The Harlan Ellison Hornbook

by Harlan Ellison

  “Gimme your wallet,” one of them said, not even lowering his voice. He pushed his knife against my collarbone. The other one smelled of fish.

  I remembered a way I’d confounded a mugger many years before. I began mumbling unintelligibly in what was supposed to be a foreign tongue, waving my hands feebly as if I didn’t understand English.

  “Your money, motherfucker…I’ll shove this in your fucking throat!”

  I rolled my eyes wildly and continued babbling.

  A group of people had come out of Max’s apartment building, were turning toward us. “Come on,” said the one who smelled of fish. “You cocksucker!” the one with the knife at my collarbone said.

  They let go and moved off. I took two steps and felt broiler-sizzling pain. I tried to turn against the pain and saw that the one who had done all the talking…he hadn’t walked away…no, he had spun and come back at me. He had driven the knife deep into my back, below my right shoulderblade. It got worse. Doors slammed in my head. Everything went silver. I fell to my knees and said something unintelligible, filled with bloody bubbles of spit.

  The group from Max’s building walked past me. I fell down and lay there. In a little while I died.

  Max and Karen came home from dinner and didn’t find out I’d been killed outside their building till the next afternoon. Karen cried, the Lunacon had a minute of silence for me, and my replacement, Isaac Asimov, said dear good things about me, better than I deserved.

  I died on April 19th, 1973.

  I will die in 1981. Here is how it happened.

  I was living in Perthshire, in Scotland. I had had a bad cold for weeks. I was living alone. The girl who had been staying with me had gone away. I was writing DIAL 9 TO GET OUT at last. My big novel. The one that would finally break my name into the memory books of great writers. It had taken me ten years to get to it. I was deep in the writing. I didn’t eat regularly, I’ve never been one for cooking for myself. I developed pneumonia in that handsome old farmhouse.

  It killed me. I never finished the book. My stories were read for a few years, but soon went out of vogue.

  No one in that little Scottish town understood that as I lay there, doped up and dying, that the pathetic movements of my hands were my attempts to convey to the nurse or the doctor that I wanted my typewriter, that I wanted more than anything, more than even life, to finish that book.

  I died on December 11th, 1981.

  I will die in 1986. Here is how it happened.

  ALL THE LIES THAT ARE MY LIFE had been published in March. Book-of-the-Month Club had taken it as its April selection. The film rights were being negotiated by Marty. It looked to be the best year I’d ever had.

  I was on a publicity tour for the book, fresh from a talk show over holovid. Oh, yes, I should mention holovid. After two-dimensional-depth television, Westinghouse developed “feelie,” a rather euphemistic name for projected video, giving the vague impression of the actual presence in your living room of the actors. Then the cable people in conjunction with LaserScience, Ltd. of Great Britain combined holograms with 3-D projection techniques and came up with holovid, in which the viewer actually became a part of the show or studio audience.

  I was in Denver, preparing to be choppered over to the studio, when I fell ill. I was using depilatory on my beard in the hotel suite’s bathroom when I felt dizzy and suddenly keeled over. The publisher’s rep and the PR woman heard me crash and came running. They got me to the hospital where the phymech took readings. (A phymech is a robot physician, used primarily for running physicals and determining the nature of the illness. Lousy bedside manner, but they’ve cut down the incidence of improper analysis by eighty percent over their human counterparts.)

  The judgment was cancer of the stomach.

  I went into surgery the next morning. It had spread, running wild, not even the anti-agapic drugs would work. I was listed as terminal. Perhaps two weeks, the last five of those days heavily sedated against the pain. It was a shame: the Cancer Society was on the verge of a major breakthrough. Had I lived another five years, I’d have seen cancer become no more serious than the flu.

  I spent the last two weeks in a hospital bed, a typewriter propped on a little table. The newspapers came and did their interviews briefly…I was abrupt with them, I’m afraid. I didn’t have too much time to talk, I had things to write.

  I finished my last novel in that bed, but the final twenty thousand words were rather garbled, I was so drugged, going in and out of consciousness. But I finished it, and was saved the horror of having another writer complete the work from my notes.

