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I Want My Argument

Someone asked me once if I had any regrets. I answered:
" I always wanted to talk about the nature of light with Richard Feynman and I wanted to start an argument with Harlan Ellison".

Feynman is dead, but Ellison is still alive, and he lives in LA.

Litening to Ellison argue is like watching a master swordsman at work. He is a master at the art of verbal vivisection.

Here is a recent interview of Harlan Ellison by Writers Digest. A sign of a truly good intellect is even when you are on opposite sides of the argument, you enjoy hearing what he has to say. Ellison is often at odds with what I think, but I love to hear what he thinks even what he thinks is that Im a boob who should have stayed in bed.

Now, it seems that Mr. Ellison has been trying to protect his work from people that have been stealing it. I've never considered a tip jar before, but for this guy I might just take up a collection for his legal bills.

But I still want my argument.

Posted @ December 03, 2004 10:28 AM | Current Events

Comments

Go buy some more of his books. I think I will, loved his stories when I was younger, then I sort of drifted off to other authors. Might be time to get back to him.

Posted by: Robert at December 6, 2004 03:40 PM

I have some sympathy for him. Some.

But as to his rantingss against the 'net, against 'pirates', etc, I also take Eric Flint's view: It's only a lost sale if the person was absolutely intending to buy it, read it for free, and decided it wasn't worth buying.

After all, the Baen Free Library has actually increased sales for its authors, including among books not published by Baen.

See the opening newsletter at Baen Free Library, and a guest article there by Janis Ian, especially the postscript.

Posted by: Dave at December 7, 2004 10:46 AM

IIRC, Harlan the one who accepted a writing job for TV, submitted scripts for the series, and the TV people botched it up so badly that he demanded his credit name be changed to Cordwainer Bird.

N. O'Brain
Imperial Minister for USeless Information

Posted by: N. O'Brain at December 7, 2004 03:25 PM