
The RISFC is saddened to report the passing of Sci-Fi and Star Trek legend Harlan Ellison. Ellison, who turned 84 just last month, died June 28, at his home in California, according to his wife, Susan.
His output includes more than 1,700 short stories and articles, at least 100 books and dozens of screenplays and television scripts. And although he was ranked with eminent science fiction writers like Ray Bradbury and Isaac Asimov, he insisted that he wrote speculative fiction, or simply fiction.
Mr. Ellison’s best-known work includes “A Boy and His Dog” (1969), a novella set in a postapocalyptic wasteland of the United States, which was made into a 1975 movie; “I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream” (1967), a short story about a computer that tortures the last five humans on earth; “The City on the Edge of Forever,” a beloved back-in-time episode of the “Star Trek” television series in 1967; and “ ‘Repent, Harlequin!’ Said the Ticktockman” (1965), about a futuristic society in which time is regimented by a fearsome figure called the Ticktockman.
In recent years, Mr. Ellison wrote a graphic novel, “7 Against Chaos” (2013),” with the artist Paul Chadwick for DC Comics. About 30 of his stories were reissued digitally. He published “None of the Above,” an unproduced screenplay based on “Bug Jack Barron,” a story by Norman Spinrad, a science fiction writer who had been his friend since the 1950s.