Dreams With Sharp Teeth, a documentary on Harlan Ellison appears on the Sundance Channel at 9 p.m. tonight.
Isaac Asimov once wrote of Ellison, “The most colorful character I ever met at science fiction conventions in the 1950’s was Harlan Ellison, who was barely out of his teens at the time. He claims he is five feet four inches tall, but it doesn’t really matter. In talent, energy, and courage he is eight feet tall.”
Ellison is intelligent, opinionated, and tends to enjoy stirring things up whenever he has the opportunity. He is also one of science fiction’s most talented writers. He’s written numerous short stories (his 1967 short story “I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream” is hauntingly horrific), written for television, (the original Star Trek series, The Outer Limits), and has amassed a mountain of articles, essays, and newspaper columns that are nearly impossible to put down.
In tonight’s Dreams With Sharp Teeth, he recalls a time when Dan Simmons turned to him about some professional difficulties he was having with an individual, saying, “He doesn’t want to know what he should do, he wants to know what I would do. And I say, ‘Well, I’d get a garden hoe and I’d bury it in the motherf—er’s head.'”
Don’t miss it. Ellison is never boring.
