The Essential Ellison

When I saw that note, with its casual impertinences and its gratuitous rudeness and its utter lack of understanding of the value of time to a writer, I thought, I can' t be the only poor devil who gets this lunacy every day.

And I remembered the conversation with Kris and Phil and Bob, and I put together a letter that I Xeroxed and sent off to eighty-five writers and artists of my acquaintance. The letter was an imposition precisely of the kind I despise most, and so I made it very clear pa.s.sim the copy that this was a lark, a frippery, an amus.e.m.e.nt, and if it interfered with the recipient' s writing in even the smallest way, it was to be ignored.

The letter read as follows: --.

Companions in Suffering: This is a minuscule request for a bit of data. If it' s convenient, respond. If you' re busy, forget it. It' s strictly by way of a small favor and if it imposes at all, just smile and toss it. No guilt attaches to a no-response. Honest, folks.

What it is, is this: Your friend and mine, that little d.i.c.kens Ed Bryant, somewhichway conned me into being the guest of honor at Westercon 37 up in Portland (29 June- 3 July). As you may know, I look on the prospect of appearing naked at conventions with all the joy I reserve for root ca.n.a.l surgery. Nonetheless, I said I' d doit, soI' ll do it.Smiling all the way.

But for my " guest of honor speech" I would like to present a talk that came to me as a lark during a conversation one night with Phil Farmer, Bob Bloch and the late Kris Neville. We were shootin' the breeze, us old hands, around the kitchen table at a party thrown for John Brunner, and we began exchanging horror stories of the most bizarre things fans had done to us through our long and exhausting careers.

I can' t remember the weird stories Phil told, but there were at least half a dozen of them, about impositions (like this one) on his time and sanity by malign or simply overzealous readers. Kris told a story about some kid who took up residence on his front lawn. Bob remembered someone had sent him a birthday card with a green gemstone pasted on it, which he tossed in a drawer and which, years later, while preparing some papers for one of the university archives, he sent along; he received an alarmed call from the curator of records that they' d had this frippery appraised, and it was worth about seven grand!

As for me, and what fans who' ve never met me but have decided I' m loathsome, have done...don't ask. The worst was not the a.s.s who signed me up for fifty book clubs, who ordered goods in my name that had to be returned, who subscribed me to dozens of magazines from Time to Crocheting. The worst was not the fool who entered my phone number in his college' s computer, with a program that had calls being made six or eight times a day, with immediate disconnect, thus waking me at 5 AM, getting me off the potty at high noon, driving my secretary crazy. The worst was not the jerk who egged my front door. The worst was not...

Well, you get the idea.

The point of all this is that I want to present a speech (that can later be written up as an article to be read by the ma.s.s of fans lurking out there waiting for all of us) with so much weight of actual anecdote, so filled with the intentional and unintentional c.r.a.p we all have to endure as part of " the business," that perhaps it will deter a few of the little soph.o.m.oric darlings.

Now many of you take it all stoically. I' ve talked to some of you and you shrug, you smile, and say " what the h.e.l.l. " One well-known lady swears she loves every fan who reads her books and she really doesn' t mind at all that they call her when she' s at the business of working on a novel.I don' t believe her, but...what the h.e.l.l. I' m addressing the rest of you, who have had experiences that make the eyes water and the mind reel.

I ask that you jot down your anecdote as fully or briefly as you choose- and pick your most unbelievable horror story-and send it to me as soon as it' s convenient. If you don' t want your name mentioned, well, I' ll reluctantly but sedulously abide by your wishes, though use of your famous name will have more impact, of course. Just add that caveat, and I' ll respect your privacy.

Just grab a piece of second sheet and dash it off, if you will.

It' s nothing that you owe me, or anything that will put a penny in your pocket, but may hap it will payoff in saving you just one looneytune intruding on your life.

I' ll send along a Xerox of the finished piece, of course; and any smallest effort you expend in aid of this project will win you my undying thanks. But since I just turned fifty, that " undying" part may not mean a diddly-bit.

In any case, thanks for letting me intrude as the looney tunes do.

- Thanks, folks. Harlan --.

I thought perhaps I' d get one or two responses from my closest friends, maybe Silverberg or David Gerrold, maybe Ed Bryant and Vonda McIntyre. What I did not expect was the instantaneous tidal wave, the floodrush, the tsunami of responses from people I hadn' t heard from in years, each one recounting a horror more unbelievable than the one preceding.

