when an outsider comes into our neck of the woods, especially from more urban settings, there's often this air of condescencion that pervades their contact with us, almost as if they are surprised that we have progressed to the point of mastery of light and fire. I'm serious, it does happen.

Now, out of politeness, we don't take too harshly to this, but size up the visitor with a shrug, a laugh, and the comment; "Don't mind us, we're just iggerant backwoods folk.".

Their future treatment depends on how much they laugh and agree with us.

As for "Bladerunner", there was no prejudgment of the film, at least as much of memory serves (the film was released in 1981, if I recall). In fact, I do believe I was looking forward to it, especially under the new title. I thought that the efforts of the director of "Alien" to create a possible fusion of Dick's novel with themes of Burroughs would really trigger something esoteric, perhaps even a more daring interpretation. I was sadly diappointed at what I got; a simple "hunt the androids" detective picture, garishly clothed in rain, garbage and neon.

As to the larger issue of "I, Robot", "Do Androids..." and other attempts at SF cinema adaptation (a fine film in its own right) I've got precious little problem with directors and writers taking works and reinterpreting them. Hell, I was astounded that Cronenberg actually made a work out of "Naked Lunch" that was a comprehensible narrative, let alone a fascinating look at the process of creativity and intellect as perversion and taboo. Interesting, considering Cronenberg's next film "Crash" as a near perfectly faithful adpatation of the Ballard novel.

The concern for me is whether or not the interpretation brings something of interest to the tale, rather than feed the money mill of Hollywood. I've yet to hear anything about "I, Robot" that indicates it is any better than "The Matrix", "Hulk" or "Independence Day"; just mindless, predictable popcorn films. In my case, considering I'm paying not only for the film, but twenty bucks in gas to go see it and the cost of a babysitter, the cost of dinner, etc., I do demand more.

BTW all,do rent or buy "The Leopard". Mel and I loved it.

Scott

Harlan's new short-short in "Amazing Stories"
ALL: Harlan's got a new short-short in the forthcoming, premiere issue of "Amazing Stories" (which is, I think, their 6th or 7th rebirth). The issue number is 603, and it is dated September (it should be on the stands in August). It's a big, slick magazine and the cover of the issue sports everyone's current favorite superhero, Spiderman. The title of Harlan's short-short (wait for it) is: "Loose Cannon or Rubber Duckies From Space: A thrilling two-part serial of exactly 100 words each." Neil Gaiman contributed an introduction and the artwork (by Jim DiBartolo) is perfect.
HARLAN: Loved the new story. It is (dare I say it?) amazing.
--Dorman

ROSE & ELIJAH:

What I most lament as regards posting these replies, is that neither of you can get the TONE of what I'm saying. Particularly when a sincerity, a gentleness, is the subtext I'm striving for.

Each of you, in your way, has reacted to my responses as if I were somehow offended. Not so. It is just my way, to eschew lachrymose and pro forma drooling. I tend to affect a Lollipop Guild street urchin toughness in my replies, to prevent others from toadying. But it takes MUCHO MUCH actually to piss me off. A Russian lady did it recently. But neither you nor Elijah came anywhere near. And absolutely not-so as regards Rose and her conveyance of the David Silver mot. My reply was intended seriously lighthearted. I did not think you rude, I did not rank him a dolt. You are overthinking this. Everything is copacetic, and I would hope your first venture into dialogue here has seemed neighborly enough for you to soar unencumbered for future exchanges.

As for Elijah, kiddo, loosen up. You asked a question that seemed simple to you, a few words: but like most questions that can be asked in a few words, the PROPER, the uSEFUL answer requires a lot more work. Well, I'd done that work several times in this outpost, over a period of years, and I may have been a squidge testy the day I first replied to you, and I advised you to go check out the archive. Then, somehow, you must've missed that reply, and you came back and hit me a second time; and by then I was otherwise inclined, and you were a gnat I had thought packed its duffle and migrated to Costa Rica or somewhere. So I gave a mildly snappish answer, suggesting a second time that you go find someone to help you with the archive, where the answer to your question lies in fulsome perfection.

Now, here you are, back again; no wiser as regards the ORIGINAL query, but dragging your ass in unnecessary apologia. So I have to take the time to balm you and pat your head and tell you I am NOT pissed at you, annoyed by you, hateful toward you, or pretty much ANYthing negative toward you, Elijah. But we manly studly guys shouldn't have to keep wiping each other's nose. Same goes for the rest'a ya.

Just stop beating this cayuse. It's glue, already.

And that does go for the rest of you. I'll LET YOU KNOW if I've got a bone stuck in my craw. Until then, shoot off your faces any way you feel like. How many times, in how many ways, must I say that?

Yr. pal, Harlan

the penitent, back from the archives...
...Mine eyes cry out for cold compresses.

Hi all - I've got to try and to clear my name. When Unca Harlan was kind enough to cast his gaze my way I was obscurely referential and then too hastily deferential, so nothing's really come of our exchange beyond a sense that I've irritated our good host. I'd like to at least affirm that I wasn't out to waste his time with redundancy or idle queries. I can only hope this attempt to rebuff my status as a non-observant ingrate won't backfire and paint me as a solypsistic buffoon.

April 7th was a long time ago, and that's the day I asked my question the first time 'round. I don't think it's been answered, but rather than require anyone else to dig through the archives I'll summarize that original post in the next paragraph. Incidently, I certainly don't think Harlan's obligated to answer me, and if any of you good forum folks know of a time he's addressed this sort of thing feel free to point me in that direction. Or just chime in with your own two cents if you're so moved:

Harlan: After seeing you with Gaiman and Davis at MIT, I got a chance to speak with you but was stricken with fanboy lockjaw and so said little of consequence. I wanted to thank you for the rare virtue of being pissed off all the time, because I believe it stems from the unrelentingly high standards you have for humanity. I feel like I have those standards and that reaction, too - the world makes me restless and disgusted and furious and joyous, though I worry that one day I'm going to forget people's potential to be more than they are. So the question at the heart of my question is, "What can I do to keep from giving up?" But I know you can't speak for me, so I turn the question around: "What's kept you going lo! these many years in the face of a world so full of crap?"

Pleas for personal validation sound pathetic, so permit me to narrow this down a little. I'm an aspiring scribbler, but I am the only person among my otherwise beloved friends who writes - so when it comes to feeling low and wondering if I'm wasting my time, I'm on my own. Harlan does not exist to be my literary Ganesh; I don't expect him to remove all doubts and obstacles. I'm just looking for an outside voice, no matter what it says, and I'm looking here because Harlan holds a great deal of weight with me.

Eh, so anyway. Those are my cards out on the table. Appy polly loggies to thee and thine if it's been naught but wasted time.

To Rose, who wrote:

"In answer to Brian Siano, who wrote: "I got to do Novels, which meant I got to praise...Lois McMaster Bujold... I kept waiting for someone to write something that would truly ASTONISH me."

I'm sorry, but I don't think ANYTHING written by Lois McMaster Bujold fits the definition of "astonishing". Just the opposite, I find her work utterly boring. Paper thin characterizations, predictable plotting, juvenile settings and situations. I've read six of her novels, including two Hugo winners, so I've given it a fighting chance. I know she has quite an active fan following, and plenty of ballot box stuffing goes on for her, but what's the fascination? Brian, I'm not looking to debate, but I'd honestly like you to tell me. What is so fabulous about her work? What makes it better than the rest? What am I missing?! Thanks."

Well, Rose, one thing you're missing is a sense of context: nowhere did I say that Bujold's work is "astonishing," and dragging disparate phrases of mine together doesn't make it so. I said I praised her book, and I said that there was little in the nominees which I found "astonishing." It's difficult to see how this equates to "Bujold's book is astonishing." (And since I wrote that I kept _waiting_ for astonishment, doesn't that imply that I never _got_ it, even from Bujold?) So I'd strongly recommend developing the habit of reading closely and reporting accurately.

