Andy Porter put together this special issue of his science fiction fan magazine Algol, and he called it the “Ellish,” which meant it had a transcribed and edited version of a speech I’d made at a convention, and half a dozen articles by and about me. I can’t deny I was flattered and even a little embarrassed by the honor. Particularly by the articles Andy had commissioned to be written by Ted White and Lee Hoffman and Robert Silverberg, three friends who have known me both wearily and well for many years. They had remembered things I’d done and things I’d said and places I’d been that I had long since forgotten. And their views of me were more honest than I’d care to admit.
Silverbob, in particular, reminisced about an incident that took place in 1953 in Philadelphia. He recalled the episode in which three rather heavy lads braced me, for some now forgotten insult I’d leveled at one of them. Bob wrote:
“Any sensible man would have disappeared at once, or at least yelled for the nearest bell-hop to stop the slaughter. But Harlan stood his ground, snarled back at Semenovich nose-to-nose, and avoided mayhem through a display of sheer bravado. Which demonstrated one Ellison trait: physical courage to the verge of idiocy. Unlike many tough-talking types, Harlan is genuinely fearless.”
Courage, to me, is one of those dormant qualities one never knows one possesses until the pressure is applied. I have known many television producers, for instance, with weighty claims to courage who, when the screws were put on them by networks or studios, folded instantly. The one time I made an idol of someone—a man who professed to being a pillar of courage—he turned out to be as weak as any other man, when the pressure was laid on him. (More the fool me, for having demanded anything more of him, or of anyone, than that they be merely human, with all the attendant foibles and feet of clay.) To be courageous when all that is at stake is talk—parlor liberals take note—or a few dollars, is not to be courageous at all. Hemingway, I suppose, knew where it was at. He was never satisfied with the shape and substance of the courage he found within himself. He continually tested it, setting himself in positions of untenability and danger, merely to find out if the courage was still with him, if it still seemed adequate for the life he was compelled to support. I am for larger and more frequent tests of courage.
Not until I was boxed in totally, in situations where there were no other exits than through the mouth of danger with courage the only weapon, did I satisfy myself that I did, indeed, possess what Silverberg calls “courage to the verge of idiocy.”
Bob has told of one such instance.
Avram Davidson may recall yet another.
Gay Talese reported on a third.
And so I find at thirty-three, that fear and I mix as well as oil and water. It is not that I am fearless, it is simply that there is nothing I fear. (Let me correct that: I am petrified of wearing contact lenses. My brother-in-law Jerry attempted once, to get me to wear contacts, and when the oculist set a test glass in my eye, the hair went straight up on my head, I wet my pants, the blood drained out of my face, and I was covered with sweat till he got it out Ridiculing myself for this adolescent behavior, I demanded the oculist try again. He was reluctant, but I insisted. It was worse the second time. I still wear my glasses on the front of my head, and I can say with great certainty that I am afraid of things being put into my eyes.)
Yet I do not fear lizards, or drowning, or dark rooms, or rats, or high places, or death, or poverty, or needles, or deep personal involvements, or the wrath of the gods. I choose not to think of this as something deserving of applause. There is no control over it—just as there is no control on my part of an absence of a time sense [see “Repent, Harlequin!” Said the Ticktockman]—and so it is as lofty an ability as a good bowel movement. Reflex action (Audie Murphy notwithstanding) is not deserving of the Congressional Medal of Honor.
Ah, but there is a fear I fear. A major fear, and one that propels me like a 30.06 slug through life.
I am desperately afraid I will die before I’ve written all the stories I have in me.
Self-analysis grows chancy, but each man decides at various times in his life who he is, where he’s going, what he stands for. Perhaps not in so many words, but in a kind of subconscious codification that enables him to stop the action at any given point and say, “This is good, this is evil; this is right, this is wrong.” We call it a sense of morality or ethic. We call it a conscience. We call it maturity or a relation to the universe. But whatever it is—even if it goes by the name of love—it helps a man know what his potentialities may be.
For some time now I have been agonizingly aware that I am a talent of considerable dimensions encased in a man of very limited possibilities. The talent that is Me and the Man that is Harlan Ellison are two very separate and distinct entities. That the Man lugs around the Talent becomes at once a blessing and a curse. Consider: a woman may find me inordinately involving, and an affair begins. Through it all, through all its stately progressions, I wonder: is it me or is it the talent she is in love with?
Why must it be me, this puny Ellison, that has to carry the Talent like Quasimodo’s hump? Why cannot this Talent be deposited within, say, Cary Grant or Kirk Douglas or even something that looks like Doug McClure. They’re beautiful people, they wouldn’t have to be jealous of the Talent. Why must it be me that wakes in the early morning because the ideas are fermenting, bubbling up in the mental mire? Why must it be me that has to write television to support the needs of a body that demands comfort and luxury; if it were Steve McQueen, he could write only the great ones, and not have to do the slavey labor.
And because of this jealousy, this rivalry between the Talent that need prove nothing to anyone—and the body that is Harlan Ellison that must prove itself over and over again, the treacherous fifth columnist of the body keeps putting the Talent in jeopardy: risking its neck, taking dangerous stands, getting involved in relationships that promise nothing but flameout, stretching the abilities to the breaking point.
Thus, all the “harlan ellison stories” that are told, all the weird anecdotes, they are the cartoon capers of the pack mule, braying for attention, while the stories merely exist, without side comment or need for defense. They speak for themselves. They are complete and whole and self-contained.
And thus, again, the body that seeks to prove its worth entirely independent of the Talent, is forced to live with the fear. By subjecting the Talent to unnecessary risks, it brings down upon its head the torment and terror of the one big fear: that the body of Harlan Ellison will succeed in destroying itself before the Talent of Harlan Ellison gets said all it has to say.
For the first time I’m beginning to think Geminis may be schizoid, after all.
So…
To get it all said. To wind out all the stories on silver threads. To relate all the relationships of all the people, each with its own tiny death interwoven with the comedy and shadows. So many stories. They now total over six hundred, not counting the novels.
But what of the ones started, and never completed? All the false starts? All the bits and pieces that began well and toured midway through? What of the night flashes that woke me from sleep and toward which I crawled on hands and knees, to the typewriter near the bed, so nothing escapes, even in half-sleep? What of those? What of the vagrant thoughts, the stray dreams, the incomplete fractions of ideas?
Silverbob’s reminiscences of me and my courage, and my subsequent analysis of it all—as set down here rather nakedly, I’m ashamed to say—set me to rummaging through the “idea file” I keep, that I suppose all writers keep. And I came up with snippets I knew instinctively I would never ever manage to get into stories. And I was afraid.
Afraid they would die.
Even as bad stories die.
But at least they deserve a chance to live, these stray dreams. So, with your permission, let me offer a few of the ones that seem good even after the long periods since they were written. And if any of them touch you, if any of them seem worthy, perhaps you might drop me a line and let me know, and it might stir me to take them up again, and order the bones and flesh onto them, making stories of them. And if only one or two come from it, then you will have been an important part of the creative act, and we will both be richer for it.