I will recount some of them here. Most have the names of the victims attached. A few, of the most horrible, do not: the true and actual anguish that came from these incidents remains, and I have been asked by the tellers of these tales not to specify into whose lives this s.h.i.+train fell.

One more interesting sidebar.

Almost without exception, every letter begins, as does, say, Isaac Asimov' s response: " Dear Harlan, In general, my readers are a very nice bunch of people who virtually never impose," and then every single one of them goes on, in the second paragraph, to say, " However there was this one fan who..." and then proceeds to recount a monstrous invasion of privacy or gratuitous bit of ugliness that makes the back teeth itch.

It is as if the writers in this genre, hedging their bets in the unlikely event fandom rises like the followers of Madam DeFarge in the streets of Paris, have prefaced their true feelings with a disclaimer that will save them from the guillotine. Have no fear, friends, the letters will go with me to my grave. Soon after the publication of this essay, most likely.

And here are the stories, so that those who suggest- as did Donald Kingsbury in his communique with the words " Each of our Karmas is very different. As L. Ron Hubbard used to say, 'We create what we expect.' Have a happy root ca.n.a.l job" - willfulness on the part of Ellison puts him solely and alone in the path of such vile behavior, will have evidence that this is a plague that touches all of us, sweetheart or monster.

Here are the faces of the demons we deal with: --.

We' ll begin slowly. The first response was from the late " James Tiptree, Jr." - Alice Sheldon- who, because of her government security clearance, maintained pseudonymous anonymity as a matter of serious consequence. Alli wrote me, " Harlan, love...Lovely idea, the egregious fan examples. I' ve combed memory and nothing comes up. The problem is that for years I was insulated and little happened except the 3-day stakeout of my post office box when the WorldCon was in Baltimore..."

Here' s one from James Gunn, professor at the University of Kansas in Lawrence. A very quiet and pleasant man, a gentle and courteous man. " Dear Harlan, I must not arouse the same pa.s.sions in fans as some of my colleagues. Oh, I' ve had people send me books and gummed stickers to sign, and one...wrote me sycophantic letters from a Florida jail and eventually wound up asking me for a thousand dollars for his legal defense...but the only incident that I found myself marveling at was the young woman who pa.s.sed me at the 'meet-the-authors reception' at the WorldCon in Baltimore, squinted at my name tag, and said indignantly, '1 never heard of you.' All I could do was stare."

Barry Malzberg could do weeks of horror stories, angst incarnate. But here' s what he wrote: " Harlan, I think it' s a bad idea altogether, this topic of Great Fan Lunacies Me and My Colleagues Have Known, because this only encourages the troops, stirs them up, like one political disaster has been known to trigger another. The 95% who cannot conceive of being similarly loathesome will laugh and applaud and enjoy and see trivialized real pain, and the other 5% will be taking notes."

In the process of bringing this ma.n.u.script up to date the first time, after five years, it was suggested by one editor that perhaps I should drop the anecdote of the " seven thousand dollar gemstone" as Robert Bloch reported it, because it redounded to Bloch' s benefit. Well, yes, I could have dropped that story; but the intent of this piece is to show the reality, not a carefully manipulated special-pleading slant on that reality. I submit, nonetheless, that anyone crazy enough to send a rock like that, casually, without advising anyone of its value, is a looneytune by any a.n.a.lysis, and might as easily do something dangerous or inconvenient the next time out...or heaven forbid the object of such a person' s admiration should rebuff the attentions! But that wasn' t even what Bob Bloch chose as his most outstanding fan horror story. Here' s what he wrote: --.

Dear Harlan: You know the old saying, " Once bitten, twice shy?" Well, I got a new one for you. " Three times bitten; what a dummy!"

A fan I' d known for thirty years kept pestering me to do a collection of my old Lefty Feep stories. Finally he said he' d go into specialty publis.h.i.+ng and do the book himself-all I had to do was choose the yarns and write an introduction. My former agent agreed, so I went to work. After a year

A second fan proposed to put out a new collection of my fanzine pieces as a sequel to THE EIGHTH STAGE OF FANDOM. Since he was already heavily into specialty publis.h.i.+ng I saw no harm in the idea and, as requested, went over my material, selected the best, and prepared an introduction. Unlike the first yo-yo, this one did reply to my letters, but never took any action. Eighteen months later I finally managed to pry my material back from him.

The third fan was on the committee of a convention where I was scheduled to be guest of honor- after they found out Jules Verne was dead. This turkey wanted to do a volume of my hitherto-unreprinted stories, both as a convention special and for subsequent sale through a publis.h.i.+ng outlet. In this case I needn' t wait a year or a year and a half- time was of the essence and he needed my choice of stories plus introductions to same. I rushed the stuff out to him and within two months- right in time for the convention!- he called to tell me he' d changed his mind and there wasn' t any book.