But if you want a defense of Bujold, here it is. I normally don't enjoy her style of fantasy. But, I'd agreed to read the Hugo nominees, so I gave her her day in court. And I was pleasantly surprised. Her characters weren't romance-novel mannequins; they had some depth to them. There were some genuinely clever plot twists that didn't seem out of left-field, and they flowed naturally from the fantasy-world she'd sketched out. (I also admired the fact that her heroine was middle-aged, and _NOT_ a magically-talented Britney waif.) I wouldn't call it a classic, and I'm not likely to read more of Bujold's stuff except as a change of pace from my regular tastes. But in these respects, _Paladin of Souls_ was better than three of the other Hugo nominees.

Now, you may wonder; given _your_ dislike of Bujold's work, were the other Hugo nominess really worse? Apart from Dan Simmons' _Ilium_, which I thought was better, I think I can explain why the other three were worse in important respects. (I posted similar comments here months ago, but I don't mind spewing more opinion boluses.)



Charles Wilson's _Blind Lake_ wasn't a bad book. Wilson has a terrific prose style, with a knack for poetic observation. But he really didn't have much of a story going on here; it was sort of like reading Michael Crichton's _Sphere_, only Wilson's a better writer. If he had a better plot, he'd be fabulous.

Robert Sawyer's _Humans_ wasn't very good, either. The plot involves a parallel earth where Neanderthals dominate, and the establishment of a tunnel-bridge-thing through which we visit each other. Biggest problem-- apart from there not being much of a story-- is that Sawyer's Neanderthals are, basically, uninteresting. They're well-adjusted, bisexual, and live by decently Green politics, and the main Neanderthal spends his time being shocked at how violent and gun-addicted and polluting we humans are. What do you call bad preachiness when the _critic_ is a straw man?

And Charles Stross's _Singularity Sky_ was just terrible, for reasons I outlined in my previous note. If you want a more detailed discussion, check the archives here. I think I vented about it before.

Tales to Astonish
Reading the magazines on a monthly basis, I encounter a number of stories by folks other than The Usual Subjects which irritate me by NOT making it onto the ballots at year's end. So it's not that the year was bad; it's that the nominations often reflect the popularity of authors and not the worth of stories.

An apology to Harlan; a question; replies for Scott & Brian...

In answer to Harlan, who wrote: "If I have any cavil with anything in your post, it would be that "he shits like the rest of us, kid" may not be the sagest response to a forensic debating assertion of Recourse to Authority. Reducing everyone's credentials, no matter how lofty or minuscule, to a matter of defecation, pretty much puts every creature that ever walked the Earth on the same level as Eleanor Roosevelt, Albert Einstein, Savanarola, and Pliny the Elder."

Harlan, I must apologize for dashing off such a misleading quote without providing the MUCH needed surrounding context. What David Silver said was in no way intended to reduce your credentials, or further imply that ANYBODY's credentials could be so haphazardly dismissed! You don't even know the man and here I've made him seem to you as a simple intellectual thug! David himself used to repeatedly drill into the nonfiction writers in his workshops that a quote taken out of context was the mother of rhetorical irrelevance and misinterpretation. Yet here I did it myself! I'm sorry, that quote had a LOT of backing context, and it was hilarious in the moment of that context, but I didn't realize until reading your response tonight how utterly stupid it sounded by itself. Like a rebellious child in a christian catechism class, screwing up his angry little face and demanding of the teacher, "Did Jesus pee like the rest of us?!" Please understand, that was NOT the intention. Rather than sticking my foot deeper into my mouth by trying to reconstruct the context and make the quote more palatable, let me just say that in the flow of David's conversation it was VERY evident that he holds you in the highest regard yet wanted us to realize that any author, no matter how great or decorated, would logically expect their work to be a matter of debate and occasionally speculative revision. The better the work, he believes, the more it evokes such a response because of its very success. So when I questioned his own personal "rewrite" of an important transitional juncture in your screenplay, he humorously reminded all of us (through the spontaneous uttering of that quote, which was honestly quite funny and innocent in the middle of all the surrounding context) that you were not some sort of god on the mount who was uniquely immune to such speculation, AND you wouldn't expect to be treated like one. Heaven help me, I hope I cleared that up. Here it is, the first time I've ever left a message on this forum, and I actually get a response from you, but I learn I've insulted you AND misrepresented another person through the careless use of a single quote. Once again, I sincerely apologize to you, and to poor David if he ever sees this!

On another note, one night in David's workshop many years ago he played for us an audio tape from a 1970's convention where you spoke about one of your stories. You had submitted the work to Playboy, but the editor sent it back for revision, insisting that you were not telling the "truth" of the emotional impact of the story. You said you realized there was indeed a lack of sincerity or integrity in your handling of the material, that you were avoiding the wounds of your own personal experience, yet THAT was what the story was really about. So you sweated through the horrors of revisiting those emotions, finished the rewrite, and Playboy published it as "All the Birds Come Home to Roost". After speaking about the story, you do a fabulous, and chilling, job of reading it aloud. David used this recording to reinforce an important interpretation of the concept that writers must write what they know. In this case, it was an issue of authorial honesty and integrity. The entire workshop was mesmerized by your talk about and reading of the manuscript. Do you recall when and where you gave this particular talk? Are recordings still available somewhere? And did this story or editorial encounter represent a change in your narrative vision or creative process? Thank you.

**********

In answer to Scott, who wrote: "Nicely backhanded insult, to both the denizens and the patron author. I rarely get condescended to in such polite fashion. I can't think too much of your assertions over "Bladerunner", however. If you could stand a little "rampant negativity and pseudo-intellectual posturing", I'd happily discuss why I still abhor the reduction of Dick's masterful tale of entropic dehumanization and paranoia into what is little more than an A-B-C plotted pulp detective story."

Scott, there was no insult intended, for either the entirety of the "denizens" here or the "patron author". If for some reason you personally identified with any aspect of my message that led you to believe you were a target of such an insult, I apologize. Regarding your opinions of "Bladerunner", no, thanks, I read them thoroughly when you first expounded them, and I think it is better to simply say that I respectfully disagree and let that dead horse die again. I have no interest in beating it! However, I do think your views are more expressions of disppointment that the movie did not meet your own preconceived expectations, rather than that the movie was inherently bad. As such, you were preadapted to "abhor" it, no matter how good a film it may have been. By the way, I made no "assertions" about the movie. My comments were not attempts to state universal truths, but simply expressions of my own values and opinions. Based on those, I thought "Bladerunner" was a wonderful film. There are no grounds for debate here. I liked it for what it was, and you disliked it because it was not something else. We will never agree, and that's just fine with me. However, there will certainly be many other films that we will both enjoy, and I would MUCH rather share those views of delight and discovery.

**********

In answer to Brian Siano, who wrote: "I got to do Novels, which meant I got to praise...Lois McMaster Bujold... I kept waiting for someone to write something that would truly ASTONISH me."

I'm sorry, but I don't think ANYTHING written by Lois McMaster Bujold fits the definition of "astonishing". Just the opposite, I find her work utterly boring. Paper thin characterizations, predictable plotting, juvenile settings and situations. I've read six of her novels, including two Hugo winners, so I've given it a fighting chance. I know she has quite an active fan following, and plenty of ballot box stuffing goes on for her, but what's the fascination? Brian, I'm not looking to debate, but I'd honestly like you to tell me. What is so fabulous about her work? What makes it better than the rest? What am I missing?! Thanks.

Richard Shaver and Ray Palmer
Dear Mr. Ellison,

Am I correct in understanding that years ago you had some interaction with Ray Palmer or Richard Shaver? Did you ever submit work to Palmer? Have you written about them anywhere? I may write a book about Shaver--I'd be very interested in any thoughts you have about those guys or their milieu. (I realize this is a topic from left field. For anyone reading this who doesn't know, Ray Palmer was the editor of the first fanzine, editor of "Amazing Stories" during the 1940s, and the man largely responsible for the popular idea of Flying Saucers. At Amazing, he published stories by Shaver--marketed as "The Shaver Mystery"--that claimed that the world is controlled by sadistic creatures living inside the earth.)

Thank you.

I, Robot, and other Sf films
I haven't seen the film yet, and it may be one of those whose release on DVD will be the viewing occasion. Even if I hadn't read Harlan's script, the previews don't make it look like something for which I'd shell out ten dollars. (_Slate_ has a nifty essay on how the film goes against the themes in Asimov's original work.)

