In this second part of our discussion of collaborations, we’ll examine a collaboration agreement and discuss the salient terms. What are the financial arrangements and the split between co-authors? How are the credits and bylines accorded? Who’s liable for any claims arising out of the collaboration? There are countless considerations and just as many pitfalls.
Click here to learn about them.
RC
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
ELLISON SUES STAR TREK
Harlan Ellison, multiple award-winning writer of the famed teleplay for the original Star Trek episode, City on the Edge of Forever, sued Paramount on March 13, 2009 for failing to account to, or pay, Mr. Ellison for the merchandising, publishing, or any other exploitations, of the famous teleplay, from inception to date. The suit also names the Writers Guild of America and alleges the WGA failed to act on Ellison’s behalf after numerous requests.
Ellison’s City on the Edge of Forever (the memorable episode starring Joan Collins as salvation sister Edith Keeler, the woman Kirk loved and watched die; remember?) continues, 35 years after its original NBC airing, to receive critical accolades, and has become legendary as one of the all-time money-making commercial favorites: it won the coveted Writers Guild award for year’s best teleplay; it won the “Hugo” award of the World Science Fiction Convention; it was ranked as one of the “100 Greatest Television Episodes of All Time” by TV Guide in 1997 as part of its 50 year survey; it was “One of the 100 Most Memorable Moments in Television History” in the 29 June 1996 nationwide survey; and as recently as its 20-26 April 2002 issue, TV Guide celebrated Star Trek’s 35th anniversary featuring, of the hundreds of episodes since its debut, its 35 Greatest Moments!
Harlan Ellison’s City on the Edge of Forever was #2.
Mr. Ellison’s attorney, John H. Carmichael, points out that the 1960 collective bargaining agreement between the WGA and the Producers, as amended in 1966, assures to the writers of individual teleplays “a piece of the pie.” Specifically, Mr. Carmichael states, “Writers under that WGA agreement are supposed to get 25% of the revenue from the licensing of publication rights. From Dollar One. Here, Paramount licensed its sister-corporation Simon & Schuster, through its Pocket Books division, the right to publish a knock-off trilogy of paperbacks – the ‘Crucible’ series – novels based on City, using Ellison’s unique elements: plot, specific non-Trek characters, prominently including The Guardian of Forever, singular conceptual uses of time travel, the sense of tragedy that propels the story, the mood and venue of the story in the 1930s Great Depression, and at the stories’ heart, pivotally, whether Edith Keeler lives or dies. Not merely minor points or window dressing or name-changes. No, they are the body, heart, and guts of Mr. Ellison’s original creation – the best story Star Trek ever told.
“But even as flagrant in evidence as is this case, Paramount has gone tabula rasa. Paramount will not respond to any alleged Guild requests for an accounting. Not just for the books, but for much City-related merchandise, such as a Hallmark Christmas ornament of the “talking” Guardian of Forever actually using lines Ellison wrote for his script – obvious re-uses of Ellison’s singular creation, for which he should be compensated. Paramount will not send statements; Paramount will not admit anyone is owed anything; and even when the WGA requests an accounting, they are blown off with – ‘we’ll get back to you,’ which they don’t. And the WGA seems routinely to accept such cavalier non-responsiveness without a fight. Paramount will not permit examination, and will not open the books; perhaps for fear of loosing a Super-Accountant/Pandora on them, who will open holes in their duplicity. But the WGA is clearly unwilling to take action on Mr. Ellison’s behalf, and so we must seek intervention of the Federal Courts to ensure that the principles of the collective bargaining agreement are upheld. Mr. Ellison is singularly reluctant to sue his own labor union, of which he has been a 47-year member, a valued public spokesman, and where he has twice served on its Board of Directors. In this fractious matter, Mr. Ellison is only asking for one U.S. Dollar from his Guild. But he wants a judicial determination as to whether the WGA is doing what its stated purpose has been since day-one! To fight and negotiate for him and other writers. To obtain misappropriated, withheld, hidden earnings, no matter how minuscule or difficult to retrieve – but HIS, nonetheless. These are intended, true, benefits from earlier WGA bargaining agreements. But after waiting patiently either for the Guild to move against dismissive Paramount, or for Paramount to have a brain-flare of honesty or integrity, these huge sums due continue to be dumped into the studio’s ever-hungry maw.
Mr. Ellison wants every penny of his long ago agreed-upon share of the revenue from Paramount’s relentless Trek exploitations, which have been unbelievably, financially remunerative in demonstrable measure as a result of Mr. Ellison’s significant contribution to the original Star Trek series.” Carmichael highlights: LA Times, 28 July 2007: “Paramount DVD sampler collects favorite episodes from all five Star Trek TV series.” The one starring Captain Kirk, Wm. Shatner’s pick as his favorite, is Ellison’s City on the Edge of Forever. (And see Ellison’s “Pay the Writer”–299,000 hits during the recent strike.)
Says Mr. Ellison of the suit: “To quote Gandhi: ‘First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, then you win.’
