Authors Electric

A young Ellison, at his Olympia SG 3 Alas, we seem to be losing all the great ones lately. Well, this is a common illusion when some beloved figure dies. Last week it was Harlan Ellison, who died June 28, just a week ago in his sleep at 84, after suffering a stroke in 2014. Ellison was probably the least known famous writer in the world. To me and a lot of writers who were his fans, he epitomized everything the brilliant, provocative, flamboyant, prolific, wild-eyed writer ought to be - and usually fall short of. Whatever one thinks of his prodigious body of work, one could not fail to admire his ferocity as a creative spirit and human being. "Born without an off-switch," his friends said. He went, Energizer-Bunny-like, fully until he stopped. Jewish by birth, atheist by self-proclamation, Ellison lived consistently by the three great moral questions of Rabbi Hillel the Elder : "If I am not for myself, then who will be for me? "If I am for myself alone, t...

This month I continue to count down the ten most important books and/or series in my life. If you haven't seen the first four you can see numbers 10 & 9 here and numbers 8 & 7 here . Last month I looked at two books that changed the way I look at life. This month I look at two books that changed the way I look at writing. 6. Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman This may well be the first book I ever bought based solely on the cover and author. I didn't read the summary until I was standing in line to pay. As you may be able to tell from the previous two entries, I've always been a fan of fantasy. After discovering Tolkien (see last month's entry), I delved into other fantasy series: I read Terry Brooks' Shannara trilogy , Marvel comics' run of the Elfquest series , anything about King Arthur I could get my hands on (more on that later), and Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time series (see September's entry). However, in 1996, while wasting ti...