I am not releasing the name of the first fan, because he' s dead.

And I' m not releasing the names of the other two fans, because I just might kill them yet. (Maybe I won' t kill them. Maybe I' ll just go after their d.i.c.ks with a cheese grater.) --.

I selected dear Alli Sheldon, gentlemanly Jim Gunn, and the ever- fan-helpful Bob Bloch as the first three invokers of the litany, for a reason. I mentioned earlier that Donald Kingsbury' s letter suggested we bring such iniquity upon ourselves by having sodden karma. His letter glowed with the wonderful experiences he' s had at conventions. Apparently, the only thing dismaying ever to have involved him was this: " Once I was sitting forlornly at an autograph table all alone because everyone was lined up for Asimov and Ellison, and a sweet young thing who felt sorry for me ran out and bought a book by me, even though she didn' t know me from Adam, just so I' d have at least one customer." And then Don finished off the note- as I mentioned earlier- with this: " Each of our Karmas is very different. As L. Ron Hubbard used to say, 'We create what we expect.' Have a happy root ca.n.a.l job."

I expected a bit of that. Because I have chosen to suffer this kind of behavior not at all, mythology has grown that I am rude, meanspirited, brutal and often violent with sweet-faced, innocent fans who merely wish to convey good wishes.

This is probably as valid as an arrant suggestion that Donald Kingsbury is a jealous chucklehead who wouldn' t know if he were being insulted or put-upon if the offenders performed their acts using jackhammers and IV drips.

Nonetheless, to remove from the equation any slightest hint of special pleading, of self-defense, or rationalization for a monstrously uncivil Ellison...I have obtained the letters, have seen to an editor' s attestation that they' re real, and I' ve opened the parade of the d.a.m.ned with three writers who have been known for their kindness, civility, leaning toward fan interests, their good upbringing and unblemished courtesy.

So even if one one-millionth of the ugly tales told about your compiler- of-the-facts is true, it has no bearing. Let us simply look at what other writers say.

You' ll enjoy, particularly, the letters sent by women writers. You think the men have it bad? Listen to Marta Randall: --.

Dear G.o.d, Harlan, I' m absolutely appalled at this idea you' ve generated about your Westercon speech. Not that I think it shouldn' t be done, and that it' s high time, and all that stuff, but I admire the sheer, unadulterated, brazen guts it takes to get up before a room full of fans and tell them about all the terrible things they' ve done through the years. Visions of stonings and crucifixions, vituperation and much noise, howlings on panels and illiteracy in the pages of fanzines- it' s positively delicious. Do it. I won' t be there to see it, but I' ll be with you in spirit.

Most of the a.s.saults upon me by fans have been verbal. The chubby young woman in Renaissance drag who interrupted me at a party, pushed my companion aside, stared at me, and said: Oh, that' s what you look like. I read a book of yours once and I couldn' t understand a word in it. The intense fellow who approached me in a hucksters room, asked if he could ask a question, and when I said yes, he said, I' ve read everything you' ve ever written, from your first short story on. I really loved that first short story a lot, but the rest of your work stinks. Would you care to comment on why your writing has gone downhill? Two years ago, I was injudicious enough to write a letter to a 'zine responding to someone' s typically lug-headed statements about another writer, and received a response telling me that I was obviously a neophyte because this bozo had never heard of me, and if I' d send this guy a copy of my books, he' d be glad to tell me what was wrong with them. The fan who got blotto at a dead-dog party, fell asleep in the con suite at my feet, and spent the next day telling everyone he' d spent the night with me. The Trekkie at the one Star Trek convention I was inveigled into attending, who said of my books, to me, " Well, if they' re not about Star Trek, they' re lull of s.h.i.+t. "

It ain' t much, thank G.o.d, but you' re welcome to use it,and my name.I just had a terrible thought: what if your speech simply gives them more ideas?

Do you begin to see a thread? This is the second time the suggestion has been made. As nervously as many writers sing the praises of their fans, do you begin to perceive: they' re afraid of you, afraid of what you' re capable of doing, as lark, as gag, as obsessive self-amus.e.m.e.nt.

Here' s Asimov.