“And please make sure to remember, at the moment some Studio mouthpiece calls me a mooch, and says I’m only pursuing this legal retribution to get into their ‘deep pockets,’ tell’m Ellison snarled back, ‘F- – - -in’-A damn skippy!’ I’m no hypocrite. It ain’t about the ‘principle,’ friend, its about the MONEY! Pay Me! Am I doing this for other writers, for Mom (still dead), and apple pie? Hell no! I’m doing it for the 35-year-long disrespect and the money!
“The arrogance, the pompous dismissive imperial manner of those who ‘have more important things to worry about,’ who’ll have their assistant get back to you, who don’t actually read or create, who merely ‘take’ meetings, and shuffle papers – much of which is paper money denied to those who actually did the manual labor of creating those dreams – they refuse even to notice…until you jam a Federal lawsuit in their eye. To hell with all that obfuscation and phony flag-waving: they got my money. Pay me and pay off all the other writers from whom you’ve made hundreds of thousands of millions of dollars…from OUR labors…just so you can float your fat asses in warm Bahamian waters.
“The Trek fans who know my City screenplay understand just exactly why I’m bare-fangs-of-Adamantium about this.”
When Mr. Ellison calmed down, he continued, soberly, “They maintain fortresses staffed and insulated with corporate and legal Black Legions whose ability to speak fluent bullshit is the ramadoola of gyrating, gibbering numbers via which they cling to every dollar. And when you aren’t getting paid for the marvels you helped bring forth — fine, hard, careful artifacts that are making others pig-rich — at some point any sane person knows he has three, and only three choices: the first is to sit around dinner parties and ceaselessly whine over your sushi about how they screwed you, boo hoo, but you can’t beef about it Out There in the World or they’ll blacklist you; the second is to pick up an Uzi somewhere, crash your SUV through a Studio gate, and just run amok; and the third, last, choice is this one – to act like an adult, to take ‘em on in Federal Court and to make the greedy, amoral bastards blink blood out of their eyes. What they do is tantamount to common street-thug robbery… just add the pig-rich Madoff-style smoothyguts attorneys.
“And I learned today that the Actors Guild is having to fight, right now, just to maintain the very concept of residuals as part of their agreement with the Producers. So I am happy as a centipede-with-track-shoes that this infamous behavior, arrogantly ignored for too damned long, is timed to call attention to the degree to which the creative cadres in this business are getting parboiled and served up in a dog-dish! The part of this imbroglio that truly dismays me, is that my once-tough, beloved Guild – my UNION – that got massively screwed when it let the Alliance scare the slacker-gen dolts into thinking not losing a job meant ‘just bend over and grin,’ – if one’s own damn Guild won’t help you, – when you’ve entreated them for months – then hell, you’ve got no choice but to raise the skull and crossbones, hone the edge of your demon attorney, and just start cutting off noggins and nuts.
“Cowardice is like parrot fever in this town; I think there are writers and other artists who revel in being bitch-slapped, in being pilfered on a regular basis, as if they were artistic trailer-trash! And if the WGAw isn’t going to watch my back – and I’ve been their loyal hit-man, pit bull, and go-to guy for 47 years – I dread the possibility that the timorous Guild won’t raise the bloody axe for other artists, writers, actors…saner and less pissed-off than I. So you can tell’em I’m coming!”
There were flecks of blood on Mr. Ellison’s otherwise charming face.
Contact: John H. Carmichael, Esq. (949) 829-9743
ELLISON v. CBS-PARAMOUNT, Inc.
WRITERS GUILD OF AMERICA
U.S. DISTRICT COURT FOR THE CENTRAL DISTRICT OF CALIFORNIA
CASE #: CV09-1777, filed March 13, 2009
JUDGE: The Honorable Christina A. Snyder
It’s a sorry day when authors and agents can’t lie. If we can no longer fudge sales figures, maybe it’s time to turn in our Blackberries and retire to our lavish Hamptons beachfront estates.
That was my reaction to the 2007 jury ruling compelling Clive Cussler to pay a movie company $5 million for (among other claims) inflating his book sales to induce the company to acquire film rights for $10 million. The film was a dud. Now that a judge has ordered Cussler to pay the company an additional $13.9 million in legal fees, I feel compelled to speak out.
It wasn’t always this way. In the Golden Age of Agenting (circa 1986-93), the hot power center of the publishing and movie industry was occupied by a legendary cadre of literary agents like Paul Reynolds, Scott Meredith, Freddie Fields, Lew Wasserman and Swifty Lazar, for all of whom the salient virtue was guile. The relations between agents and the moguls of film, television and publishing were more adversarial than they are today, and both sides seized advantages over the other with little obeisance to the spirit of the seventh commandment. The agent who lacked cunning was consigned to the B List and deserved it.
