Harlan Ellison

I just discovered a new person today, and he's fucking awesome.

Watching Sundance channel today, I caught a biography partway through the broadcast called, 'Dreams With Sharp Teeth' about Harlan Ellison. I laughed at his ascerbic wit and colorful language, cheered his direct confrontation with opposing ideas, applauded his progressive, free-thinking worldview and heartily agreed with his full-frontal assault on the decline of American intellectualism (and apparent celebration thereof).

It wasn't till *after* all this that I discovered on the show that he's an unapologetic atheist who has fearlessly proclaimed his stance for years. This guy is a firecracker, and I love it. Here's an Ellison quote from the documentary,

Video excerpt from 'An Evening of Lively Argument'. M.I.T., Oct. 6th, 2001.

"See first of all I gotta tell ya I was raised a Jew, I am an atheist. I am not an agnostic, I am not one of the wusses that says 'well maybe'. You know. If there were a god, by now she'd have hit me with a bolt of lightning in the ass long since. So, I am an atheist. I'm a card-carrying, fully-bound, right out there atheist. Ok? Ok. And I know most of you are too but you don't want to cop to it because you're afraid everybody is going to say, 'Don't you believe in the Second Coming?'. I don't even believe in the first fucking-coming!'

Quoted from the 'Dreams With Sharp Teeth' interview:

"I find nothing more ridiculous and annoying than some guy who runs a 100 yards...runs a kickoff....back 105 yards from the endzone and drops to his knees and thanks God. Well that's foolish. God didn't do it he did it. Because if God did that for him you mean god was against the other team? God is that mean-spirited that he has nothing better to do on Sunday afternoon, then beat the crap out of a bunch of poor football players?"

Truth be told, he reminds me of myself in a way, and watching Harlan, I felt an unusual emotion: relief. There are people out there who aren't afraid to be the only dissenter in the room, and he's done it for years and in a refreshingly fearless manner. There is no time for fear or political correctness.

Harlan Ellison is a case study for the sharply-made point (the documentary is seemingly named to that effect), and the world needs people like him as much as the gentler types. I've commented on this at length in my recent blogs on 'tone'. People need to get over 'tone' and listen to content. I cannot count how many times someone rejected valid information simply because of tone, and continued to plod-on being wrong about some mundane topic, correction, pseudo-science, silly belief, etc.

What do I like about him? He says it like it is, or at the very least, how he sees it...unmitigated by nice language, religion, permission or the hurt feelings of dissenters, many of whom have no business making any informed contribution to the matter being discussed.

One anecdote I especially enjoyed from the biography was Harlan relating a story about an episode he wrote for Star Trek. He had described in the script some 'runes' which were part of the set, but apparently the set builder didn't know the word 'rune' and apparently could not spell 'ruin' properly. Instead of making stones with runic inscriptions on them, the setbuilder made 'ruins', or crumbling remnants of structures which weren't even in the script.

So, when people insist on accuracy in language, it's because language is the vehicle by which we communicate. That Star Trek set-designer, when confronted by a word he didn't understand, apparently didn't have the humility or intellectual curiosity to look up or verify the meaning of this word in the script. This mistake directly caused a waste of time, resources and effort, probably caused a lot of embarrassment, some choice words from Harlan no doubt and could possibly have cost a few people their jobs.

Words matter. Accuracy matters...even if it offends people to discover that they're wrong. Better to discover the mistake early and avoid a bigger mistake later.

I'm sad to say I'm only discovering Harlan Ellison now, but better late than never. That said, at least now I have a huge new list of books I can add to my Kindle for iPhone, and I have a lot of catching up to do. (Any recommendations as to which of his books to read first are welcomed).

I'll close with one more quote from Harlan's insightful interview:

"As long as you can blame everything on some unseen deity, you don't ever have to be responsible for your own behavior."

Hear, hear.

-dB-