Anyway, I doubt it'd be as fine a science-fiction film as _Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind_, which, I've said before, was the closest to an actual Phlip K. Dick novel that's ever made it to the screen. Unless something truly brilliant comes out in the next six months, I'd give _Eternal Sunshine_ the Hugo.

I've been thinking about this a lot lately, mainly because this past Friday, the Philly SF society's Hugo panel gave its report. I got to do Novels, which meant I got to praise Dan Simmons and Lois McMaster Bujold, explain why Robert Sawyer and Robert Charles Wilson shouldn't get the award, and why Charles Stross may be one of the worst SF writers I've ever come across.

But I plowed through the novellas, novelettes and short stories as well. Was this a bad year, gang? Because there was precious little that really hit me as a major, intense, original, or truly compelling piece of work. There were fine stories here and there. Walter Jon Williams had a neat thriller about a plague that cures world hunger, with a nasty twist at the end, that I found genuinely satisfying. James Patrick Kelly had another about a smart house with some truly baroque features that worked really well. Neil Gaiman had a neat Holmes/Lovecraft pastiche that had a genuinely original take on the legend (especially compared to the others in the Holmes/Lovecraft anthology).

But beyond that, well, the stories just struck me as the products of a slow year. Some were well written, but didn't surprise or astonish me. Take "The Empire of Ice Cream" by Jeffrey Ford, or "The Tale of the Golden Eagle" by David Levine. Both begin with a wonderful story idea, both demonstrate evocative writing (and synesthesia sort of demands good, evocative writing), but the endings are as much anti-surprise as one could imagine. ("Into the Gardens of Sweet Night," another richly-written fantasy, just sort of _ends_.)

Mike Resnick's "Robots Don't Cry" was a decent, sentimental Asimovian piece, but it wasn't anything special. Michael Swanwick's "Legions of Time" starts promisingly, but turns more and more incoherent, and by the end I wondered if Stross had hacked Swanwick's word processor. "The Empress of Mars" read like good Heinlein, but the story could just as well have been set in the 1849 gold rush. "Walk in Silence" was either a Star Trek episode (the other panelists' opinion) or furry porn without the porn (my opinion).

But really, the bottom of the barrell was Charles Stross. I'd thought _Singularity Sky_ was a dreadful mess. Remember that Monty Python sketch about the playwright whose plays were filled with train schedules? Charles Stross is like that: he'll rattle off volleys of big-time SF ideas, but there's no dramatic impact. Cumulatively, it reads like word salad.

His characters are like _bad_ Heinlein. The bad characters are blunt-minded bureaucrats with all the imagination of a Czech employment officer. The beroes are are competent engineers or kickass babes, and because they always have some nanotech-quantum-whatever trick up their sleeves, they tend to stand around, make ironic comments about the doofuses around them, and make their escape quickly.

"Nightfall" is even worse. It takes place almost entirely in a virtual reality construct, among computer recreations of people's minds, so the entire Universe basically runs by TCP/IP. And since it's virtual reality-- with the hero characters able to "hack" it arbitrarily-- the story amounts to a long argument about Unix system protocols. (The same thing happens to Verner Vinge's _The Cookie Monster_. The characters get an Email, and deduce from its content (and other clues) that that they're virtual people in a virtual simulation. They also deduce that they'll be rebooted the next day and forget everything they've figured out.)

As David Cross put it in another context: I'd rather listen to my only child's death rattle than read another Charles Stross book.

But in summary, I was pretty disappointed. I liked doing the work of reading the stuff, and evaluating it, but I kept waiting for someone to write something that would _truly ASTONISH me_. And with the volume of SF and fantasy published in any given year, you'd think that there'd be more than two novels and maybe three or four shorter works that managed to do this.

THE MANIFESTO -- CLIP & SAVE
Susan and I are well into the process of returning everyones' KICK contributions (if they want 'em). Turned out to be an immense chore, just the mechanics of it.

First, the message I wanted to include on the double-postcard just wouldn't fit. Oh, the actual information fit just fine; but no matter how carefully I phrased the point that we were not trying to sleaze out of paying back every cent by guilt-tripping anyone, well, it just didn't seem STRONG enough. I needed all of you, and all of the members of HERC, and all casual droppers-in, to really really REALLY know that I'm happy as a bug in a bagel to repay your goodness and support with full remittance.

So, well, it meant writing a longer note than would fit on the card. So we did it up as a separate flyer, with the return card and its choices, in an envelope. (Also, because Susan neeeded to check on a lot of 1/2/3/4-year-old addresses.)

That means over 300 separate envelopes. Anyone who put in a grand or more, I didn't want to give them a chance to be noble; so we're returning all of Fred Pohl's and Anne McCaffery's and Kevin Anderson's and Janet Asimov's and you and you and you, all of your money. Looks to be about 82 grand going out.

It'll take us a week or two. But we're on it. Keep watching the skies! Or the mailbox, whichever is more low-carb and closer.
--------------------------------------- AND ---------------------

I figure, as long as I'm here, and I haven't done it as I said I would, permit me formally to thank you. All of you as a dear and succoring gestalt; and each of you individually as a stand-up mensch.

You simply cannot know how much your contributions and goodwill stood us in noble stead. I know you have an inkling of the opprobrium and meanness of spirit this crusade brought down on me -- even now, even after we won -- but unless you had been the much-vaunted "fly on the wall" for four years, you could not even begin to comprehend how distasteful and unrelenting has been the shitrain. But, as I expected it, I was able to weather it. In fact, it was a lot harder on my sweet honey Susan; she just ain't used to people behaving that badly, that randomly.

But every time I was feeling battered and sad and just ready to take the gaspipe, one or another of you would send ten bucks, or a sweet message, or a card. And though I am loath to engage in sentimentality, for the most part as bogus as Bush flagwaving, I need to make it clear to you, as a gestalt and as individuals...

We likely would have made it, notwithstanding...

But a lot less easily, a lot less supportedly, a lot less comradely, a lot less with the retention of our sanity. You have been just peaches, all of you. And I am in your debt. You overlook my vast store of flaws and foolishness, and act as if we had stood off the world's schoolyard bullies together, as pals.

You have my, and Susan's, unfettered gratitude.

Respectfully, Harlan

!!!!
Listened to the NPR report (and the much lengthier Ellisonian comments that accompanied it), and must comment on the scariest reference --

-- the revelation that the same screenwriter is tackling THE FOUNDATION TRILOGY next.

Dear Rose:

I see no reason why anyone here would attack your opinions, nor David Silver's opinions. They seem perfectly acceptable to me.

If I have any cavil with anything in your post, it would be that "he shits like the rest of us, kid" may not be the sagest response to a forensic debating assertion of Recourse to Authority. Reducing everyone's credentials, no matter how lofty or minuscule, to a matter of defecation, pretty much puts every creature that ever walked the Earth on the same level as Eleanor Roosevelt, Albert Einstein, Savanarola, and Pliny the Elder.

As a hopeless Elitist, I'd have to look askance at that one.

Apart from that glibness, which maybe shouldn't have impressed you as much as it seems it did, I guess we'll never know if you're right or not about how well MY version of Asimov would've done, because the Proyas/Will Smith version got made, and mine didn't. So you can surmise to your heart's content, without, I hope, anyone here going after you.

Respectfully, dear Rose, yr. pal, Harlan

Thou Canst Judge Yonder Flick Before Seeing

J L W,

"Damn I admire you Eric Martin"

An epiphany is important and I'm very happy Eric has brought such change in your life. But before we're all asked to make Eric our Great Shepherd, let me offer a few points for your scrutiny.

First of all, if you commit yourself to see EVERY movie before making SOME type of judgement on it you better have one helluva budget to cover those tickets and rentals or you'll be singing "Pennies from Heaven" at the welfare office. Not to spoil the new bonding you have with Eric, but there ARE ways to make a fairly confident call on what a movie has in mind - at least with SOME movies - without our need to see it. You HAVE to acquire some sense of where you want to risk your money and you can do it with SOME confidence.

