Harlan Ellison® is arguably the most outspoken and controversial writer associated with the fantastique genre. He has been awarded the Hugo Award eight-and-a-half times, the Nebula Award five times (including the Grand Master award in 2006), the Bram Stoker Award five times (including Lifetime Achievement in 1996), two Georges Méliès Fantasy Film awards, and the Mystery Writers of America Edgar Allan Poe Award twice.
He is also the recipient of the Silver Pen for Journalism by International P.E.N., the World Fantasy Award, and an unprecedented four Writers Guild of America Awards for Most Outstanding Solo Teleplay, and the International Horror Guild’s Living Legend Award. In 2006, he was made a Grand Master by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA). In 2009, Ellison was nominated for a Grammy award (for the second time) in the category Best Spoken Word Album for Children for his reading Through the Looking Glass and What Alice Found There for Blackstone Audio, Inc.
HE was awarded the Silver Pen for Journalism by International PEN, the international writers’ union. In 1990, Ellison was honored by International PEN for continuing commitment to artistic freedom and the battle against censorship. In 1998, he was awarded the “Defender of Liberty” award by the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund. March 1998, the National Women’s Committee of Brandeis University honored him with their 1998 Words, Wit, and Wisdom award. Ellison was named 2002’s winner of the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal’s “Distinguished Skeptic Award,” in recognition of his contributions to science and critical thinking.
Born in Cleveland, Ohio in 1934, Harlan Jay Ellison moved to New York in his early twenties to pursue a writing career. Over the next two years he published more than 100 stories and articles. Relocating to California in 1962, he began selling to Hollywood, co-scripting the 1966 movie The Oscar and contributing two-dozen scripts to such shows as Star Trek, The Outer Limits, The Man from U.N.C.L.E., The Alfred Hitchcock Hour, Cimarron Strip, Route 66, Burke’s Law, and The Flying Nun. His story “A Boy and His Dog” was filmed in 1975, starring Don Johnson, and he was a creative consultant on the 1980s revival of The Twilight Zone TV series.
His more than 115 books and audio works (and more to come) include Rumble (aka Web of the City), Rockabilly (aka Spider Kiss), All the Lies That Are My Life and Mefisto in Onyx, while some of his almost 2,000 short stories have been collected in The Juvies (aka Children of the Streets), Ellison Wonderland, Paingod and Other Delusions, I Have No Mouth & I Must Scream, Love Ain’t Nothing but Sex Misspelled, The Beast That Shouted Love at the Heart of the World, Deathbird Stories, Strange Wine, Shatterday, Stalking the Nightmare, Angry Candy, Slipppage, The Essential Ellison: A 50-Year Retrospective edited by Terry Dowling, and THE TOP OF THE VOLCANO.
Ellison also edited the influential science fiction anthology Dangerous Visions in 1967, and followed it with a sequel, Again, Dangerous Visions, in 1972.
More recently, he was the subject of Erik Nelson’s revelatory feature-length documentary Dreams with Sharp Teeth (2008), chronicling the author’s life and work, which was made over a period of twenty-seven years. His most recent N.Y. Times bestselling titles are 7 Against Chaos and Phoenix without Ashes (2014), and The Top of the Volcano: The Award-Winning Stories of Harlan Ellison® (2015).
As of 2017, seventeen brand new books have been added to the Ellison oeuvre. Published by Edgeworks Abbey® (series editor, Jason Davis) they include: BRAIN MOVIES: THE ORIGINAL TELEPLAYS OF HARLAN ELLISON (Volumes One – Seven), HARLAN 101: ENCOUNTERING ELLISON, THE SOUND OF A SCYTHE and 3 Brilliant Novellas, ROUGH BEASTS: Seventeen Stories Written Before I Got Up To Speed, NONE OF THE ABOVE, HONORABLE WHOREDOM AT A PENNY A WORD, AGAIN, HONORABLE WHOREDOM AT A PENNY A WORD, HARLAN ELLISON’S ENDLESSLY WATCHING, 8 IN 80 BY ELLISON (edited by Susan Ellison), THE LAST PERSON TO MARRY A DUCK LIVED 300 YEARS AGO and CAN & CANTANKEROUS (reissue).
A LIT FUSE: THE PROVOCATIVE LIFE OF HARLAN ELLISON is a 416 page biography, edited by interviewer Nat Segaloff, published by NESFA Press in 2017, and available through the web.