NP: Science fiction's craziest wagers (and a tangent).

[D. Patty]

http://io9.com/5169104/science-fiction-writers-craziest-wagers

"In 1960, Harlan Ellison was already a major up-and-coming science fiction
writer, but he fancied himself a jazz expert as well. One day, he got into
an
argument with jazz columnist Ted White over whether a 1939 Mildred Lewis
album featured backing music by John Kirby or John Lewis. Ellison was so
sure of himself, he bet his entire record collection - and if he lost, he'd
only
collect one record from White's collection. In the end, Ellison settled the
bet... at gunpoint.

"You can read the whole account in White's famous essay 'The
Bet.'<http://jophan.org/mimosa/m12/white.htm>
"
*
--lifted from io9 <http://io9.com/>*

I got over my admiration of Ellison's New Wave stuff about five minutes into
'The Last Deadloss Visions' by Christopher Priest.  Short version is,
Ellison
promised to put out a third & final volume of 'Dangerous
Visions',<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Last_Dangerous_Visions>a
self-
proclaimed Definitive Anthology of SF, something to measure up to the
substantial success of the first...  And his ego vaporlocked or something,
because he *never stopped revising.*  Even today he'll claim to still be
working
on it.  The truly criminal thing about this is the number of stories that
have
been sold to Ellison that have never seen the light of day--  if an author
really, truly insists upon retrieving his or her work & publishing it
elsewhere
(and we're talking Lawyering Up, here) Ellison will reluctantly relinquish
it,
mumbling all the while, *"The Book won't be complete without you.  If only
you'd wait another year!  It's almost done..."*

Not that the bloke was all bad.  Like I say, his New Wave writing was
strong.
It ought to have been--  he spent enough time drinking with the originators
of
the movement.  [Curmudgeonly aside:  Movement!  Like dada was a
movement.  Contrarian dissent that led to art, more like...]  The curators
of
*New Worlds*, New Wave's principal public organ, J.G. "only Michael could
call
me Jimmy" Ballard and Michael "English Assassin" Moorcock, fondly
remember Ellison as a bellicose blatherskite, always getting into fights.
Apparently the trio were great pals, though they exactly had much reason to
convene in recent years...  just drifted apart...  like...  imagined
patterns in
static...

Ellipsis or analepsis?  Whichever, I can't resist:  *New Worlds* had the
distinction of being the first British publication of 'Entropy' by Thomas
Pynchon.

Wotta woild!  Wotta plate of soup!

-revD
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://waste.org/pipermail/pynchon-l/attachments/20090314/b2e9a2e6/attachment.html>