As the twentieth century progressed, these fabulous individualists gave way to a more collegial, collective and committified approach to conducting business, and in time a sort of Geneva Convention of ethical conduct evolved that pretty much characterizes business on both coasts today. The rules and regulations of the powerful Writers of Guild of America govern movie and writers and their agents, and the Canon of Ethics guiding the conduct of literary and dramatic agent members of the Association of Authors’ Representatives has replaced the rough justice of that bygone era. Since many of the principles of the Canon were formulated under my administration as president of the AAR, I leave it to you to determine how deeply into my cheek my tongue is thrust as I offer these observations.
One ethical innovation formulated in the mid-’90′s was a more stringent code for the conduct of book auctions. The prevailing tenet up to then could be summarized by the phrase “Anything Goes,” for there are no licensing requirements for literary agents, at least in New York City where a great many of them practice. Agents auctioning books were not required to reveal to the winning bidder the identity or bid of the underbidder. Many agents succumbed to the temptation to enhance the size of competing bids, or to bluff altogether. Many a winning bidder suffered buyer’s remorse after reconstructing (often by simply phoning other participants in the auction) the bids and learning that the highest underbid was miles behind or did not in fact exist.
Perhaps a watershed event in the transformation of book industry rules was an auction in the early 90′s for a major novel by an author who has since gone on to become a blockbuster star. As legend has it, the agent told Publisher A that she had a one million dollar offer (a lot of money then, and a lot of money now) from an unnamed publisher, whom we’ll call B. Publisher A, desperate to land the huge fish, impulsively doubled the offer without conferring with her editorial board. She landed the fish, to the dismay of Publisher B who had believed the book was in his bag. His dismay turned to something approaching apoplexy when he learned that Publisher A was the head of another division of his own company. The company had been bidding against itself! Despite cries of “Foul!” the agent felt no compunction to adjust the terms of the deal.
What emerged from this event was a condition imposed by publishers that agents must reveal the name and offer of the highest underbidder under penalty of cancellation of the deal or reduction of the winning bid. This condition is reinforced by the provision of the AAR’s Canon of Ethics stating that members “undertake never to mislead, deceive, dupe, defraud, or victimize their clients, other members of the Association, the general public, or any person with whom they do business as a member of the Association.”
Which brings us back to L’Affaire Cussler. In its coverage of the lawsuit The Book Blog reported that attorneys for the principal of the production company alleged that “author Clive Cussler duped the Denver industrialist into paying $10 million for film rights to the adventure novel ‘Sahara’ by flagrantly inflating his book sales to more than 100 million copies. ‘Cussler and his agent had gotten away with these numbers for years,’” said the industrialist’s lawyer. “‘It was a lie and it doomed the movie’”
Setting aside the Cussler team’s contention that the producers were simply sore losers pinning the blame for their movie’s lousy performance (it lost about $78 million) on the author of the book; and setting aside the likelihood that Cussler’s books have in fact sold 100 million copies worldwide (though it’s impossible to get an accurate count), we have to face the fact that inflated printing and sales figures are a time-honored tradition in the publishing industry. Except during contract negotiations, when each side hauls out numbers and counternumbers, most denizens of the publishing business are complicit in (or at least tolerant of) exaggerated printing and sales figures, for it’s a victimless crime, or was until the Cussler case. Think about it: why would an agent challenge a publisher’s bloated boast about his or her own client?
But the authenticity of such boasts was dealt a grievous blow by the introduction of Nielsen BookScan in 2001, a more or less scientific system for compiling sales data for publishers. I say “more or less” because the Nielsen Company does not include certain book sales outlets in its data mining, and that bloc of non-reporting stores can account for as much as 30% of a book’s performance that doesn’t appear on BookScan’s database. Nevertheless, it is an accurate enough bellwether to sharply curtail an agent’s efforts to produce impressive numbers out of whole cloth.
In short, our options for hyperbole and creative embellishment have been so hamstrung that we’ve been cornered into resorting to the truth to support the promotion of our authors’ performance. What’s the fun in that?
Some days an agent can’t make a buck, and that is no exaggeration.
Richard Curtis
Copyright (c) 2009 by Richard Curtis
Andrew Sullivan, who writes the always-insightful Daily Dish blog for The Atlantic, carries a note from an anonymous but successful Harlequin Romance author. Here’s a key excerpt:
Although the romance novel industry is constantly derided from the outside, made fun of and considered “trash” by the uninformed, these are not the romance novels your mother read, nor anything like the Barbara Cartland books gathering dust on your grandmother’s bookshelf. This is a HUGE business of numerous sub-genres for all tastes, and regardless of what anybody thinks, romance novels SELL. Romance fiction generated $1.375 billion in sales in 2007. And while other forms of entertainment suffer economically, romance novels usually sell better during economic downturns. Why? Probably because it’s cheap — anywhere from $4 to $8 for several hours worth of escape in the privacy of your own garden, bed, or bathtub — and best of all, when times are awful everywhere you’re guaranteed a happy ending.
Though many segments of the publishing industry are in disarray, romances continue to thrive. Indeed, without the profits from those $billion+ sales, not only would the publishing business be in even worse disarray, but support for serious literary endeavor would be crippled.
