My Harlan Ellison Story

For those who don't know Harlan Ellison is a short (he sometimes has had the Napoleonic syndrome) vocal man who was the darling of the SF community when science fiction started to really take off in the 70s (maybe also the 60s for Harlan). He came onto the scene with a different style of story and was soon crowned king of the genre. Over the years other people have shared that title, such as Neil Gaiman but Harlan remains an iconic, nearly a god in the field. What he says, people listen to. He's rich, he's written various movies and he's not afraid to say what he thinks.

Back when I was in Clarion West (a writers 6-week intensive writing workshop) one of our instructors was Ed Bryant. He's not that well known unless you know the ins and outs of the genre. Once a protege of Harlan's Ed sold a lot of short stories and one, maybe two novels. These days he's a reviewer for Locus but Ed always has his finger in a few pies. We became friends from Clarion and though I see Ed rarely we get together when we can. Ed's a terrible communicator and often suffers from complications of his diabetes. I see him once a year or two.

Anyway, he told this story at Clarion and though he didn't say it was the esteemed Mr. Ellison who did this there was certainly an innuendo that who else but he would have done this. Supposedly Harlan was invited to a garden party in California (where he lives) and he did not particularly like the people organizing it. So he scooped up some lovely west coast slugs from his garden, tossed them on a plate and stuck them in the fridge until they were moribund. He took them out and covered them in whipping cream. At the party he put them on the table with all the other foods and left before they started to crawl.

It was also said that Harlan had once autographed a woman's breast. So now we move forward to a World Fantasy Convention. This is the professional convention for writers, editors and publishers. Everyone who attends is pretty much in the biz from some aspect. There is no fan track and no people in costumes. One night they hold the author signing and pretty much it's a huge room with almost everyone who's published anything sitting at tables to people can get their books signed. It could easily be 50-100 authors. Even my name was put at a table but since I'm an almost no-name Canadian (sold poetry and a few stories mostly to Canadian publications)it was pointless to sit at the table because few people would know me. So I wandered around.

I also don't believe in getting autographs and don't really see the point. I consider the author and not the signature important. So I started going up to the authors and asked them to sign my arms. As I said, the autograph would last a while and then be washed off and therefore no lasting signature. Everyone pretty much got into the swing of it, with female and male authors signing my arms. Harlan was there but I hadn't got to him yet. At one point Jack Cady was signing my arm and Harlan came up to the water cooler, mouthing loudly to someone, What's she doing? Why is she doing that?

So eventually I got around to Harlan and asked him if he would sign. Succinctly, he said, no. If you have a piece of paper or a book, I'll sign that. I then told him how I felt about autographs to which he replied you're cute. But he didn't sign.

I believe that if I had gone to him first as the prince of SF then he would have signed. After all it was there in his history. The next morning I was having breakfast with Ed when Harlan approached to check something with Ed. Then he turned to me and said, Why did you do that last night? That was very strange.

A compliment? Jealousy? Amnesia of one's own past? I have no idea but I found it amusing coming from Harlan after the antics I'd heard he's done.