  When I died, I was not unhappy. I rather regretted being denied those last twenty years, though. I had such stories to write.

  I died on my birthday, May 27th, 1986.

  I died in 1977 when a right-winger shot me because I’d done an article in World magazine on President Agnew, and how he should be indicted as a criminal for the war in Brazil.

  I died in 1979 in a plane crash in Sri Lanka. I was on my way to see Arthur Clarke. We were going to go scuba diving off the coast of coral. The plane exploded; I never knew what hit me. My fourth wife got the flight insurance.

  I died in 1982 during the worst blizzard the East Coast had ever seen. I froze to death in my car on a lonely Connecticut road where I’d run out of gas. Some asshole suggested that because I’d been frozen, they might try to preserve me cryonically for restoration later. Fortunately, he was ignored.

  I died in 1990 from a sudden, massive coronary. I was sitting at home on a Sunday afternoon and felt the slam of it, and had just a moment to realize I was dying the same way my father had died. But he never had a U.S. postage stamp commemorating his achievements.

  I died in 1998 from ptomaine poisoning in a seafood restaurant in the undersea resort city of Cayman. They had to wait three weeks to ship my carcass out; it would have been simpler to turn me into fish food and let my soul wander the Cayman Trench. I always hated the lack of imagination of Those in Power.

  I died in 2001 on my way back from Sweden. I died very peacefully, in my sleep, on board the catamaran-cruiser Farragut, somewhere in mid-Atlantic. I died with a smile on my face, lying in bed, holding the Nobel Prize for Literature to my chest like a teddy bear.

  I died in 2010 from weary old age, surrounded by grandchildren and old friends who remembered the titles of my stories. I didn’t mind going at all, I was really tired.

  Hey! You! The skinny sonofabitch with the scythe, I’m over here…Ellison. I saw you looking at me out of the corner of that empty socket in your skull-face, you sleazy eggsucker. Well, listen, m’man, understand this: since I know I’m going straight to Hell anyhow, and since I’ve always lived with the feeling that Heavens and Hells are sucker traps for the slowwitted and one should get as much goodie as one can while one is breathing, you’d better get used to the idea that you’re going to have to come and get me when my time’s up. Kicking and screaming, you blade-boned crop-killer. Hand to hand or at gunpoint, you’re going to have to fight me for my life.

  Because I’ve got too much stuff yet to do, too many stories yet to write, too many places I’ve never seen, too many books I’ve never read, too many women to admire, and too many laughs yet to cry. So don’t think I’ll be a cheap acquisition, clatterframe! And if you do get me, I’ll be the damnedest POW you ever saw. I’ll try and escape, and if I can’t, I’ll send back messages.

  And it’ll drive your boney ass crazy, Mr. D., because I’ll be the first one to write about what it’s like over there in your country.

  INSTALLMENTS 11 THROUGH 20 | 11 JANUARY THROUGH 15 MARCH 1973

  HARLAN ELLISON’S MOVIE

  INSTALLMENT 21 |

  Interim Memo

  One of the friends with whom I was having a rough patch, as discussed in this column, read this piece when it was first published, and recognized himself. We had a long talk. More than one long talk. We cleaned it up. We’re still friends.

  INSTALLMENT 21 | 29
MARCH 73

  FAIR WEATHER FRIENDS, SUMMER SOLDIERS, AND SUNSHINE PATRIOTS

  “Nowhere are we commanded to forgive our friends,” said Cosimo de Medici (1389–1464). Today I’d like to dwell with morbid attention on friendship.

  It occurs to me that this column has evolved in some ways into a debunking platform, from which I cynically shoot holes in the balloons of motherhood, Christmas cheer, New Year’s resolutions, childhood memories…all the ratholes of the soul into which we crawl to avoid ugly realities. I don’t mean it to be that. I never intended it that way. But oddly enough, I find others who shamefacedly admit that, yes, they had always believed in their darkest core that the things I’ve written were so. And I suppose confronting these truths can’t be a bad thing; the human animal has a virtually limitless capacity for rationalization, an uncanny talent for ignoring lessons learned. So these little candles lit in the darkness don’t do any lasting damage, and if they codify universal feelings…well…then I suppose the job was worth doing.