“It is vital for the writing establishment,” I wrote in an essay entitled The Two Worlds of Literature, “to realize that literature is far more than a ladder with junk at the bottom and art at the top. Rather, it is an ecosystem in which the esoteric and the popular commingle, fertilize one another, and interdepend. Principally, if it were not for the immense revenues generated by science fiction, romance, male action-adventure, and other types of popular fiction at which so many literary authors and critics look down their noses, there would be no money for publishers to risk on first novels, experimental fiction, and other types of serious but commercially marginal literary enterprises.”
So, next time you buy a romance, display it proudly to remind the world that part of the purchase price of that book may be supporting the next Poet Laureate or National Book Award winner.
RC
R.A. MacAvoy won the John W. Campbell Award for best new writer of 1983. Her debut novel Tea With the Black Dragon was festooned with awards and nominations* and launched a career replete with highly acclaimed, imaginative and original fantasy novels.
With publication of The Book of Kells, the Damiano trilogy and The Third Eagle - her only science fiction novel – E-Reads offers the complete works of this uniquely gifted writer. You may purchase the downloads or wait for the print editions to appear, which are in production as I write this (keep an eye on this page for updates).
Set against the turbulent backdrop of the Italian Renaissance, the Damiano trilogy takes place in a world where real faith-based magic exists. Its hero is a wizard’s son, an alchemist and heir to dark magics. But he is also an innocent, a young scholar and musician befriended by the Archangel Raphael, who instructs him in the lute. To save his beloved city from war, Damiano leaves his cloistered life and sets out on a pilgrimage,seeking the aid of a powerful sorceress as he must walk the narrow path between light and shadow accompanied only by his talking dog. But his road is filled with betrayal, disillusionment and death, and Damiano is forced to confront his dark heritage, unleashing the hellish force of his awesome powers to protect those he loves. The further volumes of this tale are Damiano’s Lute and Raphael.
The Book of Kells treads the border between realism and fantasy. It centers around one of the most famous and beautiful illuminated manuscripts in history, the legendary (but entirely real) Book of Kells. Celtic history blends with magical fantasy for a strange and immersive tale of adventure.
A lovely review by D. D. Shade in the Lost Book Archives captures the essence of MacAvoy’s evocative and haunting style:
Roberta Ann MacAvoy applies words to a page as delicately as Monet added water colors to canvas and with the economy of Scrooge. When reading a work by R. A. MacAvoy, there is a deep sense of being in the hands of a master craftsman. There is also a touch of wonder. Clute and Grant note that most of MacAvoy’s novels are witty tales that cover unfamiliar ground. As such, her little known books make delightful, refreshing reading.
* Locus Magazine Award – 1983
Nebula Award Nomination – 1983
Philip K. Dick Memorial Award Nomination – 1984
Compton Crook Memorial Award-First Novel Nomination – 1984
Hugo Award Nomination – 1984
Locus Reader’s Poll-Best Fantasy Novel – 1984
Locus Reader’s Poll-Best First Novel – 1984
World Fantasy Award Nomination – 1984
Modern Fantasy-The Hundred Best Novels – 1988
INTRODUCTION BY MARTY CLARK
For the serious Ellison reader, there are few tasks more difficult than staying current with his nonfiction output. Harlan’s work appears all over the literary map, so that it is impossible to know where he will turn up next. This is also true of his fiction, but one can always count on the publication of a new fiction collection every few years to gather together those stories which one has missed. Until now, this has not been so of his essays. They have occasionally been included in other collections and, as with the four essays which appear in Harlan’s short story collection Stalking the Nightmare (Phantasia Press, 1982), have received raves. Also much in demand are The Glass Teat and The Other Glass Teat (Ace, 1983) which collected the columns of television criticism which Harlan wrote over a period of four years in the Los Angeles Free Press. However, Sleepless Nights in the Procrustean Bed marks the first time that a book has been devoted exclusively to the best of his general essays. The twenty reprinted here are from such disparate sources as Video Review, Heavy Metal and the Saint Louis Literary Supplement.
Credit for suggesting this collection of Harlan’s nonfiction belongs to our publisher, Robert Reginald of Borgo Press, who approached Harlan with the opinion that “These Menckenisms deserve a permanent home; they’ve been undeservedly neglected by both readers and critics, who tend to focus on your more flamboyant short stories.”
At the time this book was proposed I had spent over two years with Harlan in the enviable position of personal secretary, administrative officer of his professional corporation, and occasional grammarian. Modesty compels me to point out that the opportunity entrusted to me in assembling this book derived in large measure from being in the right place at the right time. In addition to that qualification, I brought to the task of editing these essays other qualities, among them familiarity with Harlan and his work, and a great enthusiasm for the idea of making the essays available to a larger audience. I am also probably the only person ever to read straight through the entire body of Harlan’s nonfiction work (all twelve file drawers of it), a distinction which I do not expect to relinquish any time soon.