In a landscape of movies that copy each other in style and little substance, it becomes quite easy to spot the slick, safe formulas that have proven successful staples of major studio films (and Indies trying to play it safe as well; plenty of rip-offs in that crowd). To detect the predictable, condescending shit, it helps to have background information. If you'd been keeping up on the "making of", fer instance, and you have some knowledge about the people behind a production, their credit history, their philosophy about content, and whether or not they'd habitually pushed for an easy buck, your guess about the outcome for this new flilck will have been sound. We KNOW an intelligent 'I, Robot' script had been discarded. If you know what this signifies in Hollywood, when finally a movie comes out sporting the same title, you know by historical pattern a formula cash-in has replaced the original property. Also, the previews, believe it or not, often - not ALWAYS, mind you but OFTEN - give us clear clues as to how "safe" the movie is going to be, the degree to which it will pander. The uniqueness of the images and editing style can tell you a lot. My feeling has come to be if I see lotsa speeding cars in a preview and get these generic "tin can" explosions on the track, and splices of cliche dialogue, THAT'S a movie I'm not going to pay for. I KNOW it's going to be predictable, pandering, condescending shit. And I can tell you, there has been no exception I can recall where my prediction had been wrong: reviews - if that's what you want to gauge it by - would echo by-and-large precisely what I thought the movie was going to be (examples off the top of my head include PEARL HARBOR, INDEPENDENCE DAY, ARMAGEDDON, THE PUNISHER). When you recognize the elements in flicks from practically every other movie you've seen, you can "sniff" out the movies you'd best not risk your cash on.

Although I've had it with critics, they do serve ONE practical purpose if you use them properly as a resource in order to save your money. When a film is released I tend to stick with the same critics, the ones I consider more substantive. I'll skim ALL the reviews to look for common observations, pro or con. I am not trying to find out if these critics LIKED the movie - since it's all subjective bullshit opinion - so much as whether or not it does what I want a movie to do for me. I look for criticism like cliche lines and performances, the same action scenes we've seen everywhere else, weak narrative and character development, implausible characterization, flat dramatic pacing, a stupid premise, and so on. I consider any of these points sound and cogent. Any movie that takes these knocks I'll either avoid or rent sometime when I'm in the mood for something stupid and campy (I did that with EVENT HORIZON). So, ideally, that's what critics are for. You need SOME kind of radar to know where to risk your cash.

Speaking for myself, I've studied film since my early teens with a desire to one day MAKE films (I'm one of these freaks, though, who jump between drawing, in which I've had pronounced skill since the age of six, photography, animation, and writing; probably because of powerful subconscious connections, I am viscerally obsessed with images - at times to the point of distraction). I see film as a medium and I usually watch films in this spirit. My background has sharpened my eye so that, for example, I can recognize camera styles - sometimes even distinct editing (montage, Steenbeck non-linear, cross-cutting, etc) - and often tell you who made the movie without having seen the credits (OR whose style they're copying). I can also tell when a director is evolving or just "losing it", or is just in it for the easy buck (the Michael Bays of the world). This, and knowing ample film history, has enabled me to fairly often assess a flick before its release with the confidence of a metal detector, and ferret out the losers. Of course, that's based on what I, myself, like to see. There are plenty of fuckin' crappy flicks that raked in big box office, no matter HOW bad they were (I learned from experience by eventually renting some of these and regretting it big time; now, I don't do that so often).

You don't have to be into it THAT much, of course. You only need to know what YOU want in a film. Then you'll know what to look by way of b.g. data and word-of-mouth. On the other hand, if your standards aren't particularly THAT rigorous and "formula" doesn't bother you, by all means, Eric's is probably the way to go. My argument is, before giving Eric the Metal of Valor, you should consider the question in more detail.

Frank:

"Rob, ya cyborg, let the man speak for himself. "

Replies in no conscious order:

1) I think you realize that's not in my nature. You should know better than that. I don't let NOBODY speak fer himself.
2) I haven't a single mechanical part attached to my body. I am an all-natural, god-spawned dynamo, out-Narcissusing Narcissus.
3) I sent Frisco one of the files I have on you so he'll understand the implosion he's dealing with.

Just one question, M. Ellison, regarding the NPR piece. I'm wondering if you felt that stating your side of the experience of working to get a much more Asimov-inspired version of "I, Robot" was adequately expressed in the report. My own perception is that you were edited to little more than a sound bite, one that made you sound somewhat like an impertinent jackass.

If past experience has been any judge of you, you likely gave the reporter in question a small (say, twenty minute) audio essay that explained to near total completion the process of the screenplay of "I, Robot", from writing to final rejection by the suit at Warner Bros.

Rose: Nicely backhanded insult, to both the denizens and the patron author. I rarely get condescended to in such polite fashion. I can't think too much of your assertions over "Bladerunner", however. If you could stand a little "rampant negativity and pseudo-intellectual posturing", I'd happily discuss why I still abhor the reduction of Dick's masterful tale of entropic dehumanization and paranoia into what is little more than an A-B-C plotted pulp detective story.

Scott

I, Robot: Haven't seen it. Plan to; probably next weekend (we saw Anchorman this weekend then went to see the local T-Ball Diamondbacks hand a game over to the Dodgers...again.

Read Asimov's book many a decade ago. Read Harlan's screenplay many a year ago. They both exist. No need to cry. If you don't want to see Mr. Smith run around with CGI robots, you don't have to. But if you do want to see it, you don't have to lament the book and screenplay to your dying day. I'm sure there are many Ellison screenplays that have not been filmed. He's placed his widdle toes into the stagnant Hollywood waters before. He's placed his index finger into the boogery teevee universe before. He's a big boy; you need not cry so.

What's getting a bit sad is how this I, Robot debate is turning into whining and moaning and the gnashing of teeth over how good movies don't get made anymore. Yes, the theaters are full of the schlock that common America wants to see; especially in the summer. Yes, surprised as you may be, though it's been happening since Jaws raised it's wonderful head one exciting summer, as surprising as it may appear to many of you....it's true, the summer is full of blockbuster action special effects noisy silly movies. Some are a blast (Spider-Man 2) and some are Fleet induced watery shit (Van Helsing).

But good movies are still made. Stop crying. Some are big movies, some are small movies, but movies of high quality are still making it into the theaters. I, Robot will not destroy America. Keep cool; every week is a new attempted blockbuster in the summertime, and yet those very same weeks can deliver some films of high quality like The Clearing, if you can find them.

There is much at the movie theaters that suck balls. After you shake off the obvious flics aimed at the kiddies and teens, there is still a lot of shit. But there is much quality out there too. Why, in just the last couple years there has been: Supersize Me, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, The Lord Of The Rings Trilogy, Lost in Translation, Master and Commander, American Splendor, The Human Stain (fuck you all, this movie is splendid even if miscast), 21 Grams, Big Fish, Pirates of the Carribean, Bad Santa, Solaris (it's better than the Russian snorefest), Punch-Drunk Love, The 25th Hour, About Schmidt, The Pianist.........And these are movies that made it to your local multiplex! Imagine what you can find if you have an art theater near you.

I, Robot opened this week, folks, and it stars Wil Smith and it may or may not suck but it sure as shit ain't gonna be Isaac's book or Harlan's screenplay. And the Earth will still rotate, and fun can still be had in the cinema.

Ciao. -TODD

Oh my Non-Existent Deity!

I just heard the NPR piece and am sick. They slanted it! They slanted it toward Proyas and his schlock fest, as surely as any piece was ever slanted. What could have been the reason? Do they really believe that there is an audience out there listening to NPR who simply doesn't want to hear negative things about a big summer robot movie.

The biggest insult was that they twisted an Irving Kirshner quote to make its sound like I RObot was killed by Harlan and not by the ignorance of those well-meaning Hollywood producers.

Way to go NPR. You fill me with disgust as once more you went out of your way to support the Overdog.

When did NPR get so bad. If you have Real Audio, you can listen for yourself through the link below.

http://www.npr.org/features/feature.php?wfId=3444025

Steve Dooner

Rob, ya cyborg, let the man speak for himself. As for you, you give me your take about what is wrong with San Francisco. In 200 words or less.

-------------

One more crack about Chomsky and it's helter skelter up in this cut.

I Robot, You Jane,
Rationalist: You are not very rational. You clearly have never read Chomsky, and you apprently have missed all of Mr. Ellison's works championing civil rights, a far more important test of one's liberalism (itslef a meaningless term). You're grammer is sketchy as well, but I'm not going there.

