I recently posted about the passing of science fiction pioneer cum pain in the ass, Harlan Ellison. The loss of Ellison has found me going back through lots of written reviews and obits as well as checking out a bunch of videos and recordings on YouTube. One of the things I like best about Harlan Ellison is the variety of writing that he did and I really enjoyed reading Harlan Ellison is watching — a compilation of Ellison’s film and television reviews and essays from 25 years of writing for Cinema magazine, the Los Angeles Free Press, Starlog magazine, and The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction among others. As a science fiction book and story author as well as a script writer, Ellison brought an uniquely intimate insider’s perspective to the magic of bringing science fiction and fantasy to life onscreen.

Harlan’s book sort of came to the small screen when the author’s “Harlan Ellison’s Watching” came to the “Sci-Fi Buzz” show on the Sci-Fi channel in 1993.
Here’s a YouTube playlist including more than 50 episodes of the show and countless insights, insults, punning praises and cracking criticisms from Ellison…

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Harlan Ellison is one of the greatest authors of science fiction and fantasy ever. He’s written more than 1,700 short stories, novellas, screenplays, comic book scripts, teleplays, essays as well as criticism covering literature, film, television, and print media. He edited and anthologized two groundbreaking science fiction collections, Dangerous Visions (1967) and Again, Dangerous Visions (1972). Ellison has won multiple multiple Hugos, Nebulas and Edgar awards.

In 1993, Ellison was tapped by the then-nascent SciFi Channel to provide commentary on the science fiction scene during it’s “Sci-Fi Buzz” segments. In this seventh installment, Ellison rails against internet trolls on “PC bulletin boards” three years before I had my own desktop computer. The man has always been ahead of his time…

A few weeks ago Ellison suffered a stroke that left him partially paralyzed. According to this Los Angeles Times story, he’s already improving and complaining and ranting the way only he can. Here’s to a speedy recovery, Mr. Ellison. See you back at the front.

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