I was initially enthusiastic at the prospect of editing this collection of essays simply because I admired them and felt that they deserved to be read. It was only after I began research for the book that I came to appreciate how startlingly well-suited to Harlan’s talents the essay form is. I suspect that Harlan himself is unaware of the degree to which his gifts match the requirements of the essay. In point of fact, if the form did not exist, Harlan would have had to invent it. Fortunately, this was not necessary.
In the judgment of scholars, the essay was invented by 16th-century French nobleman Michel de Montaigne. His two volumes titled Essais (meaning “attempts, experiments, endeavors”) were the first to be identified as such, although of course “the word is late, though the thing be ancient.” As with all literary forms, the roots of the essay stretch back to antiquity; Harlan is one of the ablest contemporary practitioners in a form favored by such honored writers as Swift and Emerson and Thoreau. Today he shares the form with columnists and commentators as diverse as William F. Buckley, Jr. and Ellen Goodman, Joan Didion and Sidney Harris, Shana Alexander and Tom Wolfe.
The 20th century has seen a broadening of the concept of the essay. Because of the huge circulation of periodicals (magazines such as Newsweek, Esquire, and the proliferating city magazines which publish essayists; newspapers which carry numerous syndicated columnists), the essay has become a major vehicle for the communication of ideas. Harlan is toiling in a literary form which is currently very popular, and therefore powerful.
As presently evolved, the essay is a short prose form which deals with a single subject. Although historically essays have ranged from the length of aphorisms to the extended essays of de Tocqueville, relative brevity characterizes modern essays. Harlan’s range from a length of less than one thousand words to a maximum, in this collection, of 9400 words.
Although each essay addresses only one subject, over the years hundreds of subjects have been the target of Harlan’s wandering reflections. He is conversant on nearly every subject one can think of, largely due to the fact that he is one of the most widely-read men alive. Harlan samples everything, and the input that can’t be had from reading, his peripatetic mind seeks from judicious viewing of thirty channels of cable television, faithful attendance at film screenings, and constant association with colleagues and friends who are similarly well-informed. Topics for his typewriter are limited only by his interests, which is to say, not limited at all. This collection includes essays on topics from gun control (“Fear Not Your Enemies”) to video dating (“True Love: Groping for the Holy Grail”).
Many of Harlan’s strengths as a writer are the salient characteristics of the essay form, in particular informality of structure, highly distinctive style, and a strong personal tone.
The essay is not a rigorous literary form. Its purpose is to stimulate and influence thought, rather than to educate or instruct. It accommodates, but does not require, the scholarly, philosophical approach such as that exercised by Francis Bacon. Consequently, it need not be exhaustive in its treatment of the subject. This suits Harlan quite well. He throws everything he has into the writing of a piece, rather like making a salad. On the other hand, he will ignore avenues of inquiry one might expect him to pursue. It simply does not please him to go down that road right now. (Interestingly, he will often expand on those subjects in later work; I’ve noted some of these in the text.) Such incompleteness would be a fault in a more didactic work, but is quite permissible within the essay form. By this I do not mean to suggest that Harlan is jarringly unsystematic in the presentation of his material; and in fact some of his shorter essays such as “Epiphany” and “Rolling Dat Ole Debbil Electronic Stone” are deceptively disciplined, tightly-wrapped little pieces. But the scattergun pyrotechnics of his mind are clearly at home in the freedom of the essay, which Samuel Johnson called “a loose sally of the mind … not a regular and orderly performance.”
It is Thomas Macaulay, however, who perhaps best expresses a consideration which I hope you will keep in mind as you enjoy this assortment of writings reprinted from a variety of sources. Macaulay himself resisted being reprinted for this reason:
The public judges, or ought to judge, indulgently of periodical works. They are not expected to be highly finished … The writer may blunder, he may contradict himself, he may break off in the middle of a story … All this is readily forgiven if there be a certain spirit and vivacity in his style. But as soon as he is reprinted, he challenges a comparison with all the most symmetrical and polished of human compositions.
As to style, excellence as an essayist leans heavily on a distinctive manner of expression, and there are few contemporary writers with as distinctive a style as Harlan’s. Tom Wolfe, perhaps, or William F. Buckley, Jr. are as readily recognized. Harlan’s style has always been high-profile; the discerning reader has no difficulty identifying an unattributed piece of his work. One marvels sometimes, re-reading a particularly striking passage, How did he do that? As Alexander Smith said of Montaigne and Bacon,
Not only is the thinking different, the manner of setting forth the thinking is different. We despair of reaching the thought, we despair equally of reaching the language.
Harlan’s virtuosity is inarguable, and his command of the material allows him to write for the sheer joy of self-expression, when he so chooses, without seeming self-indulgent. Notice the playfulness in “Stealing Tomorrow,” and in “Voe Doe Dee Oh Doe,” a genial soft-shoe of a sketch which appears effortless in Harlan’s hands, testifying to his artistic control. I defy anyone to read of “the sternwheeler spatterings of crazed hummingbirds” without smiling.
