Harlan Ellison still angry, still writing at 81

[Machiavelli]

Nat Segaloff
The Jewish Advocate
May 22, 2015

Harlan Ellison is still an angry young man, except he'll be 81 on May 27. He has used this anger, fueled by childhood anti-Semitism, throughout his extraordinary career as a writer of speculative fiction. This year saw the publication of his 116th and 117th (so far) books: The Top of the Volcano, a collection of his awardwinning short stories, and a graphic novelization of his original script for "The City on the Edge of Forever," widely considered the best Star Trek episode ever written.

Although Ellison's hundreds of published stories contain a wealth of Jewish characters, his most complex creation is Ellison himself. Born in Cleveland Heights, Ohio in 1934 and raised in nearby Painesville, "We were not very Jewish," he said of his family. "I was a Shabbos Jew. We were Jewish when it came to the High Holy Days. The rest of the time, the only time Jewishness was brought up was when somebody called somebody a kike and there had been a fight. And that was usually me."

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