My point was, Harlan is famous among other SF/F writers, but not really all that well known anymore.

Oh, and Ben, help me prove my point- before my blog, did you know who Harlan Ellison was? Be honest.

there’s no such thing as bad press.

notice his website is titled “harlan’s webderland” i’m sure meant to be a clever twist on wonderland, but strikes me more as web der land, like der, duh, doh, uh huh? the more crotchety and yelling he can be, the better, he’s just trying to stir up publicity among writer-types and reader-types.
someone else said this in here and it bears repetition. there’s no clear voice for our (who) generation, or generations. no clear voice everyone agrees on, we’ve become so divided and sorted and categorized that we don’t know anyone now, the neighbors are wierdos, people across the street? i think they’re in with the gangs or the drugs. these damn kids write these stories they don’t know the first thing about my intestinal tract, damnit lookit the hair these kids have! and the clothes and the…. he can go off for quite a bit, i say let him, in fifty years me and you’ll be complaining about the damn kids nowadays and how they don’t know shit. but hey, this is what everyone’s hear for si?

Now I really gotta get back to work.

“I’m not saying Ellison speaks across generations. I said he and Asimov maintained and evolved a market for themselves that you and others are now claiming.”

Actually, I’ve never been published anywhere either of those artists were published. If you’re talking about the SF market, well, they didn’t create that, either

“The bloggers name stays in the reader’s mind. That’s how I heard your name sff signal blog. Actually I never heard of you before. What a writer intends is irrelevant. The reader is all – once you put something out there it’s no longer yours. I believe that.”

You are one reader on this blog, out of the 500 or so I get daily. I see a spike on blog hits (as well as new readers- I can track them with these nifty internet tracking tools) each time a short story of mine gets published somewhere. In the long run, I get more hits from my short stories than anything else.

So, realistically speaking, if anything the short stories are advertisement to my blog

But really, its here for me to talk to my readers. That’s about it.

Books are ephemeral too. My copies of P.K. Dick crumble each time I pick them up. Miss Ravenal’s Conversion was one of the more popular books in late 1800′s. Now nobody reads it except for someone taking a literature course in college. Shakespeare will be irrelevant except to academics, who’s reads the Illiad for fun. Who’s Kafka, that paranoid guy that other paranoid guy wrote a comic about (R. Crumb). Jane Austen – maybe someday I finish one of her books. Dune was more interesting to me when I was in college now he’s become a cottage industry for his son and other writers.

I’m not saying Ellison speaks across generations. I said he and Asimov maintained and evolved a market for themselves that you and others are now claiming. They were entertaining for awhile, now not so much.

I didn’t say Asimov or Ellison influenced you, I don’t care what influences you as long as you entertain me, create a dream, a movie in my mind, make me forget the real world for a short while. If you can’t I’ll find someone who can.

Believe when I say I not trying to antagonize you, I’m sure you don’t give a crap, but I will now read you.

I never read Ellison again after I saw him live, too full of himself for my taste, but he sure packed a lecture hall

And I have gotten quite a lot of stuff in physical print, so really, even if a giant magnet fell from the sky and wiped the world’s hard drives all at once, I would still have made a mark, still be read, still can pass words on from text to eye and mouth to ear.

“Asimov’s and Ellison’s writings have lost relevancy because their popular culture references have disappeared. ”

Yes and no. There are a lot of writers who have written in the past, whose work is still relevant long after their cultural reference have dried up and blown away. Jane Austen, Kafka, Shakespear, etc. Some thing work on a level that speaks across generations. Ellison is not one of them.

“Asimov’s and Ellison’s impact on the sff market in their time was enormous. I believe todays writers stand on their shoulders, just as they stood on the shoulders of Burroughs, Wells, Verne and Hans Christian Anderson. After all nothing comes from nothing.”

And that means nothing. Absolutely nothing. History stands on the shoulders of history, etc. You have no idea what influences me, what I’ve read, and what my personal classics are. Asimov and Ellison may made an impact back then, but that does not affect me, nor my writing, other than as a historical curiosity.

BTW, my readers are growing exponentially each year. Will these lead to my writing being immortal in the annals of literary history of genre history? I’m not sure. But I do know that most genre fans have no idea who Harlan Ellison is, and most that do know him from Stephen King’s mentioning him in interviews and his non fiction book, rather than his writing.