Description

A Lit Fuse: The Provocative Life Of Harlan Ellison by Nat Segaloff

Hardcover – NESFA Press – May 2022 – 480 pages

In late 2011 Harlan Ellison—the multi-award-winning writer of speculative fiction and famously litigious personality—did two uncharacteristic things. First, he asked biographer Nat Segaloff if he’d be interested in writing his life story. Second, he gave Segaloff full control. The result is the long-anticipated A Lit Fuse: The Provocative Life of Harlan Ellison. The expansive biography, which is the first such project in which Ellison has permitted large portions of his varied works to appear.

Segaloff conducted exhaustive interviews with Ellison over the course of five years and also spoke with many of his friends and enemies in an effort to get inside the man and pin down the best-known “Harlan stories.” Their wide-ranging discussions cover his bullied boyhood, his storied marriages, his fabled lawsuits, and his compulsive writing process with more depth and detail than has ever before appeared in print. But it also delves into the man’s deeply held principles, his fears, and the demons that drove him for all of his 84 years. Friends, colleagues, and admirers such as Neil Gaiman, Patton Oswalt, Peter David, Robert Sawyer, Michael Scott, Edward Asner, Leonard Nimoy, Ed Bryant, Alan Brennert, Robert Silverberg, and many other notables add their voices.

Along the way the reader is treated to an analysis of the Connie Willis controversy, the infamous dead gopher story, allegedly pushing a fan down an elevator shaft, and the final word on The Last Dangerous Visions. What emerges is a rich portrait of a man who has spent his life doing battle with his times and himself, always challenging his readers to reach for a higher plane and goading himself to get them there. It’s funny, wise, shocking, and—well, it’s Harlan.

This vastly expanded second edition of the Hugo-nominated A Lit Fuse: The Provocative Life of Harlan Ellison covers events after Harlan Ellison’s death in June, 2018. The additional material also includes interviews with many of Harlan’s friends and a coda covering the death of Harlan’s wife, Susan Ellison. Containing tributes from SF icons, appraisals of Harlan’s legacy, and previously unpublished material, this second edition provides closure and perspective to an unquiet life and a lasting legacy.