As far as people calling him a one-hit wonder and being glad when he’s dead, you are beneath contempt.

That was a great episode!

Cosmo

I enjoyed it. There was an episode with Robert Kline as a man who wakes up to find that everyone is starting more and more to be speaking a different language than him. It was an episode that made me start thinking differently of Kline. Good ep.

Man oh man, I thought for a moment that David Gerrold was on the Transmitter/Mic. Great Stuffing’s for the old turkeys!!!!

Peace and Reese’s,
Cosmo

Oh, and for what it’s worth…sorry I was rude to you the other day in another thread. I was over the top and it was uncalled for. Please accept my apologies.

(sound of retching…..) :)

That’s nothing compared to how I’m going to feel when I discover that Mrs. Ballz is, in reality, some 19 year old guy from Michigan!! :)

“You implied, it seemed to me, that you could objectively ‘prove’ your case that Ellison’s work would be forgotten at some point in the future…”

Well this is just silly; I implied no such thing. I was merely making a case for it. “Proof” never entered into it.

“You’re right–it would mean very little, if you’re talking about the general population, which (as we both acknowledge) doesn’t read much for pleasure.”

No, again, Michael, for the umpteenth time–I am talking about the READING audience, not the general population.

“As for the general reading audience–well, to be fair, you would have to provide them with a non genre-specific example of Ellison’s work…”

This is rubbish, and frankly, a shallow attempt at trying (I assure it would be unsuccessful) to stack the deck in Ellison’s favor.

The fact of the matter is A) Ellison is primarily a sci-fi writer (sorry, I’ll never buy your or his argument about the “speculative fiction” nonsense—I didn’t buy it when he started spewing that in the early 70s, and I don’t buy it now) and time will judge the body of his work as a whole—so to get an accurate view of how people may view his work in the future, you would have people read some *average* selection of his—something that reflects what he’s known for. B) You make the tired old argument that sci-fi MUST be judged by “those who have a taste for such things.” Again, this is rubbish. Good writing is good writing and bad writing is bad writing—PERIOD. THAT is what we’d be trying to judge here–NOT whether Ellison is good “for a science ficition writer.”

It’s funny, Michael. I know lots of people who don’t generally read sci fi, who have read Jules Verne, H.G. Wells, Bradbury, and even Asimov and a few others.

No, the fact is that good storytelling and good writing cuts across boundaries of taste. Not always, no… of course some people just plain don’t like certain genres—BUT AGAIN—most dedicated readers, I find, are not of that mindset—they will give good writing a chance regardless of the genre.

Your argument here is transparent and smacks of desperation. If Ellison’s going to survive, it’ll be on the basis of whether a GENERAL reading audience (of READERS) finds his work good and readable–or *not.* No qualifications, no equivocating.

As for your defense of Ellison regarding my point about The Oscar—I’m sorry, but here you fall utterly flat. A work THAT bad IS a signpost, Michael—I don’t know how anyone could argue otherwise without being outright dishonest. Now recall–I’m not saying Ellison has stayed at that *low* a level—but I maintain he hasn’t risen as far above it as you or he thinks.

And let’s touch upon the vaunted scripts for “The Outer Limits” here, since you brought them up.

I do, in fact, love “Demon with a Glass Hand” and have my own copy of it… but I love it for the IDEA of the story (which as always with Ellison, is inventive and original) and the cheesy, nightmarish thrill of it—in large part due to Byron Haskin’s direction—NOT for Ellison’s *dialogue,* which is occasionally atrocious. I can quote you chapter and verse if need be.

“All that “The Oscar” proves is that anyone screw up royally.”

No, Michael. A minor failure would prove such a thing. “The Oscar” is acknowledged universally as one of THE worst scripts in film history. That proves a great deal more.

And by the way:

“I’d be willing to bet that the number of readers any novel over a century old enjoys, outside of school assignments, is vanishingly small even when compared to the relatively minor percentage of the population which reads for pleasure at all.”

Again, you keep missing the point. The point is not that fewer people today read—or that older works–even great ones—often find a narrower audience as time passes; indeed all this is true. But this isn’t relevant to the point I was making. It is almost always a *relatively* small group of intellectuals who keep great works alive—and they continually pass these works on, as much as it is in their power to do so, to succeeding generations of less-knowledgeable readers—through instruction or by recommendation. Great works also continue to reach people *outside* of the university circuit as well. They gain a reputation, and become generally known.

Some “good bad” books also manage to last, because they entertain, touch some iconic need in people, etc. etc.