Harlan Ellison touched Connie Willis’s breast onstage at the Hugo Awards last weekend. The video clip is here.
The SF community has had a love/hate relationship with Harlan Ellison for the entire length of his career. He’s always been loud, rude, childish, argumentative, and disrespectful. He’s the iconic brat of the literary world. But sometimes he pushes it too far. And this time, he’s pushed it clean off the edge.
It’s really too bad that Harlan is such a moron, because he really is an amazing writer. A genius, in fact. Which, I think, is one of the reasons people have put up with his brattiness all these years. We’ve let him get away with things that ordinary mortals would be tarred and feathered for, because, well, he’s Harlan. The normal rules of society have never applied to him.
You know why? Because we — the SF community, the fen, and society in general — have never enforced them. Because we have laughed at his cruel jokes. Because we’ve found his vindictive pranks against those who’ve offended him funny. Because we’ve allowed him to do all the things that we could never get away with. We made him the icon he became. Not despite his antisocial behavior, but because of it.
Shame on us for that.
And shame on me, too. Because despite how angry I am at him right now, I still want to like the little troll. And sooner or later, against my own better judgment, against my own principals, I know I’ll forgive him. Sort of. Because, well, he’s Harlan.