I have complicated feelings about Harlan Ellison, because Harlan Ellison was complicated. @warrenellis described him as "great author and cautionary tale, arsehole and titan," and that's a start. Separating him from his work is nigh impossible, because they intertwined.
Ellison was as much text as person, really. And it was uncompromising. And that's generally a compliment, except when it isn't.
I will say this -- if you have never, ever been offended by anything that Harlan Ellison wrote or said or did? Go read more Ellison. Go find that thing he said or did or wrote that will piss you off and make you want to scream at the top of your lungs.
Then -- and this is harder by far -- find the thing he wrote or said or did that encapsulates something you believe in your heart possibly better than anyone else ever did.
Science Fiction, Fantasy, Horror, and all their derivatives are inexorably different today because of Harlan Ellison. Few people of his generation were a sledgehammer to the SF status quo like he was.
And? He was often an absolutely terrible person. Unlike a lot of often terrible people, he never hid it. I don't know that he ever hid anything in his life. He screamed it.
We sometimes forget that great people aren't always good people. And that being good or evil, kind or hateful, compassionate or selfish is a continuum, not a continuing state.
Ellison was sexist and passionately fought against sexism. Ellison was racist and passionately fought against racism. