By now I suspect most of you have heard about the little incident at the Hugos this weekend.

For those of you who have missed it, Harlan Ellison evidently thought it would be fun to inappropriately touch Connie Willis on stage at the awards ceremony. He also seemed to have other encounters that were also inappropriate during the convention, though none as visible as his treatment of Ms. Willis.

Excuse me while I vent. Just a little.

What I would like to go is go to a convention and a la Harlan meeting Isaac Asimov go up to Harlan and say, batting my wide star struck eyes, "Are you Harlan Ellison?" And then when he says, "Why, yes I am," I'd like to grab his crotch, twist, and respond with, "You're not so much."

But since I don't get out of town much and the old fart is reportedly retiring from cons, I'll have to write a letter.

Because, see, this is the thing. I don't care if you're Jesus Christ, Buddha, and Siddhartha rolled all into one. This is not the MTV movie awards -- it is not cool to do what Harlan did to any woman under any circumstances. (Even on MTV.) But on this point I suspect I'm preaching to the choir.

But here's the next point.

Are we going to just roll our eyes, or have a giggle and say, "Oh, well, that's Harlan for you", or flame Harlan in our blogs and then sit back in our apathy and let it pass? Or are we going to do something about it?

What would be cool is if a bunch of people in the SF/F community got together and joined their voices to speak out against such behavior, but I don't have the name or the readership to institute any such thing.

But this is what I'm going to do: I'm going to let my feelings settle on this topic a little bit until the old head clears. Then I think I'm going to write Mr. Ellison a letter. A nice professional letter telling him how I appreciate his talent and his body of work, and have for many years. And then I'm going to discuss how such treatment of women affects the field -- the field he loves and has been trying to move to new heights for decades.

I suspect the letter may never get to him, or if it does he may not read it, or if he does read it he may spit on it, call me nasty names, and move on with his life.

But that's okay; that's his choice. At least I'm doing something about something that bothers me.

Finally I'm going to write Connie Willis and tell her how much I admire her work. How she inspires me. And then I'm going to tell her I admire the way she has handled Harlan's treatment of her. In the end, though thoroughly not amused, she has handled the situation with grace and maturity.

And maybe I'll make a t-shirt, even though Harlan may sue me. Because, well, you know, we all need our hobbies -- I make shirts, he sues people.


He still wrote some amazing short stories.