Free Republic

To highlight the Prometheus Awards’ four-decade-plus history and make clear why each winner deserves recognition as a pro-freedom and/or anti-authoritarian work, the Libertarian Futurist Society has been publishing since 2019 a series of Appreciations of past award-winners. Here is an Appreciation of Harlan Ellison’s “Repent Harlequin!’, Said the Ticktockman,” the 2015 Prometheus Hall of Fame winner for Best Classic Fiction.

Trek nerds know what went down, at least in its rough outlines, and Marc Cushman gives all the sordid details in the first volume of his essential tome, These Are the Voyages. Ellison, already a respected writer of SF stories and screenplays for series like The Outer Limits, was commissioned by Roddenberry in 1966 to write an episode for the first season of his new space series. The treatment Ellison delivered contained the brilliant premise we all know and love—Kirk travels into the past and falls in love with an idealistic peace activist whom he must then allow to die...

Harlan Ellison, one of the most influential sci-fi writers of the twentieth century, passed away today in his sleep. He was 84 years old. Christine Valada, the widow of the late Len Wein and a friend of Harlan and his wife Susan, officially announced the author’s passing on Twitter. “Susan Ellison has asked me to announce the passing of writer Harlan Ellison, in his sleep, earlier today,” Valada wrote. “For a brief time I was here, and for a brief time, I mattered.”—HE, 1934-2018. Arrangements for a celebration of his life are pending.

Harlan Ellison is still an angry young man, except he'll be 81 on May 27. He has used this anger, fueled by childhood anti-Semitism, throughout his extraordinary career as a writer of speculative fiction. This year saw the publication of his 116th and 117th (so far) books: The Top of the Volcano, a collection of his awardwinning short stories, and a graphic novelization of his original script for "The City on the Edge of Forever," widely considered the best Star Trek episode ever written. Although Ellison's hundreds of published stories contain a wealth of Jewish characters, his most complex creation...

The great writer Harlan Ellison turns 80 today. Ellison has won eight Hugo Awards, a shared award for the screenplay of A Boy and his Dog that he counts as "half an Hugo" and two special awards from annual World SF Conventions; four Nebula Awards of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA); five Bram Stoker Awards of the Horror Writers Association (HWA); two Edgar Awards of the Mystery Writers of America; two World Fantasy Award from annual conventions; and two Georges Méliès fantasy film awards. -- Wikipedia Ellison is known primarily to television viewers as the author...

<p>Two and a half years ago, I called Harlan Ellison because I’d heard through a family friend that he was dying. Well, I heard it through a family friend and because he announced it to an audience of fans at a science-fiction convention in Wisconsin. When I spoke with the legendary – and legendarily combatitive – sci-fi writer on the phone shortly afterwards, his voice was weak. You’d better come by soon, he said. I did, and with a tray full of noodle kugle that my mom made for him and for his wife, Susan.</p>

Fans of fantastic fiction -- or just some of the finest damn writing to be put on paper -- take heed: If you've ever wanted to talk to Harlan Ellison, this weekend's MadCon 2010 is your last chance. The 76-year-old writer, cultural critic and longtime den mother of the genre he'd prefer you didn't call "science fiction" is the guest of honor at the convention, happening Sept. 24-26 at the Crowne Plaza Hotel. Ellison is the winner of multiple Hugo, Nebula and Edgar awards and the author of such oftreprinted short stories as "'Repent, Harlequin!' Said the Ticktockman" and "The...

When I was about 18, I went to a science-fiction bookstore in Berkeley, Calif., to attend a book signing by Harlan Ellison. I had a couple of well-thumbed paperback collections for Ellison to sign, and was totally unprepared for the long line of fans, many of them bearing 10 or 15 pristinely preserved hardcover books. The college-age woman in front of me had just such a pile, but was carrying something else too. When she got to the front of the line, she cleared her throat and thrust something toward Ellison. "Mr. Ellison, I wrote a story and you're in...