Harlan Ellison rumour control

Harlan Ellison, are you in trouble? I see where there are all sorts of rumours going around. I was never your biggest booster, but I hate rumours, so let me set a few things straight.

1) I never slept with Harlan Ellison. We met for one weekend, when I was co-chairing the West Virginia University (WVU)Monongamoot Science Fiction Society's "edu-con", MonCon. I and my friend Steve Saffel had managed to land Harlan (for $2500 plus expenses) and Stan Lee (for $1500 plus expenses) just to have Harlan go on Tom Snyder's "Tomorrow" show and deny he was attending our science fiction convention. In the middle of a coal miner's strike. Not a great fiscal move for us...but what could we do? They were both just great. Why did I never sleep with him? He's straight. I'm straight. I was in a monogamous relationship with a brilliant, leggy goddess at the time. And I never sleep with anyone too short to ride the adult rides at Disneyland.

2) Harlan is not William Shatner in disguise. Trust me, all elements of self-loathing possible aside, Harlan is too short. And, he writes his own material. Including the original script to the Star Trek episode "City on the Edge of Forever". In his first script, Captain Kirk has to die in order to save the future. They had him change the ending and it still won classic Star Trek an Emmy.

3) Harlan had a friendly feud with Isaac Asimov. He said that Asimov pretended to be a dirty old man to get away with being what he really was...a "tit grabber". If current rumours are true...He may be channelling Asimov, but I wasn't there and I don't know the full story. A Harlan groupie did get past our security at MonCon using a letter of introduction from Isaac. She was carrying doped chocolate chip cookies in order to molest Harlan. He didn't eat them. But friends of one of the organizers did and passed out. She didn't molest them.

4) Harlan did write an early treatment for "I, Robot". I saw it. He sold off copies of the first several pages at $10.00 a pop at MonCon to make up for the losses we were taking. It was a noble gesture, but knowing how much he hates it when people change their opinions on anything, I walked up to him afterwards an told him I respected his action, but he would always be a "prick" in my opinion. He smiled and said "I can respect that". His version, being written in 1979, did not star Will Smith.

5) Harlan is not behind the War in Iraq. That is actually Joe Haldeman. Or Orson Scott Card. I always get those two confused.

So there you have it, some rumour control for an old acquaintance. You don't have to thank me, Harlan, just buy one of my books sometime. Oh, by the way...I still have never bought one of yours. I didn't want to lose your respect.