FOREWORD

BY TOM SNYDER

 

In SHATTERDAY, Harlan Ellison assured all of us that we share the same fears. That the one thing none of us have to be afraid of is admitting that we are afraid of the scary dreads that lurk inside us all. I have been sitting staring at the keys of this machine since three months ago. Then, Ellison asked if I would write a foreword to this book. A collection of more of his rantings and ravings that I first experienced very late one night on a defunct television program named “Tomorrow.” I liked Ellison then and I like him now. He honored me with his request. He flattered me. I accepted. And for three months I have been staring at the keys on this machine, in stark terror.

For years, I have written for television news programs. I think much of it has been pretty good, but if I set it down right here in front of you, few would remember a word of it. That’s because television news writing disappears rapidly. It comes on, it goes off, and it disappears. It doesn’t lie around gathering shelf dust for years and then one rainy night beckon your curiosity from the book-table. I called Ellison three days ago and confessed to him I didn’t have the foggiest notion of what a foreword to a book was all about. That I was terrified to think whatever words I strung together would be available for the jeering and ridicule of the audience forever. The good pieces I wrote for television would always be a private satisfaction to me. The dumb ones—the really horrid crap I had dashed out with no thought and less preparation—those were gone and forgotten and nobody would ever know of them and thank God for that. But here I was facing a foreword to a Harlan Ellison book.

Ellison has written forty-some books, won every award his peers can give him, has legions of fans around the world who hang on his every word as if they were struck in stone, and he—he who has taken to college lectures and Trekkie conventions so he will never again have to write for television because he hates it so deeply—wants a “television schlep”—as he loves to define us—to write a foreword to his book. For me to write anything in the same book with Harlan Ellison makes about as much sense as having me hit tee shots for Jack Nicklaus. I confessed that to him, and he laughed and said to make believe the whole thing was writing a letter to a friend; simply to have fun.

I think Harlan Ellison has fun. Here’s a little guy who every now and then drops into my life and points out that humans are the craziest people. We go absolutely nuts when New York State offers a winner $22,000,000 (that’s right folks, twenty two million dollars) in a lottery. But New York State doesn’t have the money to fix the highways and keep the bridges from falling down. Ellison has made me aware of things like that—the great contradiction between what we are and what we think we are. I want to believe that most of us have had sufficient of the current diet of news slime: How a Kennedy really died; are Brooke Shields and Michael Jackson more than good friends; is Boy George really a boy; and so on and so on and so on until your brain can’t stand it any longer. Ellison delights in cutting through all the smarm. He fights battles most of us haven’t even thought of, much less cared about. If you know anything of Frances Farmer, you’ll recall how she challenged everything hypocritical about God and Country. The so-called guardians of the public good cut her brain out to rid us all of cynicism and skepticism but it didn’t work. Watching a movie about her reminded me of Harlan Ellison. He fights the wars that aren’t even worth fighting, and delights in our frustration when we finally figure it out. Guys like Harlan know we can’t win ’em all, but we sure-as-shooting better win some, or else the guy who said, “Life’s a bitch, and then you die!”, will wind up being right.

 

The writer in the book follows. Along the way, you’ll hear him say that he wrote much of this a long time ago, and that when he asks you to write him about certain things, he meant for you to write him then, but that he doesn’t want to hear from you now.

He’s just kidding.

—Tom Snyder 
  29 May 84