Harlan Ellison, sci-fi and politics...

1. If you are a fan of Harlan Ellison, you may want to read Neil Gaiman's blog post on Good Reads.

HERE . Gaiman unlike other commentators was a close friend of Ellison, and knew him well. Here's a snippet from his blog post that moved me.

He was his own worst enemy, and that's even more impressive when you stop to think that he is the only person I know to have actually had an official Enemy group (for a while they actually called themselves the Enemies of Ellison). He inspired great loyalties and great enmities, and thought it a huge character failing in me that I really liked most people (including several of the Enemies of Ellison) and that most people seemed to like me.

Harlan and I stayed real friends, through ups and through downs. The most recent down was his stroke, three years ago. He went to bed and didn't get up again. He had been a fighter, but he stopped fighting. Was not always there: lost memories, was sometimes confused, was still Harlan.

I was very aware that each time I saw him could be the last. We were painfully honest with each other. You try not to leave things unsaid, when death's in the air.

The last time I saw him he was more himself than at any time in the last few years. But a milder version of himself. He wanted me to tell him the set-up to a joke I had told him 15 years ago that, he said, was the funniest joke he'd ever heard, but he had forgotten how to tell it, and I did, and he laughed again. I told him about the Mermaid Parade, and Amanda and Ash. (I took Amanda to meet Harlan, when we first started dating, in the way you take someone to meet the family.) He said he had learned from Susan how to be at peace with things, and that she had learned, in the 32 years they had been together, how to be angry.

[I go through phases...and I'm a bit of binger in regards to food, books, television shows, etc. I will binge hard on something, become obsessed, then lose all interest in it and wonder what I was thinking. I'm sure it looks a bit insane and bewildering to an outsider.

Anyhow. I binged Sci-fi and fantasy books roughly through my teens, twenties, thirties, and up to mid-forties. Then lost interest, abruptly. I've been writing science fiction, so that may be part of it. Not at the moment -- at the moment I am writing a weird subversive contemporary romance novel that I'm afraid to tell people about or show them. The sci-fi stuff I can actually envision sharing.

So, I've read a lot of Harlan Ellison (mainly short stories and scripts), Neil Gaiman (novels and comics, and seen some adaptations), John Scalzi, Octavia Butler (Kindred), Ursula Le Quinn (mainly short stories and Wizard of Earthsea), Margaret Atwood, Issac Asimov, Robert Heinlein (a lot of Heinlein -- what can I say, I like pulp), Orson Scott Card ( I don't like him and haven't made it through anything he wrote), Sherri Teppar (read Grass, it's amazing), Anne McCaffrey (sci-fi light), Frank Herbert (Dune, ignore the rest), CS Lewis (couldn't get through it, too preachy and religious for my taste, but his fantasy isn't bad), Andre Norton, Mercedes Lackey, Edgar Rice Burroughs (pulp and couldn't get through it -- Sorry Aunt A, who adored him), Ray Bradbury (loved and mostly short stories -- he's a great short story writer and I hate short stories), Ship of Fools by Russell something or other, tried China Melville...but reading him felt like reading a journal entry on quicksand -- too much description, HG Wells (better than expected), Jules Verne (boring)...JA Corey, okay, for a space opera, Lois Bujold (whose name I can't spell), and many more. I've read more than I can remember. The problem with binge reading is after a while the novels and stories blur together and I don't remember them.

I may go back to sci-fi soon, but taking a break at the moment -- certainly have a lot of it in my apartment and on the Kindle that I haven't read.]

2. Politics.

Two stories about Trump supporters from different decades.


2018 - Today
Co-worker: The economy is booming because of Trump! As I keep telling people, we are doing well because of him. So tariffs are driving up prices -- I don't know what that's about, why would tariffs on European and Canadian Steel drive up our prices...but whatever. The economy is great!

Me: Sigh. Yeah, let's ignore the kids in the cages, the environmental infractions, the rising sea levels, the natural disasters, the increasing number of hate crimes, the people being deported and separated from families, the loss of health care for millions..hey, at least I'm making lots of money! All is good. (Sometimes I wonder about people. I also wonder what the world would be like if all currency, all money, were to just suddenly disappear like that. No bitcoin, no gold, no silver, no bills, no stocks, no bonds, nothing. All gone. We'd probably find something to substitute...money isn't the problem, how we relate to it is.)

2003 - when I was hunting jobs in Human Resources (this one is ironic, if you think about it.)
Job interview with Director of HR at Planned Parenthood
Somehow the Apprentice came up. Mainly because we were talking favorite tv shows and she'd mentioned it was her favorite.
Me: I can't stand Trump, he's such a bully. I can't stand how he treats people...
Director of HR (African-American Woman): Oh really? I adore him. He's my baby, my guy. He's so funny. He isn't afraid to say it like it is.
Me: I met people that worked for him on Apprentice, he kicked the dogs, literally, and he groped his female employees.
Director of HR: do you have proof?
Me: No...
Director of HR: I still love him.

Needless to say I didn't get the job. But both made it clear to me that discussing politics with folks is a losing game. Also, to make it clear to folks...that no, not everyone's eyes have been opened regarding the Doofus. Some people value their pocket books and current way of life above EVERYTHING else.

Also if you support Trump, don't tell me. I keep telling people not to tell me. They do. And then I have to struggle to not dislike them or think ill of them. (Trust me, they know where I stand. I've made it clear that I despise him and think he is the Americanized version of Adolf Hitler.) I'd prefer just not to know -- so much easier. I have to put up with Trump supporters at work, although it's against company policy to discuss politics (mainly because we are a public funded State and Federal Agency), I will not tolerate them on social media. Zero Tolerance on this journal for Trumpets.

[ETA: I don't know why this keeps happening. I write a post. I come back, and discover I've skipped over an entire word. (Example -- "Needless I didn't get the job"...I had to go back and put in "to say". But when I wrote it I could swear I wrote that word (or in this instance two words). Are Gremlins erasing random words in my posts? Or does my brain have a glitch? Or does the computer? Does this happen to anyone else?]