Rose: If you liked the movie that's cool. Persnonally it doesn't interest me. I just find it sad that a movie can't be made at all nowadays unless it has someone like Will Smith toting a gun.

-STeve E.

Breaking my hiatus for a few precious moments

HARLAN & SUSAN,

Dear kind Sir & Madam,

IT'S HERE! IT'S HERE! IT'S REALLY, REALLY HERE!

The Hebrew edition of DANGEROUS VISIONS arrived last Friday, and it is BEAUtiful. The cover is incredibly ethereal, and immensely eerie - far more appropriate for the book's material than any other cover I've seen.

You should have seen me during the first five minutes right after opening the package. Being the Christian maroon that I am, I kept turning the book upside-down and right side-up, trying to figure out how I was exactly supposed to read it. Not that I could even read it in the first place. My Hebrew is about as good as my Spanish. And my Japanese.

But hell, it's HEBREW! A language that's beautiful just to LOOK at! If I can't meet the book's expectations, then it's ME who should start learning the damn dialect!

A truly wonderful gift. Thank you, thank you, thank YOU. The $100.00 is on its way, 2you, 2day.

>I think Harlan's "I, Robot" would have been a poetic masterpiece, a moving tribute to the REAL world of science fiction, and a hot point for critical debate, but probably a "failure" at the box office.<

While it will probably never get made as a feature film, I wonder if Ellison's screenplay couldn't be done as an animated film. With the new animation technologies, and the growing interest and respect for animation (it's not just Disney anymore), good scripts that take advantage of the medium are in short supply.

Harlan on NPR

Here's the URL: http://www.npr.org/display_pages/features/feature_3444025.html?place=home02

The "I, Robot" movie; and the elusive David Silver...
I only lurk on this forum. In fact, I've been watching all of you for several years now. It's a dirty job, but SOMEBODY has to do it!

Just kidding! Yes, I lurk, and I learn quite a bit as well, but in all this time I never had a reason to add my two bits worth of commentary. Today, however, I had one of those moments of synchronicity that both informed and entertained me, and it all relates very nicely to this forum, the apparent subject at hand, and a question from the past.

I saw "I, Robot" today...and I liked it! I have no intention of defending my point of view from the inevitable attacks I'm going to receive from many others on this forum (most of whom will probably never bother to see the film, but will say whatever they feel necessary to further ingratiate themselves to Harlan), but I found the film to be exciting, tightly scripted and directed, smoothly acted, well paced, full of properly applied yet never overbearing special effects, and generally a ripping good yarn with enough cerebral energy to lift it far above other more typical Hollywood science fiction "blockbusters". No, it is NOT "Citizen Kane", but it doesn't pretend to be. Yes, I have read ALL of Asimov's robot stories and novels, and I fully understand that this film is not "accurate" in terms of established plots, characters, and motivations. However, I still LIKED it, I felt it was a darn good movie, and it made enough of a limited homage to Asimov's work to make me VERY happy. The three laws are there, much is made of the seeming perfection of those laws, there's the inevitable logic of the robots eventually taking control of humanity for its own sake, and all of this played against the many fascinating little evolving personality quirks of Sonny, the robot that marvels at its realization that it is "unique". My two friends liked it as well. Very much! Whether any of YOU like it or not, it's going to be a hit anyway. I am sad, sad, sad that the breadth and depth of Asimov's actual stories and vision were not realized on the screen, but I truly understand why this film was done this way. Harlan's screenplay was spectacular, I've read it from cover to cover twice, and I've forced it upon several of my friends, but there's no way it would have been as much of a commercial success as THIS film will be. Instead, much like "Bladerunner" (a remarkable and stylish telling of the heart of a darkly perplexing and difficult book) or "Gattaca" (a passionate vision of the power and integrity of the individual spirit), I think Harlan's "I, Robot" would have been a poetic masterpiece, a moving tribute to the REAL world of science fiction, and a hot point for critical debate, but probably a "failure" at the box office.

After the movie, my friends and I sat for a leisurely lunch and I spent half an hour telling them about the real robot stories, the real characters, Asimov's writing, and Harlan's script. When things got quiet for a bit, while we paid attention to our food, I suddenly heard a familiar voice at my back. When I turned around to look, there was David Silver at the next table, talking away to a rapt group of his own. Apparently they had all just seen the film as well. I'm bringing this up because about a year ago somebody on this forum was trying to locate David Silver, they had participated in one of David's writing workshops, and they were worried something might have happened to him since he seemed to just fall off the map. Well, I found him! I, too, had been in a workshop moderated by David many years ago, only for about two months, but long enough for him to thoroughly kick my ass into getting several short articles published in the newspaper during that time! The man is amazing! So here I was, all these things on my mind, Asimov, Ellison, robot movie, thinking about this forum, and then there's David, and I remembered the concerned inquiry.

In a nutshell, David is still in San Francisco, a rare native of the city, and doing fine. I won't tell you his life story from the past five years, but it's been a VERY winding road for him, he's suffered much during that time, and he's only now getting back on his feet. People are hounding him again about doing workshops, but he says he wants to devote time to his own projects and only handle small select groups on occasion if he has the time. Anyway, we compared "notes" on the movie, and he also liked it, but not as enthusiastically as I did. He acknowledged that Harlan's script was a vastly superior concept, but that this film was a "better" choice for the box office without "pandering to the lowest common denominator of pointless action for action's sake". He did, however, express his own persuasive criticisms of Harlan's script, things I have never thought about, and in particular deconstructed an important juncture in the screenplay where a lapse of logic and dynamicism deflates a vital transition. When I respectfully reminded him that he was "rewriting" Harlan Ellison, he replied, "He shits like the rest of us, kid!" Oh, how I missed that man!

If the person wanting to locate David is still on this forum, David says he'll come out of hiding if you explain why you want to find him. In fact, he says he came on this forum once, about two years ago, and asked a single question of Harlan...involving the screenplay for "I, Robot"! David says Harlan never answered, which was fine, but he was turned off by the rampant negativity and pseudo-intellectual posturing he perceived in much of the group, and he stopped lurking after only a week. He loves Harlan, however, and I may have convinced him to come back, but he wants to know who's looking for him first. Whoever you are, please respond and I'll hook you up.

In the meantime, hello to Harlan. David actually turned me on to you many years ago, but I don't regret a single nightmare! Thank you for revealing the truth about the many manifestations of the human condition, and please never stop!

Getting bad vibes about a movie


I remember when I made my decision not to see EVENT HORIZON in the theaters. I saw the promotional the studio did on E! Entertainment Television (aka the whore of Babylon). Lawrence Fishburne and Sam Neil were the hosts. It was not only obvious, but incredibly obvious that this movie was going to suck. Neil and Fishburne were just trying too hard to make the movie sound scary. They came across like the Count Floyd character on SCTV. "Ooooohhhh, it's a verry scary movie, kids! Blood sucking monkeys from outer space! Ooooohhhh!"

That, and the profound theme they were beating half to death: "There are some things man was not meant to know."

How original.

I didn't need to see this stinkburger to know I'd be wasting my money. I finally saw it a couple of years later in the Sci-Fi Channel. I'm glad I saved my money. An infinite number of Bonobos banging on an infinite number of word processors could have come up with a commercial jingle that was better than this cinematic abortion.

I, Robot is actually getting somewhat decent reviews, even from the Rocky Mountain News reviewer, who is nicknamed Mikey because he's such a tough grader. I think he gave it a b-minus.

Still, I think I'll save my scarce dollars and see Spiderman 2 instead. I'll catch it later. I just don't like the smell of hucksterism that surrounds the use of the title and Asimov's name. It's so P. T. Barnum.

I understand sales of Dr. A's book are up though. More converts to the cult.

Chuck

Warren Ellis has a bit in his latest Brainpowered column that may tickle Harlan's (and everyone else's) fancies. It's at www.artbomb.net/brainpowered.jsp Scroll down and look for the bit that starts with "Free Culture." In the event that Ellis has updated his column between my post and your reading, it's column 36. I think. I'm not paging back to check, anyway.

