Harlan Ellison "The truth of what's going on here is that I'm dying," says Ellison, by phone. "I'm like the Wicked Witch of the West -- I'm melting. I began to sense it back in January. By that time, I had agreed to do the convention. And I said, I can make it. I can make it.'"
There have been rumors for a while, which intensified greatly around the time Ellison quit the Internet (he's since returned, but of course he was never really on the Internet except for his own website's guestbook) that his health was failing and that except for a couple of hours a day he was resting in his sickbed. Then there's the attempt to sell his first typewriter, so suggestive of wishing to create a bit of a cushion in the case of his passing.
Ray Bradbury just turned 90 and for the past few years has given a bunch of newspaper interviews, which have led to me occasionally thinking, "Oh, is he dead!" when I'd see his photo on the front page of a newspaper or his surname floating up in my Google News page. And Bradbury is still alive and even watching videos about his fantasy sex life on the Internet, so good for him. Ellison is no Bradbury; you still have to hunt him down to see what he's up to—a short story in one fantasy magazine, the introduction to a forgotten reprint in another, a bit of a story in an anthology of Green Hornet stories that has already missed a couple of release dates.
It'll be too bad when he dies, of course (or when I die! Or maybe even when some of you people die), but to me it's always a bit odd how people get all wrapped up in a famous person's death. Books and stories and music and movies can be life-changing experiences—I have my life changed every few months by one or the other, which can be a problem!—but I guess I never got the use of pop culture people as towering figures in one's life. Whether it's the guy I heard about the other day who committed suicide while listening to Nirvana songs (a tragedy sure, but there was also the secondary tragedy of my eyes threatening to roll so much they'd be suck in the back of my head forever) or the woman who claimed that it was Robert Heinlein and not her backwards Portuguese parents that raised her (someone is missing a spanking or two!), or the whole mess of people currently so concerned with reconciling new parenthood with their own childhoods steeped in Super Mario Bros or punk rock, I'm always a little distressed when people have tied so much of their identity and adult lives to the creative work of strangers or, worse, corporations.
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la_nausicaa asked me the other day if I were excited about the possibility of watching pro wrestling with our future children and I thought to myself Oh God no. And then in another venue I saw a reference to someone's newborns being "baby SF fans" and again thought Oh God no. Some things are better discovered on one's own in an atmosphere of at least faint disapproval if not outright derision. What one should get from one's parents instead is enough of the other stuff of life (the stuff that generally isn't sold at prices pegged to median kiddie allowances) that whatever happenes to float in front of your eyes at age fifteen doesn't imprint too deeply. And that's as true for the people who read Nine Stories over and over as it is for the folks looking for daddy in skiffy. When I was reading about Ellison's imminent demise this morning, I wasn't sad for him or even for his wife so much as I was sad for the people carrying on about a father figure dying. Is that really all they have?
There have been rumors for a while, which intensified greatly around the time Ellison quit the Internet (he's since returned, but of course he was never really on the Internet except for his own website's guestbook) that his health was failing and that except for a couple of hours a day he was resting in his sickbed. Then there's the attempt to sell his first typewriter, so suggestive of wishing to create a bit of a cushion in the case of his passing.
Ray Bradbury just turned 90 and for the past few years has given a bunch of newspaper interviews, which have led to me occasionally thinking, "Oh, is he dead!" when I'd see his photo on the front page of a newspaper or his surname floating up in my Google News page. And Bradbury is still alive and even watching videos about his fantasy sex life on the Internet, so good for him. Ellison is no Bradbury; you still have to hunt him down to see what he's up to—a short story in one fantasy magazine, the introduction to a forgotten reprint in another, a bit of a story in an anthology of Green Hornet stories that has already missed a couple of release dates.
It'll be too bad when he dies, of course (or when I die! Or maybe even when some of you people die), but to me it's always a bit odd how people get all wrapped up in a famous person's death. Books and stories and music and movies can be life-changing experiences—I have my life changed every few months by one or the other, which can be a problem!—but I guess I never got the use of pop culture people as towering figures in one's life. Whether it's the guy I heard about the other day who committed suicide while listening to Nirvana songs (a tragedy sure, but there was also the secondary tragedy of my eyes threatening to roll so much they'd be suck in the back of my head forever) or the woman who claimed that it was Robert Heinlein and not her backwards Portuguese parents that raised her (someone is missing a spanking or two!), or the whole mess of people currently so concerned with reconciling new parenthood with their own childhoods steeped in Super Mario Bros or punk rock, I'm always a little distressed when people have tied so much of their identity and adult lives to the creative work of strangers or, worse, corporations.
![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif)
la_nausicaa asked me the other day if I were excited about the possibility of watching pro wrestling with our future children and I thought to myself Oh God no. And then in another venue I saw a reference to someone's newborns being "baby SF fans" and again thought Oh God no. Some things are better discovered on one's own in an atmosphere of at least faint disapproval if not outright derision. What one should get from one's parents instead is enough of the other stuff of life (the stuff that generally isn't sold at prices pegged to median kiddie allowances) that whatever happenes to float in front of your eyes at age fifteen doesn't imprint too deeply. And that's as true for the people who read Nine Stories over and over as it is for the folks looking for daddy in skiffy. When I was reading about Ellison's imminent demise this morning, I wasn't sad for him or even for his wife so much as I was sad for the people carrying on about a father figure dying. Is that really all they have?