In general, my readers are a very nice bunch of people who virtually never impose...There are the teachers who force all their students to write me painstaking scrawls and make it necessary for me to answer politely because I can' t bear to disappoint kids. (I' d like to strangle the teachers, though.) However, once I blew my top. A bookstore owner asked if I could sign " a few" books for him. I sighed and said okay.

Next thing I got huge packing crates containing every book of mine he had in the store, scores and scores and scores of them. My first impulse was to throw them away and claim they never came. My second was to keep the books for use as gifts (or to a deserving charity). But I couldn' t do that. I had to sign them all, rea.s.semble the packing cases, hang them together with ropes and then my wife and I had to stick them on luggage carriers and lug them to the post office which was several blocks away (and I' m not exactly in my first youth any more). The only satisfaction I got was to write the bookstore fellow an eloquent letter that probably singed all the hair off his head and body.

Which is as likely as that the idiot understood he' d made an impertinent fool of himself to begin with. I' ve told Isaac a hundred times that just because we' re both Jewish, does not mean that we must suffer two thousand years' retroactive persecution at the hands of human trash like this bookstore fellow. And did he even understand what he' d done, after Isaac apprised him of the monstrous imposition? No, I' d venture not. Because, you see, that' s another aspect of this: Stupid enough to commit the sin in the first place, means...a singularity of tunnel-vision, a self-involvement, a lack of empathy, that blinds them to the awfulness of what they' ve done...even when you explain it slowly and simply.

For instance, I' m rewriting this essay in my bed, as I went in for fairly serious surgery little more than a week ago. A number of fans found out about this, and so I was pleasured, three days before Christmas, by a bookstore owner in the L.A. area, who knows me for years, who called and asked if I' d mind if he came by with a book of mine someone had just bought, for a personal signature. He had spoken to me the day before, and knew I couldn' t move out of the bed for fear of the sutures giving way, but he called to ask if I' d mind, during my recuperation, if I' d sign some G.o.ddam book for a customer.

I was astonished and told him I was in bed. He asked a second time. I said, " I' m recuperating! I was three hours under the knife! What the f.u.c.k do I care about signing some book for a stranger at this time!?!" So he suggested he come by tomorrow, instead. I hung up on him.

Do they understand, Isaac? Not b.l.o.o.d.y likely!

They feel as if we' re being rude to them.

Barry Longyear wrote one of the most touching of the letters I received in reply to my query. For personal reasons, I' ll only reproduce excerpts here...the totality is too intimate.

Early in my career, shortly after the publication of my pun story Duelling Clowns, I was at one of my first conventions (a Boskone, I think). This fan, equipped with the disposition and general build of a gorilla, stops me in the hallway and asks, 'Are you Barry Longyear?"

" Yes," I replied, preparing to bask in author' s glory.

He hauled off and decked me. " That' s for Duelling Clowns," he said; then he stormed out of the hotel...

About a year after completing my treatment for alcoholism and drug addiction at St. Mary' s Rehabilitation Center in Minneapolis, I attended my first convention since sobering up. This was the time when my real fan horror took place.

At that time I was still very uncomfortable in drinking situations. Even with a year of A.A. under your belt, early sobriety is a fragile thing. Since MiniCon was being held in St. Paul, about a ten minute drive from St. Mary' s Rehab, I figured if I was ever going to be safe at a convention, MiniCon would be the best bet...

The next morning I was up early trying to figure out what one does at a convention at seven AM, never before having had this experience. I was a mite shaky in the self-image department, so I decided to give a fan a thrill and let him eat breakfast with a real-live big time SF pro. This particular fan was on the con staff and had just gotten off duty. In the hotel restaurant we sat down and placed our orders. Every pore on my body was open, waiting to absorb sorely needed compliments. He finished his breakfast, sat back in his booth and smiled at me as he looked up from my name tag. " Well, Barry," he said, " what is it that you do that rates you a guest ribbon?"

As I watched the staved-in hull of my career sinking into oblivion, I focused on my grapefruit and muttered something about doing a little scribbling now and then.

And they say fan sensitivity is dead.

Terry Carr isn' t with us anymore, but here' s one he told me, that you might not' ve heard. When his first novel came out, half of an Ace Double called W ARLORD OF KOR, it was around the time of DisCon, 1963. The first wife of a well known fan (who was sitting in the audience as I delivered this essay verbally), came sauntering up to Terry, and Terry was expecting some small recognition from her that his first book had at last been released, and she said to him, " I' ve just read your novel. I wanted to introduce myself." And Terry smiled, because we all expect kindness our first time out, and she said, " What did you write that miserable piece of s.h.i.+t for?" And she stood, hands on hips, waiting for the pain to translate itself into guilty apology. And Terry said, " I wrote it for seven hundred and fifty dollars," and he walked away.

