It's shopping day. I'm going to be out for a large chunk of it running errands. So the reviews will go up this evening.


Friday’s Editorial

I decided on the basis of some email I received, to run the editorial first this morning and the reviews second.

Harlan Ellison is notorious for telling people what they can’t do in the most savage terms imaginable. Harlan has always been far nastier in his reactions to new writers than I will ever be. This is a small tale of Harlan and a young writer.

In 1962, Hank Stine was a young man of 17 who had recently finished high school and moved to Los Angeles to attend college. He immediately became a member of LASFAS, the Los Angeles science fiction fan community. Some of his material was printed in the old mimeographed fanzines of the times. Harlan read some of Hank’s work and tore into him. He said that it was so bad that he should learn to fry eggs because he would never be a writer.

Hank was hurt. But he did something that is more important than anything else. He noted the specifics of Harlan’s criticisms, got other input from his fellow fans and some of the pros he met as to how he could improve his work, and kept writing. Each and every piece he wrote was more refined and sophisticated than the one before it. He improved his sentence structure, his characterizations, his plotting, and his dialog.

In 1968, five years later, Hank went back to Harlan. Hank had written a novel, sold it to Essex House, a publisher of the time, and wanted Harlan to look at it. To me, that took nerve, audacity, and confidence in his belief that he had vastly improved.

The result was that Harlan Ellison wrote a glowing introduction to the novel, which he called (rather ironically) Frying Eggs. He admitted to having trashed the young man’s work, and how Hank had nonetheless gone on to learn his craft and produce a profound book entitled “Season of the Witch.” In 1994, Season of the Witch was made into a Canadian film, entitled Synapse.

My point in telling this story is that you have to take the bad with the good. The good may feel wonderful, but it is the bad that teaches us to improve. It is that raking over the coals of opinion that help us see what we need to learn. Young writers always get heavily raked over those hot coals in the beginning. Part of this is to challenge them, test their mettle, and force them to do or die. Past that it is up to you.


Some brief creds, a partial list

articles published in:
Movieline
Cinefantastique
Washington Post Book World
Los Angeles Times
Los Angeles Drive Guide
Black Belt
Martial Arts Weapons
Monsterland
Thrust: Science Fiction in Review
Science Fiction Review

Former MPAA Accredited Journalist.
Currently Active member, SFWA, HWA