Cheers, Jon

Harlan Ellison's liberalism is overestimated his all to true attacks on the Common Man/Woman is antithetical to someone like Noam Chomsky's pandering to the ignorant herds of fast food bloated illiterates pushing prams deep in the heart of America. Corporate delinquents are birthed in the same cesspools. Viacom CEO Mel Karmazin for example was born in a public housing tenement and brought Don Imus and Howard Stern to prominence. Americans are the problem. That empirical observation can't be escaped. Where do all the cops and military enlistees come from? Lower middle America. And they believe in their jobs 100%. Like Jack Finney, Ellison's references are often to a more elegant period of time, his automobile is a Packard, he stockpiles discontinued confections saying today no one knows what real chocolate tastes like, and almost all his film writing lambastes current trends in that increasingly corrupt industry. Sounds like a conservative to me.

Damn I admire you Eric Martin
Its hard not to discuss a film like I, Robot if you're interested in Asimov's work. So much has been written about how I, Robot came to be made into a movie (or should I say how a B-movie script called Hardware came to be made with I, Robot as its title). So many reviews have discussed what sort of a film it is. And there's been quite a few comments made by people who have seen it, and who's opinion many of us have an interest in (like Mr. Ellison's). Considering all this, its not surprising that some have given into the temptation to discuss, or even form a preliminary opinion.

Not you though. You've risen above the fray.

I salute you, and in the future will try to refrain from ever saying anything about a film, even one that's been followed as closely for as long as this one has, at all, ever, until I've seen it in full. And in the interest of absolute fairness, I'll be using a random number generator to decide what I see in the future. If I end up going to an Olson Twins flick as a result, so be it.

You are an example for us all.

Hello and welcome William!

I, Robot
I can't imagine what could possibly compel me to see "I, Robot." I've read tons of Asimov and Mr. Ellison's screenplay. Studio lackeys can do better? Please. Do yourself a favour, instead of shelling out $10 to see "I, Robot," go to your local video store and rent "Bubba Ho-Tep." Sure, it's low budget, but Bruce Campbell is more Elvis than Elvis was, and it's a great, twisted little story.

I Robot
Hi everyone,I just wanted to say a few things.
First, that film burns my ass worse than a mdget with a lighter.
Second, this is a wonderful site.
Third, I am greatful to have found this site and wanted to thank Mr. Ellison for the rants he did on the Sci-Fi channel(especially the one on Dachau).
I appolgise in advance for spelling or grammar errors.

Forgive Me, For I Have Sinned

It would be truly cool if, but once, pampered white collar transgressors like Martha Stewart, Kenneth Lay, Jim Bakker, et al, would suppress the tears of self-pity once indicted for their crimes and take accountability.

Yet...I feel such a close connection with them!

Frisco,

Take it from me as a specialist on Frank (I have a cabinet CRAMMED with files on him and a dartboard displaying his puss)...do NOT try to REASON with him, do not try to introduce linear logic to his dead-end hyperbole, do not try to debate his idees fixes. He holds this iron-weight notion that if you aren't flawless you amount to a sanctimonious, hypocritical fuck, and assumes you make no REAL efforts on the issues at all.

Simply resort to threats and insults. It wraps the whole thing up so much more quickly!

Now that WAS a question, or sort of an interrogatory remark, so I think get to post twice...

Harlan, the short answer is, I'll see it when it gets to the cheaps. My evenings are scheduled enough that if I'm going to take the three hours and plunk down the nine bucks required for a first-run film here in the Chicago Morass, it has to be one I really want to see.

But in the interest of keeping the so-called lackwits (your affectionate term, not mine) apprised of what shines true and what just stinks in the Will Smith summer funfest, I will pick it up the moment it raises its haunches in the second-runs, and give a most-objective review on this board that very night. That's not a breath-holder, but there it is.

Sedulously, Eric Martin

THE SEDULOUS INTEGRITY OF ERIC MARTIN

I presume, Eric, now that the Proyas/Smith version of I,ROBOT has been available onscreen for two full days, that you will have been one of the first in line to plonk down your fee to see it, and to return at your convenience not only to review it for us first hand and impartially, rather than on such insufficient evidence as the lackwits here have been using for days...but to enhance with rigorous evidence your mild yet forceful chiding of the Webderlander Mafia for its egregious assumptions.

I, for one, expect big things from you.

Respectfully, yr. pal, Harlan

Jesus Christ in hot sauce, Frank: you are one t e d i o u s fan boy.

Mark

"I'm just wondering how a group of people who consider themselves, usually with some justification, on being intellectually rigorous can so easily trash something they haven't bothered to see."

Easy, considering the nature of how films are made, marketed, and consumed by the audience. You yourself know the corporate mentality that goes into the creation of cinematic culture. The Oz-like journey Mr. Ellison took trying to get the screenplay he loved made should be enough of caution for any who would consider themselves neophytes to get an inkling of the process.

That doesn't mention the efforts of marketing, the often completely dishonest representation of a film to the public. The specific editing of scene and dialog into a baiting package that often shows how much sizzle you get compared to steak. Do you recall the recent film "The Girl Next Door", where a movie about teenagers getting involved in the porn industry was advertised as a harmless teen coming of age romantic comedy? The use of pet critics who wouldn't give a bad review to an outbreak of Ebola Marburg. The exhaustive cross-marketing with other corporate outlets, restaurant chains and the like, a media-wide saturation bombing to almost force you into the theatre to get some relief.

And that doesn't cover the film itself. The movies are made mostly with the philosophy of target audience and demographics, not for the idea of good acting, direction, or interesting story. How many "Godzilla"s "White Chicks", and "Thunderbirds", their inane and formulaic plots do we have to tolerate before the studios get the message that fans want something where talent and craftsmanship have come to be put in play?

You talk of intellect, and dismiss the lessons learned from being repeatedly intellectually insulted by the studios that continue to promote such dreck without any consideration that most here are simply smart enough to see through their salesmanship, and decent enough to demand better than what's being served as first-rate entertainment. It's too easy to argue that saintly point of judging only the product, without any consideration of how tawdry the process is that delivers it.

I'm not saying cinema's problems display in toto, but one would think that "Spiderman 2", the recent Harry Potter films and the triumph of LOTR should show how it can be done. And we, the audience do respond to the effort with our viewing dollars.

Think of me as an intelligent entertainment consumer, who's gotten the shuck-and-jive once too often.

Melissa

So far, only Harlan has seen the film. I'm not defending the movie, which I have not seen, or the producer's decision to use an action-script over Ellison's, which I have read, and effusively praised here in an earlier post.

I'm just wondering how a group of people who consider themselves, usually with some justification, on being intellectually rigorous can so easily trash something they haven't bothered to see. Allegiance to Harlan is one thing. But I remember when everyone pilloried Last Temptation of Christ without bothering to see it, and I don't see much difference here.

Hey, pound those nails slower, Mr. Frisco man. So you say the homeless harass little old ladies, well, I'd think all the slum landlords and major corporations situated on those misty shores do a better job harassing everyone--even little old ladies.

Defecating in the streets you say. So we should kick them in the teeth, because some of their brethren haven't been properly house trained? You do know many of them are mentally ill? Can a person off his or her nut be as responsible as a pampered yuppie pet? You do the math.

I think the main problem with Frisco is that their brand of liberalism is way too secular. I don't mean secular in the good sense of separation of church and my dick, but the kind of bohemian selfishness that exists in high rent party towns like your esteemed Frisco.

They have no sense of humanity; their liberalism is more of an artistic conceit. They prescribe to the secular religion of eat, drink and be fucked. Yes, there are good radicals there, like my good buddy Jello Biafra, but even those radicals sometime get lost in their nit picky little issues--and they fail to see the big picture.

And, Sir. no more babbling about the reality of the market. People have to live somewhere; whatever needs to be done to give low income dwellers places to call their own, I'd think, you would think that it was worth it. It is called Socialist reform. No Gulags or funny name tags needed. Sweden is a model.

And sorry about the use of the Blair Witch Project like term, 'Frisco.' I just don't give a shit about minor word quibbles. You need to worry more about what can be done to make San Francesspool a nicer place for everybody. Everyone deserves their own patch of turf. Better then the coming war against the rich, if things don't improve.

Not a warning, but a fact. Ticklin your toes.