One important characteristic of a distinctive essay style is that it should resemble good conversation. Harlan is, of course, renowned as a conversationalist, and he is able to transfer that easy eloquence to the printed page. Perhaps not since Charles Lamb has an essayist employed such a rambling, conversational manner. This sometimes results in untidiness, for Harlan indulges in the delightful digressions which are common to both forms of expression, and such bypaths can lend a disjointed, patched-together quality. In this Harlan is apparently in the incomparable company of Montaigne, of whom Aldous Huxley said,
Free association artistically controlled–the paradoxical secret of his best essays. One damned thing after another, but in a sequence that in some almost miraculous way develops a theme and relates it to the rest of human experience.
Harlan’s mastery of free association is nowhere better demonstrated than in “Revealed at Last! What Killed the Dinosaurs!” As he remarks himself at the beginning, “It seems disjointed and jumps around like water on a griddle, but it all comes together, so be patient.”
Another characteristic vital to a distinctive essay style is charm. This came as a surprise to me, but the information certainly bolsters my assertion that the marriage between Harlan and the essay is a happy one, since Harlan has charm in abundance. Who can fail to be won by the self-effacement and wistful earnestness of “True Love,” or simply the sparkle of an intelligent mind at work? Harlan appeals to us, as he puts it, “huckleberrily.”
One could cite many other characteristics of Harlan’s distinctive style; I had, for instance, prepared a lengthy section on his use of anger as a stylistic signature for inclusion here. But these traits are well-recognized by any reader who is at all familiar with his work, and it is enough to say that each of them–the arrogance, the irreverence, the gutsy ferocity, the occasional posturing–contributes to the singularity of style which is so vital a part of his success as an essayist.
The third essential characteristic of the essay is a strong personal tone. The essay in prose has been compared to the lyric in poetry, in that it is an expression of subjective emotion. This is in perfectly good taste. Expressing as they do the writer’s personality with an immediacy not possible in fiction, essays allow us to know essayists as we know no other writers. Harlan’s work displays the colors of his passions and personality more vividly than almost any other essayist working today. As with all good essays, Harlan’s absolutely seem to be written to the person reading them; to read them is an intimate, personal, familiar experience, partly because of the conversational tone noted earlier. As a result, readers somehow feel invited into his life by the intimacy of his work–I mean this quite literally–and to the degree that this is true it is a problem in his personal life. Harlan’s essays have contributed to his becoming a legend. I use the word “legend” here with great care (Webster: “a notable person much talked about in his own time”) acknowledging Harlan’s concern that his charisma, some might say notoriety, may eclipse the seriousness of his work. I think this is unlikely. Other writers–George Bernard Shaw comes immediately to mind–have seen their wit and personalities become as famous as their work without compromise to their literary reputations.
In a recent conversation, Harlan remarked on having come to acknowledge the need to engage in cheap theatrics in order to get people’s attention. Since all Harlan cares about is posterity, he will do whatever is necessary to be remembered long enough to be accorded his rightful place in literature. As he says of Fritz Leiber (in “A Few Too Few Words”), time and posterity will say what has to be said for him. He has already been acknowledged by his contemporaries, having won numerous awards for his short fiction, and presently sharing the record for Writer’s Guild awards for work in television. Ironically, however, and at the risk of finding myself on the wrong side of a disagreement with Harlan, I venture to suggest that it may well be the strength and timelessness of his essays on which his reputation ultimately will rest. Harlan was the recipient of the 1982 Silver Pen award of American P.E.N., the politically-oriented association of professional writers, for a column which appeared in the Los Angeles Weekly. (It should be noted that in so doing, he edged out competitive entries from the best dailies in California.) I believe that this is but the first evidence of a growing awareness of his importance as a commentator.
As Baltasar Gracian says, “The sage has one advantage; he is immortal. If this is not his century, many others will be.”
It seems to me sometimes that Harlan considers his essays rather like stepchildren, and not the Serious Art of his fiction. I wish for all of us who admire his work and his message that he would allow himself to revel in his mastery of this powerful form in which he is so comfortable, and to acknowledge what he is, one of the most accomplished essayists of our time.
Sleepless Nights in the Procrustean Bed
Marty Clark “spent over two years with Harlan in the enviable position of personal secretary, administrative officer of his professional corporation, and occasional grammarian.” Those who have experienced the master’s bark and bite might choose a different adjective than “enviable”. Clark not only lived to tell the tale, but went on to assemble, from hundreds of rare and previously unprinted works, this breathtaking collection of twenty wide-ranging essays that demonstrate why the monstre sacre of imaginative literature won the prestigious Silver Pen award of P.E.N. International in 1982.
Clark’s introduction is filled with insight into the essay form and Ellison’s place in the tradition that began with Montaigne.
You can download the e-book of Sleepless Nights, but before long we will have it in print format as well. Just keep an eye on our home page for an announcement.