  I say all this upfront because what I’m about to venture on the subject of friendship is depressing as hell, but—at least to me—inescapable.

  Most of the people we call “friends” are merely passersby in our lives; acquaintances with whom for a short time we have something in common. A mutual club membership, a commonly shared lust, a project, a cause, a crusade, an accident of blood relationship, a physical closeness of habitation…

  What Kurt Vonnegut calls a “false karass.”

  Yet friendship seems to me something else again. Something far nobler, vastly more enriching and warming, something purely succoring. It’s there, whether you need it or not, whether you ever make a call on it or not, even if you don’t want it. There is a guy I know (and it’s going to be hard in this column not to name names, though I’ll try my best), and I am his friend. He loathes me. Wants nothing to do with me. Would punch me out if I offered friendship. But I am his friend. He ain’t mine, but I am his. I would do anything for him. He did me a good turn once, and I put such high value on that favor that forever I am on call for him. Times have passed and we no longer talk, he thinks he has a gripe against me—and he may be correct in that belief—but I’m still his friend. That’s the way it is with me.

  It defies reason or common sense, even good sense. But I am a creature who lives by rules and ethics and moralities I’ve honed and winnowed and pruned through the years till they suit me, so I can do no other. It fills me with sadness that he is no longer my friend; for him I was merely an acquaintance.

  Friends are those into whose souls you’ve looked, and therein glimpsed a oneness with yourself. They are a part of you, and you a part of them. They own a piece of you.

  And when it goes sour, it makes you want to go blind.

  I’ll tell you about one of those in a moment, but first I want to talk about what it feels like when you’re in the middle of losing a friend. Having been through three divorces I can tell you the situations are not at all dissimilar.

  What is it that makes a friendship go sour?

  For me, it’s the realization, usually after many small disappointments, that the person in whom I’ve placed my trust and camaraderie, is not the person I thought him or her to be at all. Usually it’s in the area of ethics. Not one of us is as clean as we would have the world believe. We cheat a little, fudge a little, lie a little, cut a few corners, and occasionally even do something that fills us with self-loathing and guilt. Most of the time we lose very little sleep over the minor gouges we rip in the flesh of honesty; it’s too busy a world, and we move so fast we’ve skimmed past the moment of recognition in which we face ourselves and understand that we’ve sold out our souls. But our friends see. And though they may not comment on it, because they are our friends, it diminishes them because it means they have put their faith and trust in some creature less grand than they’d at first imagined. It makes our friends less, and we can only steal from them for so long before they turn away. It has gone sour.

  I feel this most acutely at the moment, because I’m in the process of losing one of my closest friends. A fellow writer, I’ve known him for ten years and have felt more brotherly toward him than almost anyone I’ve ever known. I am short on family; most of my relatives are clowns I wouldn’t associate with if they weren’t related, so I see no reason why accidents of blood should bind me to human beings who, but for their familial relationships, are detestables or bores; my friends are my family; I never had a brother; so this friend means a great deal to me.

  But over the years I’ve seen his attitude toward me sicken and turn ugly. He feels a sense of competition: in writing, in career success, in notoriety, in women, in even the day-to-day minutiae of conversation. If I say night, he says day. If I say good, he says bad. If I say fried rice, he says steamed rice. We have reached a point where we avoid each other’s company, because we cannot talk. I cannot blame him entirely; I am by nature a competitive animal, even when I’m relaxed and unaware of the pressure I’m applying. But I’ve recognized it and now—for a long time now—have laid back when in his company. I don’t want that kind of scene with him. But in some special part of his heart, he hates me. He loves me, as well; but that worm of hatred gives him no rest.

