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El Reg reports
Harlan Ellison, the legendary science fiction author who kickstarted the 1970s "New Wave" of science fiction has died in his sleep at the age of 84 at his home in Los Angeles.
Ellison was one of the giants of the genre, the winner of eight Hugo awards (including an unbeaten record of three short story prizes), four Nebula awards, five Bram Stoker awards for his horror writing, and numerous other honours. He wrote what is widely considered to be the best episode of the original Star Trek, The City on the Edge of Forever, was a consultant on Babylon 5, and was credited for James Cameron's The Terminator--albeit after a lawsuit.
Born in 1934 in Cleveland, Ohio, Ellison was an early starter, selling his first story at the age of 15. He never stopped writing, producing over 1,700 stories, film [scripts,] and TV scripts. His early writing career coincided with the heyday of pulp science fiction magazines. Those mags paid as little as a penny word, so he couldn't initially afford to write full time.
This led to a very broad résumé. He worked as a cab driver, tuna fisherman, crop harvester, and--briefly--as an armed bodyguard for a paranoid friend. He also had a two-year spell in the US army.
[...] In one anecdote, Ellison was one of the writers called in to pitch ideas for a Star Trek movie. Idea after idea was shot down by the film exec as not "thinking big enough". Finally Ellison suggested the Enterprise would warp out to the edge of the universe only to find a solid wall. After rerouting all power to the weapons system, the spaceship would blast though the wall and gaze at the face of God. When the exec told him he still wasn't thinking big enough Ellison gave him the finger and walked out.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 01 2018, @08:20PM (1 child)
I started listening to KPFK in 1998[1], by which time that had stopped being aired.
So, no.
From time to time, the SciFi hour you named gets mentioned on old-timer Roy Tuckman's midnight-to-6AM "Something's Happening" program. [blogspot.com]
Roy recently mentioned how Ellison took over as host of "Hour 25" after the death of the original presenter.
Before he does a replay of Thom Hartmann's program from earlier in the day, Tuckman (AKA Roy of Hollywood) has been playing "X Minus One" around 3AM once or twice a week.
That's the only SciFi left on the station.
[1] ...and then, for several years, I only tuned in on Saturday mornings for "Digital Village".
It's sad what that program has become.[2]
First, the new (awful) management gave them a new timeslot, at night and mid-week.
Next, the even-newer (and even more awful) management tried to make it Gen Y-friendly with some on-air hipsters.
More recently, the program was cut to a half hour.
About the time I discovered all of KPFK's other programming, I had already stopped listening to Digital Village.
[2] It didn't help that presenter Doran Barons got oral cancer and had part of his tongue cut out and replaced with a piece of his thigh.
Another guy whose anti-Fascist stuff Roy features, Dave Emory, also had had life-altering oral surgery.
While Dave's speech was also negatively impacted, speech therapy has improved that greatly.
Doran's speech remains difficult to understand with co-host Ric Allan having to repeat some things.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 02 2018, @05:17AM
Roy [...] has been playing "X Minus One" around 3AM once or twice a week.
That's the only SciFi left on the station.
Let me modify that.
The first Monday of the month (actually, Tuesday morning), Roy does an Old-Time Radio night with Bob Lyons and Barbara Sunday of SPERDVAC.
July 2/July 3 will be such a Monday/Tuesday.
This is Roy's page for July but it's currently empty of content.
http://shprogramguide.blogspot.com/2018/07/# [blogspot.com]
Expect it to have a week's stuff before 23:59 Monday (Pacific time).
Maybe that will include a SciFi program or 2 and the time will probably not be 3AM.
They also jabber between the old recordings, so there's about 35 minutes per program for the first 3 hours.
The audio archive is here.
https://archive.kpfk.org/#rt-mainbody [kpfk.org]
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]