RC
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INTRODUCTION BY MARTY CLARK
For the serious Ellison reader, there are few tasks more difficult than staying current with his nonfiction output. Harlan’s work appears all over the literary map, so that it is impossible to know where he will turn up next. This is also true of his fiction, but one can always count on the publication of a new fiction collection every few years to gather together those stories which one has missed. Until now, this has not been so of his essays. They have occasionally been included in other collections and, as with the four essays which appear in Harlan’s short story collection Stalking the Nightmare (Phantasia Press, 1982), have received raves. Also much in demand are The Glass Teat and The Other Glass Teat (Ace, 1983) which collected the columns of television criticism which Harlan wrote over a period of four years in the Los Angeles Free Press. However, Sleepless Nights in the Procrustean Bed marks the first time that a book has been devoted exclusively to the best of his general essays. The twenty reprinted here are from such disparate sources as Video Review, Heavy Metal and the Saint Louis Literary Supplement.
To read Clark’s full intro, click here.
INTRODUCTION: SONS OF JANUS
These are stories I have written with other writers. Collaborations, they’re called. They are the products of two minds working together, sometimes in complete harmony, more often in opposition. The former, because the ideas were so right they needed no conflict to produce a coherent whole; the latter, because writers are perverse creatures who enjoy tormenting one another. And also, conscious opposition on the part of one of the collaborators, to the direction a story is taking naturally, may produce a stress that bends it unexpectedly in a totally unpredictable way. And from that can come a toad prince or a toad, depending on whether or not both writers know how to handle a fable run amuck.
The beloved Lester Del Rey–one of my early mentors in the craft of professional lying–told me once: never write a story with someone, that you can do as well by yourself. Well, I believe that. I tried writing a novel with Avram Davidson once, titled “Don’t Speak of Rope.” Ech. One of the most horrible experiences in a universe filled with death camps, hardhats, campus massacres and the human gamut that runs from Spiro to Manson; somewhere in a file drawer languish ten thousand words of that novel, unended, unlamented, unfortunate. So I do, I really do, agree with Lester.
Even so, life can occasionally become dull and predictable, and so, to spice it slightly, those of us with a flair for danger and high adventure take guided tours through the heart of Mt. Vesuvius, stalk the blood-sucking vampire bat through the swamps and fens of Bosnia and/or Herzegovina, join peace rallies, date beautiful models and, when all else fails, collaborate on fictions with other writers. I grant you the picture of world-weariness and jaded appetite I paint, the desperation of ennui that drives men to such hideous extremes as collaboration, is an ugly one. But I feel you must know what horrors and pitfalls lie behind this seemingly uncomplicated act. Ask Avram. Ech.
But the reward of successful collaboration is a thing that cannot be produced by either of the parties working alone. It is akin to the benefits of sex with a partner, as opposed to masturbation. The latter is fun, but you show me anyone who has gotten a baby from playing with him- or herself, and I’ll show you an ugly baby, with just a whole bunch of knuckles.
And so, risking the hisses and catcalls of overly critical readers and critics who will call these joint efforts (if you’ll pardon my carrying on the allusion from the preceding paragraph) merely gimmicky constructs, over the past many years I have yoked myself to fourteen other writers, and from these literary miscegenations have come the fictions before you.
My relationships with all of these men have been substantially more than what might be termed mere acquaintanceship. All of them are my friends, but not all of them like me. Nor do I like all of them. Many of them have done me favors I would be hard-pressed to repay in full or in kind. Others have messed me over hideously. From time to time I have been in serious disagreement with one or another of them. Between one of them and myself there was a shadow for many years. Between myself and another is something very much like the love of one brother for another. One saved my life, literally. I thought another had ruined it. One made me terribly proud of him, and then sold out, thereby destroying all my illusions about him. Two of them managed to alter the course and texture of my life. From one I learned much about the nature of love, from another the nature of hate. With one I dreamed odd dreams, and with another I learned people can only act as people, not as gods. One demonstrated there can be nobility even in failure, and another showed me how badly success can be handled.
Millions of words of conversation in the past nineteen years have passed between me and these fourteen men. Advice, shoptalk, problems, respect and denunciation. That is the nature of friendship.
But without these men, I would never have come to write the solo stories on which my reputation–however great or small it may be–is based. Without all the words they have given the world on their own, some larger part of the joy of having been a part of speculative fiction would never have been. Bloch and his psychos and the Ripper; Bova’s clear view of the importance of space travel; Budrys and the Gus nobody bothers; Davidson and his sentient coat-hangers; Delany and frelking; Hensley and his son, Randy; Laumer and Retief; Rotsler and a stack of cartoons only slightly smaller than Everest; Sheckley and all his dimensions of wonder; Silverberg and thorns; Slesar and the greatest short-story ever written; Sturgeon and … well, everything; Van Vogt and weapon shops and Jommy Cross and the corticalthalamic pause; Zelazny and he who shapes.
