Jamesian Philosophy Refreshed

Discussing the late sci-fi writer Harlan Ellison a couple of weeks ago got me to thinking about one of the best known facts about his life, one which may not be true at all. The fact, or factoid, is: The Schwarzenegger movie, Terminator, was plagiarized from a scenario that Ellison wrote for the television program Outer Limits. If anyone ever tells you this, they'll probably tell it in the tone of someone retailing a deep dark secret. Something that was hushed up, but that the cognoscenti are aware of nonetheless. If this ever happens to you, please answer: "Oh, really? Which episode was that?" The truth is that Ellison wrote two such scenarios, both variations of the same general idea but very different from each other. Terminator is generally described as a rip-off of one. Or the other. Or it doesn't really matter. But it does matter. Because one is not entitled to a property interest in one's broad thematic ideas. Neither Ellison nor anyone else eve...

One of science fiction's greats passed away late last month. I refer of course to Harlan Ellison, the author of Web of the City (1958), Spider Kiss (1961), and A Boy and His Dog (1969). But Ellison worked best in forms that were not book length. Among his many published collections of short stories, Stalking the Nightmare (1982), Angry Candy (1988) and Mind Fields (1994). No, that isn't a photo of Ellison I've attached here. I'll tell you who the b-and-w photo is of in due course. Ellison was probably best known, though, for having written the screenplay for the greatest episode of the original Star Trek, "City on the Edge of Forever." Or, rather, he wrote the first draft of the screenplay. My understanding is that Roddenberry re-wrote it quite radically, in ways to which Ellison was never reconciled. Well, that's show biz. The basic plot involves a time machine that sends Captain Kirk back to the year 1930, a soup kitchen in Depression-stri...