A Boy and His Dog (Author Biography)

Author Biography

Harlan Ellison is a prolific editor and writer of novels, short stories, essays, and screenplays. His fiction includes crime stories, mysteries, mainstream fiction, and science fiction. Although he is most strongly identified with science fiction, he balks at being categorized. Ellison maintains that his influences — Mark Twain, Ambrose Bierce, Henry David Thoreau, and Edgar Allan Poe — also defy neat categorization.

Ellison was born on May 27, 1934, in Cleveland, Ohio, to Louis Laverne (a dentist and jeweler) and Serita. As a child, Ellison performed at a local children’s playhouse, but his creative interests soon turned to writing. At the age of thirteen, he saw his first story published in the Cleveland News. Three years later, he formed the Cleveland Science Fiction Society.

Ellison left Ohio State University in 1954 after only a year and pursued a career as a professional writer in New York. Within two years, he had sold 150 short stories to various magazines. The science fiction readership was most responsive to his writing, and critics soon aligned Ellison with the New Wave of science fiction writers, whose writing is characterized by previously taboo subjects and fictional experimentation. He was drafted to serve in the United States Army from 1957 to 1959, but then resumed writing and editing. According to Ellison, his reputation was secured when the esteemed critic Dorothy Parker wrote a favorable review of one of his mainstream stories in 1961. With success as a fiction writer came opportunities to write for television in the early 1960s. Ellison wrote episodes for The Outer Limits, The Twilight Zone, and The Alfred Hitchcock Hour, and he won a Hugo Award for a Star Trek script.

Ellison’s personal life has been tumultuous. He married his first wife in 1956 and has since divorced and remarried several times. He is currently married to his fifth wife, whom he married in 1986.

Ellison’s numerous awards include Writers Guild of America Awards and Hugo Awards. He also won the Nebula Award from the Science Fiction Writers of America for Best Short Story in 1965 for “‘Repent, Harlequin!’ Said the Ticktockman” and for Best Novella in 1969 for “A Boy and His Dog.” Ellison’s recent work (including the 1993 novel Mefisto in Onyx and the 1994 screenplay for I, Robot, co-written with Isaac Asimov) continues to draw critical praise.