All of them are masters, each of them writes only as he can write, and no two can ever be confused in the minds of students of masterful sf. These are the extra special meanings for me of these superimportant people:
Laumer is strength, and Davidson is erudition, and Budrys is empathy, and Delany is youthful commitment, and Sheckley is outrageous madness, and Sturgeon is both dazzlement and love, and Bova is the rationality of reality, Silverberg is craft, Van Vogt is complex conceptualization. Rotsler is irreverence, Hensley is gentleness, Zelazny is poetic intricacy, Bloch is coming to grips with terror, and Slesar is courage and pride and dignity.
I have learned these things from these men. So it is not merely by chance that we came together finally to write. It is heady company and only a fool or an amateur would consider working with them without a full realization of how good one must be to share the same story with each of them.
The individual introductions to the stories will tell you how the pieces came to be written, the method of collaboration, any sidelights or anecdotes that informed them, any mishaps or contretemps encountered in their making, their history and their success or failure as works of art, in my estimation. (Understand: just because a story reaches print, or even sees repeated anthologization, does not mean that we, the authors, are totally delighted with the outcome. Some of these stories fail in some of the areas where we considered it important to succeed. Some started out as one thing, and wound up as quite another, thereby dampening our pleasure. But in rehashing the histories of these stories with the men who were one-half their origin, I have not found one who regretted the experiment. That says something; what, I’m not certain.)
It sounds like hype to point out that this is the first book of its kind ever published; in that one way it is the most original book of stories ever published, and in the same way it is a monstrous literary joke. Throughout, however, it is for me a delight. You cannot know what a joy it is, what a prideful thing it is, what a satisfying thing it is, to have my name linked with these men.
I have a few regrets. I’ll name them. Norman Spinrad, Isaac Asimov, Michael Moorcock and Philip José Farmer. I wanted to write stories with all of them, and somehow, through no real fault of anyone, they just didn’t get written. I’m sorry about that. They’ll more than likely never get written now. And I think it a bad thing that there is no Ellison/female collaboration here. What a strange mind-fuck it would be to read a story on which I’d worked with, say, Kate Wilhelm or Ursula Le Guin or Joanna Russ. Yeah, I lament that.
And the lamentations are all that remain, because now having written the collaborative thing out of my system–it was a thing to do, you see–I doubt very much that I’ll do it again. Oh, there may be one or two little stories that chance ordains will be written in company with another (there’s a half-finished short story titled “Mefisto in Onyx” by myself and bright newcomer Ed Bryant in my file, waiting for a conclusion), but a project like this? No, not again.
I think I speak for my collaborators when I say that we hope this book lightens your burdens, brings an occasional smile to your lips, puts a twinkle in your eyes, a shiver down your spine, an idea or two in your heads, and when you close the book finally, you will feel that our time–and yours–was not ill-spent.
For all of them, I say, thank you for dropping in on our little session, and for myself I say, thank you for letting me coat-tail your talents; thank you gentlemen, one and all.
HARLAN ELLISON
New York City
21 July 70
Partners in Wonder is arguably the first collection of collaborative stories ever created. But unlike some Very Important Authors who don’t pick on someone their own size when inviting writers to collaborate with them, Harlan Ellison threw his gauntlet at the feet of such giants as Algis Budrys, Samuel R. Delaney, Keith Laumer, Theodore Sturgeon, Robert Zelazny and Robert Silverberg. Before each story is one of Ellison’s patented intros explaining how it was written (and who gets the blame). Below is his intro to the collection itself. Note his regret that there are no female partners in wonder.
Download this e-book version, but if print on paper is more your speed, watch this space for news of the paperback edition.
RC
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INTRODUCTION: SONS OF JANUS
These are stories I have written with other writers. Collaborations, they’re called. They are the products of two minds working together, sometimes in complete harmony, more often in opposition. The former, because the ideas were so right they needed no conflict to produce a coherent whole; the latter, because writers are perverse creatures who enjoy tormenting one another. And also, conscious opposition on the part of one of the collaborators, to the direction a story is taking naturally, may produce a stress that bends it unexpectedly in a totally unpredictable way. And from that can come a toad prince or a toad, depending on whether or not both writers know how to handle a fable run amuck.
The beloved Lester Del Rey–one of my early mentors in the craft of professional lying–told me once: never write a story with someone, that you can do as well by yourself. Well, I believe that.
Did Ellison take Del Rey’s advice? Read his complete introduction, and his book.
Jim Milliot & Judith Rosen of Publishers Weekly report that Houghton Mifflin Harcourt’s trade book division – the one that stopped acquiring last fall – is being auctioned off as we speak by its debt-plagued parent company. Their sources say there are four “serious” bidders and the action is at $200 million so far. Given the 7 billion debt load that Education Media & Publishing Group groaning under – costing them $500 million annually in debt service alone – bidders will have to get thirty or forty times more serious if the winning bid is to make EMPG even remotely whole.
Leading the pack of snapping bargain hunters, as we predicted here, is Hachette, but there is also apparently a dark horse in the person of “former HM executive Wendy Strothman who has the backing of private equity firm.”
Vultures are standing by.