-----------

I won't say any more to him, Rick and Harlan. Please be gentle.

The night Martha Stewart didn't meet Harlan
The one and only time I ever saw Martha Stewart was a dozen years ago at a book publication party for MURDER PLUS, a collection of true crime stories which featured a 1956 article by Harlan - he'd asked me to go in his stead since I live in NYC. The fest was held at a now-defunct TriBeCa topless strip bar called the Baby Doll Lounge (it's where Woody Allen talks to Mira Sorvino's pimp in MIGHTY APHRODITE) - and Martha Stewart was gleefully tipping the girls like a sailor. My point being:

NOBODY likes to see a good tipper go to jail.

Seeing the movie
Eric: true, the trailer is no substitute for the film, and there are times when the trailer and reviews provide a misleading indication of a film's quality (in both directions).

However...

...they are the best guides available SHORT OF seeing the film, and my dismay at the mistreatment of Asimov is sufficient that I have no interest in pursuing a personal investigation.

Yes, Eric, >I< have.

Harlan Ellison

Has anyone actually SEEN the movie? Not to put a fine point on anything, but that usually supports an argument more then reading critics or watching trailers.

Dear Mr. Ellison,

David Gerrold had some very kind and gracious words to say about you and your writing in his interview on the recently released "Land of the Lost" Season 1 DVD. Among the things he mentioned were your championing of getting quality writers to produce quality scripts which in turn make for quality shows and one amusing story involving an evening with Gerrold, Ben Bova, and you in which you produced a teasingly incomplete story idea for "Land of the Lost" (Gerrold still misses not getting a contribution from you on the series).

A bit of a treat:

http://www.npr.org/display_pages/features/feature_3461066.html

NPR is putting forth a replay of an 1987 Asimov interview concerning his writing. Quite interesting to listen to.

I've emailed USA Today, mentioning the last chapter of Philip K. Dick's "Do Androids...", with Deckard's wife discovering how the toad he found in the woods of Oregon turned out to be synthetic, and she calling to order flies for the animal as Deckard slept. Made a rather snide and unprofane comment about how someone who writes for a newspaper might want to check the end of a book, or at least try to get the research department to check the article's facts.

Then again, it is USA Today. The hamster's busy enough already keeping the wheel running to power their four-color mimeograph.

A rather amazing book, that one; one of the first books of Scotty's I'd read and liked.

As for "I, Robot", we're not wasting the money. Joel said it best: "It's one of those movies where you watch the ad, and you know how the movie was. As soon as you see the commercial is all explosions and crashes and fights, that's all the movie is. Why waste ten bucks on it when you can rent a cool Playstation 2 game that's got explosions and crashes and fights you can play for five bucks and get some chips and junk, too?"

He loved Spiderman 2. To tell the truth, so did I.

He's playing "Transformers" right now. He's mad because Mom can still kick his butt at "Godzilla: Monster Melee".

Melissa

The I, Robot article
"Harlan's literal retelling of a collection of short stories didn't make for an exciting movie," Rothman says.

This tells me two things:

1) Rothman's never read Harlan's script. It is not a "literal retelling" of Asimov's book at all. As Isaac noted in his introduction to Harlan's script, Harlan kept to the spirit of the story, not the plots of several different yarns.

2) Rothman is trying the same crapola we saw from Roddenbury and company, in the attempts to claim credit for Harlan's "City on the Edge of Forever" script. It boils down to, "Wonderful writer, but he just doesn't know how to write for the medium." And, as Harlan noted in his delightfully acidic essay in the White Wolf edition of the script, the charge doesn't hold water. Harlan's won four WGA awards for best script. Has anyone else ever matched that total?

Okay, I'm preaching to the choir here, but, Jesus von Jesus, don't these guys ever learn anything _new?_ I realize they can't just say, "We preferred to go in a different direction." Harlan's script is so well-known, so widely available, that they can't ignore it. They feel like they have to cut it off at the (figuratively speaking) knees, because interviewers are going to bring it up. But the same old drivel? Again? No wonder Hollywood so rarely generates new ideas. They can't even come up with new attacks.

Ah, well, it's not like the papers are doing any better. Contrary to the USA Today piece, Deckerd does not commit suicide at the end of Philip K. Dick's "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?" He doesn't even die.

HE name-drop in CNN 'i robot' article
FYI,
HE is briefly name-dropped in a CNN "Eye on entertainment" article about the robot film (http://www.cnn.com/2004/SHOWBIZ/07/14/eye.ent.scifi/index.html). I was happy to see HE acknowledged as a writer who places "humanity over technology", and to see his name dropped, unfortunately no mention was made of the screenplay. I'll never forget seeing the trailer for this film for the first time, my stomach hitting the floor with a splat when I realized that the schlock-o-the-week that they were shoving at me was somehow being peddled with an Asimov title. Very disappointed that the HE screenplay seems even farther from any hope of production in light of this junk. Yuck. Go see F-9/11 instead.
-Jim

Just making conversation. . .
"Ontario is not Ultima Thule."

Sometimes I wonder.

" You're not in the fuckin' Gulag with a home-made crystal radio secreted under your pillow."

Funny you should mention that acutally. . .

Response from a San Francisco native:

>Here is a question: What the fuck is wrong with San Francisco?

Nothing that you can't fix, Frankie, so try running for mayor. We've had worse. Which could account for the problems you cite.


>Here you have the enclave for progressive, radical politics, but at the same time the city has these outragious [sic] rents,

It's a small, beautiful city and everyone wants to move there. Big demand and small supply mean outrageous rents. Despite its best efforts SF cannot opt out of the laws of the market.


>huge homeless population, that are treated like refuse,

Welcome to urban America. It's not as if SF politicos haven't done their best to protect the homeless from such barbarous measures as might deny them their god-given right to shit in the streets and harass little old ladies. Maybe that's why they gravitate to fog city. See also: Santa Monica and Venice.


>and cops that make the Gestapo flinch.

San Francisco tradition. Maybe if the sons and daughters of the enlightened bourgeoisie decided to join the ranks things would change, but I'm not holding my breath in antcipation of a huge rush from from Cal to the SFPD.


>With all those lefties in once place, why isn't there better activist tendencies there?

Because they're all preoccupied with crimes against grammar.


>This is why I don't like liberals much.

We're not too keen on you either.


>So, once again I ask, through wind burnt lips--What the fuck is wrong Frisco?

That sound you hear is an internet bitch-slapping for use of the forbidden "Frisco".

Todd:

Futurama was truly underrated and sadly remains somewhat ignored within the SF genre. Somehow humour and rocketship fuel don't seem to mix well, I guess. Would go some distance to explain why Sheckley and Malzberg don't get their do.

Methinks those who can fuse funny to future are uniquely skilled. Either that, or geeks have no sense of humour. When I think of those who ponderously waste their lives making that idiocy known as "Star Trek" into a mainstream representation of the genre, in light of those who've done the genre better service...

Leads me to my one complaint about M. Ellison: No collection of his works has contained humour as its main theme. Damn shame to that.

Anyhow, completely disagree. Yes, have seen the episode mentioned, but still find "Roswell" and "Godfella" funnier and more pointed. In "Godfella" I see real poignancy to Bender unintentionally shepherding a miniscule species to its doom, then trying to sort out the mistakes created in good intentions, and it's made even better by not forswearing the irony and broad humour that can be used. A very deftly handled script, which never gets maudlin or preachy.

As for "Roswell", it's simply a great little time travel tale; Fry's paradox of existence providing a great joke alongside Zoidberg's literal nature and complete ignorance of his situation in the hands of the military brings down the house for me. I love the bit with the good doctor asking the President if Truman is hitting on him. The visual image of Farnsworth in a zoot suit alongside Leela's poodle skirt: just great stuff.

Zapp Brannigan -- "Amazon Women In The Mood", after much Snoo-Snoo: "Stop! The spirit is willing, but the flesh is spongy and bruised!"

Scott, proud owner of a Squishy Brain Slug.

Harlan, short, but nice comments in the USA Today story. Too bad Asimov's daughter is cheerleading this film. I know you probably love the girl, but she needs a good talking to.

That fucking Roth guy needs his knees broke.