  But that’s only part of it. That’s the part that has soured him against me…even though he refuses to admit it, and we still dance the friendship dance with one another, a hideous rigadoon of spastic movements and terrible lies. The part that has soured me against him is in the area of ethics. He is a back-stabber and a weaseler and a guy who will rationalize himself into some very ugly situations.

  I remember one time, a few years ago, when I met a girl who was interested in me, and I (at first) in her. She was throwing a party the night I met her, but I had a previous appointment and couldn’t go. She knew the name of this other writer, my friend, and I suggested he might like to attend the party. She told me to invite him. There were to be many unattached ladies present.

  So I called my buddy and told him; and en passant, with a laugh, suggested he hustle any other fine female he saw, but to kinda sorta leave that one because I wanted to get to know her myself. So he went to the party.

  Guess which one he bedded down with that night?

  Out of an apartment filled with females he’d never met before, and with whom he could have formed a liaison without contretemps, guess which one he beelined?

  That wasn’t the first time I had my moment of doubt about my friend’s fidelity, but it was a bit of a shocker. I’m not even dealing with the silliness of my “staking out” the girl—she was a free agent and could choose whomever she wanted, of course. Nobody owns anybody. What I’m crawling toward is that he sought her out specially.

  To what end, I must ask. To the end of chopping me, comes the answer. Chill shot.

  Recently, he did it again. Same situation, different cast of characters. Except this time it was a girl I’d brought in from far out of town. And this time I chose to absent myself from the play. I suggested they go off together and just not bother to bother me. It was with a sigh of relief from me that they split my house. But I liked him a lot less. His girl friend wasn’t too happy about it, either.

  But what has gone down in the past two weeks, during the Writers Guild strike, has been the most souring.

  For those of you who don’t know what the strike’s all about, or who have been confused by the stupid articles in The Hollywood Reporter (a simpleminded puff-sheet for the Producers Association that has traditionally bumrapped writers), be advised we are out on the bricks to get wage increases that have been substandard since 1951, plus many other areas where we who create the dreams feel we are entitled to a taste, seeing as how everyone else is getting fat. It’s too complex to go into here, but suffice it, if you trust me at all, that it’s a necessary strike and the Guild is on the side of the angels. (A few of whom, I’d love it a lot, should flap down and carry picket signs in front of Universal just to scare the piss out of Wasserma
n.)

  My friend doesn’t work much in tv, or films, but when he does, he reaps the benefits that other Guild members struck for and sweated for and negotiated for in years past. The Guild doesn’t ask much of its members, actually. Years go by without any call on their time or efforts. But in a strike it’s got to be solidarity or the pavement-pounding and out-of-work can go on for months. So everyone is called on to picket, or work in the Strike Action office, or drive a car to pick up people or somedamnthing…anything!

  The strike has cost a great many good men and women their incomes, their jobs, their reputations. Doug Benton, who was producing Columbo, and George Eckstein, who was readying a pilot project, have both been canned by Universal and each has received threatening letters from Lew Wasserman—one letter says they’re going to be sued for breach of contract, another says they’re going to be held to the terms of the contracts—but even if we settle the strike next week, and all of us start working for the higher compensations that have been negotiated, those writer-producer hyphenates who’ve been loyal to their union will still never regain the lost wages their striking has cost them. Hell, Wasserman can meet the new increases in compensation using just the money he’s withholding from Benton and Eckstein and other hyphenates. Liam O’Brien was supposed to fly to London to write a film for one of the struck studios. He didn’t go. God knows how much he lost. People who’ve created tv shows and sold them for the first time in long years of struggling have struck and been aced out of the fall schedules.

  My friend called me, the first morning of the strike, hysterical, and asked me, because I am on the Board of Directors of the Guild, to get him off picket duty, because he was writing a book. Well, shit, I’m writing a book, too, and I have work stacked to the ceiling on my desk, but we’re both freelancers and I know he can knock off for three or four hours once a week, to carry a picket sign, without seriously hindering his work schedule. I told him I couldn’t and wouldn’t do it, not even if I had the power, which I didn’t. He thinks I’m a fucked-up friend. I think his ethics suck.