This one is from Gene Wolfe: --.

The worst was inviting me to be guest of honor at Icon in Iowa City. Rusty Hevelin was fan guest of honor, and we were told we would give our speeches Friday afternoon.

Then Friday evening.

Then Sat.u.r.day morning.

Then Sat.u.r.day afternoon.

Then Sat.u.r.day evening before the play. At no time were explanations of any of these postponements made.

I arrived at the play at about eight PM, once more keyed up and ready to speak. First Rusty, then me. Right.

The co-chair got on stage and announced that the guest of honor speeches would be given after the play, and I walked out.

About fifteen minutes later, Rusty found me and asked if I were going to speak after the play. I told him no- he could, if he wished; but I would not. He explained that he intended to refuse, and he' d wanted to suggest we act in concert. Our little meeting ended with our agreeing to strike the convention, which we did. To the best of my knowledge, it was the only time the fan and pro guests of honor (all the GoH the convention had) have staged a concerted labor action.

This was the convention at which the banquet (Sat.u.r.day evening before the play) was held in the corridors and on the stairways, because the committee had failed to arrange for a room, tables, and chairs.

Here' s a nasty little one from the elegant L. Sprague de Camp.

On the whole fans have treated me very kindly. There was, however a time a few years ago when a group of admirers of H.P. Lovecraft became so exercised over the critical remarks in my biography of HPL that they discussed hitting me in the face with a cherry pie at a convention.

At the Fantasy Convention in Fort Worth, in 1978, word reached me that someone in this group would undertake this form of literary criticism. A pair of large, muscular fans, who make a hobby of martial arts, appointed themselves bodyguards. When I finished my presentation, a young man, bearing a brown- paper package of about the right size, approached. My defenders asked him what he wanted. Without a word, he turned and went away. So I shall never know for sure what was in that package; but I can bear my ignorance with becoming fort.i.tude.

From Bob and Ginny Heinlein.

Dear Harlan, Since we retired behind- [Get this, Folks!], Since we retired behind an unlisted telephone number and chain link fence and electric gate, we' ve been pretty free of horror stories. Except one.

One night I was working in my office. There' s a pane high up in the door; but it would take a giant to look in through that pane of gla.s.s. I can' t see anyone shorter than that if I look through the pane.

The bell rang. Startled, because I hadn' t let anyone in the gate, I answered the door, and there was a creep. His first words were, " Someone killed my peac.o.c.k. "

I' m afraid that I told him to get out, and that if he didn' t, I would call the sheriff.

He didn' t climb the fence again, but for days there was some kind of wire " sculpture" left at the mailbox. Each day a new one. And letters. Etc. I never laid eyes on the man again, but I haven' t forgotten him...

There were endless drop-ins years ago when we lived in Colorado, and quite a few here until we had the gate installed. Robert once had a phone call- during a c.o.c.ktail party we were giving. A woman called from Kansas, wanting to know whether she should go to the Menninger Clinic. And we' ve had our trees decorated with toilet tissue, and so on. We' ve even had our lovely house sign stolen.

Here' s a quickie. Raymond E. Feist tells one about a fan who showed up at his door a bit before seven AM of a Sunday, while Ray' s nursing a fever of 102, after a restless night and he' d finally fallen asleep. So he staggers to the door, looking like h.e.l.l, and here' s this cheery little fan cherub with a paper bag full of books to be signed. Maybe a dozen books. But since Ray had only had a few t.i.tles published at that time, what he was looking at was three of each, probably to be sold.

And this kid demands Ray sign the books, right there, right then. And Ray says, " Look, I don' t mean to be rude, but I' m sick as a dog, hundred and two fever, I feel like h.e.l.l." And the kid sorta blinks and doesn' t say anything, but he just stands there. So Ray says, " Could you come back another time, this is a little inconvenient," and the kid says, " I' m flying back to Hawaii." And Ray snuffles, and says, " I' m sick...couldn' t you maybe..." but the kid just keeps on demonstrating this absolutely sensitive demeanor, and keeps wanting the books signed.

" That, and the death threat I got on my answering machine," Ray says, " convinced me to take my number out of the phone book."

Another major writer I contacted for this piece was so nervous about fans giving him trouble, though he called them " creeping morons," that he refused to let me use his name in any way. He said that attending conventions had thrown him so far off his writing that all he wanted to do was absent himself utterly from any access by fans to his life.