--------------

Here is a question: What the fuck is wrong with San Francisco? Here you have the enclave for progressive, radical politics, but at the same time the city has these outragious rents, huge homeless population, that are treated like refuse, and cops that make the Gestapo flinch. With all those lefties in once place, why isn't there better activist tendencies there?

This is why I don't like liberals much. So, once again I ask, through wind burnt lips--What the fuck is wrong Frisco?

Now back to your I Robot circle jerk.

Comics on the net.
www.comics.com have quite a large selection of stuff that might be of interest, if you haven't tried that site already.

Comic book webs
Can anyone and all direct me to some of the better comicbook related webs? I am working on some stuff and would like to narrow my focus a tad. Where do you guys congregate for your comicbook fix?

Thanks.

Heather

I suspect Tom Rothman is daunted by Harlan's vocabulary and the epic scope of the screenplay. This is, after all, the man whose studio brought us that recent intellectual masterwork, "Garfield: the Movie".

Perhaps it's just me - and I never had the pleasure of meeting Isaac Asimov, so it's hard for me to put into context - but with all of the written words, everything he put to page regarding the subject of robots, all of the dramatic tales he told, is it possible that maybe...

just maybe...

perhaps...

given his interest in robotics and humanity...

if he'd WANTED to write a tale about robots running amuck in massive numbers against mankind that he WOULD HAVE?

Nah. That's just crazy talk...

"Harlan's literal retelling of a collection of short stories didn't make for an exciting movie," Rothman says.

Now, now. This Tom Rothman is obviously using the word exciting to mean "to produce a magnetic field" as in excite a dynamo. He was by no means talking about compelling, emotional, engaging, stimulating work. But he is correct that the screenplay cannot produce a magnetic field.

He's chairman of 20th Century Fox. He knows what he's talking about. He's smarter than all of our toes put together. And that's a lot of toes.

>The interviewer was Ms. Neda Ulaby, a very nice woman.

I've been wondering how that was spelled. Probably my favorite NPR reporter name. Alongside the Thai woman whose moniker I won't even try to reproduce here. And Syliva Poggioli, just because I love the way she draws it out.

No, I do NOT have too much time on my hands.

Scott, though I commend your appreciation of Futurama, I must advise everyone that the best Futurama episode in its sadly short run is not yet available on DVD:

Aired during it's final season (if you can call all those spotty airings a 'season') was an episode called Jurassic Bark, which should have been called A Boy And His Dog.

The final 30 seconds showing Fry's dog as he waits loyally for his master to return to him might be the only time in the history of Matt Groening cartoons that the viewer will break into tears.

One of my favorite moments in television history.

-TODD

Ah nuts - I'm really sorry Harlan. I can't believe I missed it, but I must've. Many inadequate apologies for pestering.

Beating a red-faced retreat into the archives,
Elijah

(to the recommended regulars: I'll throw a query out when I've got a better handle on what I missed. too embarassed to risk another question o' ignorance right off the bat.)

I'm with you ATC: I did not appreciate how the typist of the USA Today article reduced Harlan to the loyal opposition.

Mark

This seems to be the link to the USA Today story on I, Robot:
http://www.usatoday.com/life/movies/news/2004-07-15-sci-fi-main_x.htm

Adam,

Yeah Roth's comment chilled me too. This is a guy who decides what gets made and this is what he thinks we want.

Most of the reviews I read so far seem to have seperated the book form the movie. Only USA Today and Ebert have referred to Harlan's screenplay. At least the reviewers are doing their homework.

Adam,

Yeah Roth's comment chilled me too. This is a guy who decides what gets made and this is what he thinks we want.

Most of the reviews I read so far seem to have seperated the book form the movie. Only USA Today and Ebert have referred to Harlan's screenplay. At least the reviewers are doing their homework.

USA TODAY article
Especially irritating was the comment by the studio head, to the effect that Harlan's screenplay wouldn't have worked as a movie. (Sure. No explosions.)

Noting that Roger Ebert mentions Harlan's screenplay in his own (negative) review of the Proyas I, ROBOT; he doesn't seem to have read Harlan's screenplay himself, but he does take pains to separate it from the one used for the film.

Dorie and Patchouli
Thank you, Dorie. Finally, someone who agrees with me and my wife. I know it's not just SF fans. My wife and I found this out when we attended a Renaissance Festival. Even outside, the stench was nigh unbearable.

James

Best wishes for the surgery next week--make sure they shine the light of a red sun down on you, so you don't break the vitrector...

ELIJAH:

Oh, if THAT'S what you're talking about, I already answered it; not only to you, personally, back when you asked it (how did you manage to miss it? are you just not paying attention?)...but in general, as I said in my reply to your query, some while ago, in detail and exhaustively. I urged you to go to the archives or to ask for help from the regulars here. But no matter how much you nuhdz me, I'm not going to continue answering over and over and over, every primary-level question asked by every querulous latecomer. And that's the name'a THAT tune. Finis.

STEVE EVIL: Ontario is not Ultima Thule. You're not in the fuckin' Gulag with a home-made crystal radio secreted under your pillow. Unless you live far beneath the mantle of the Earth, you get the radio broadcasts of NPR via American stations that leak over from New York. As for getting tomorrow's USA TODAY, go to a newsstand nearby that handles "furrin" newspapers. USA TODAY is omnipresent. I'm sure it's available to you. If not, ask an American friend to buy an extra copy and ship it to you. Or read it online. Geez Louise! You guys...!

Harlan

Gary Paulsen and others
Sort of threw me to see Gary Paulsen's name virtually alongside Fred Pohl's, not least because I'd just spoken to Pohl (albeit very briefly, setting up an interview about his new HeeChee book). Mayhap Paulsen has confused "Harlequin" with another story. He's a very prolific writer, heaven knows. I interviewed him a few times. The guy's had a hard life, particularly in childhood, being brought up by alcoholics in a very rural area. Paulsen learned all that woodcraft in his books the hard way.

But Harlan, your remarks on not remembering Paulsen ever editing you touched a memory or two here. I've occasionally had something edited by one person, only to see another person credited. The editor "of record" as it were.

Back when I was writing horror comics for TSR, everything I did was edited by Steve Gerber (whose new title, "Hard Time," I recommend highly). Six stories in all. And when they appeared in print, Steve's name never appeared on them. Instead, Flint Dille's name did. Now I've nothing against Flint, but I never spoke to him, never even met him until long after the last one appeared. My edited manuscripts confirmed my experience, with the "editor: S.G." under my name.

This happens a lot. I once had a conversation with Virginia Kidd where she suggested I put together an anthology on a particular theme. She wanted to sell it as edited by "Big Name Author and Alex Krislov." Just a way of selling it. I demurred--not because I thought it unusual, but because I simply didn't feel the need to advance myself in that manner.

I know I'm not telling you anything you don't already know here. But I suspect most people don't realize how misleading the "edited by" credit can be.

For all who are foreign, to themselves, each other, or to existence in general:

NPR is available to you if you have Windows Media Player, the upgraded 9 version (Windows 98 or more recent OS). Click on the "RADIO" message, and a NPR link should show up on the screen.

Weekend Sunday edition starts at 14:00 EST Sunday, or 2 pm for those who prefer people time. Go to the NPR website or use the link through the Media player ON Sunday (unlike CBC International, NPR doesn't post the lineup until just prior to broadcast). There gives you the order of broadcast.

If you miss the interview, no biggy. Simply keep the NPR site in your Favorites scroll down menu, and go to the site later the following week. The audio is archived for your listening pleasure, 24-7.

I now leave to watch Futurama, Vol. 3: "Tales of Interest, Vol. II", "Roswell That Ends Well" (the best episode in the series run), and "Godfella" (almost as good).

This post was brought to you by Glagnar's Human Rinds: It's a buncha muncha cruncha human!

Scott, who dances like a monkey.

INterviews. . .
MR. Ellison;

Any way for us foreigners to aquire the gist of these interviews/articles? We get everything second hand up here.

Is there any hope for the future?

-Steve E.

THIS JUST IN:

The NPR interview is scheduled to run Sunday on Weekend Edition. I'm told there will be a web edition, as well. The interviewer was Ms. Neda Ulaby, a very nice woman. Arts Fest is the title of the se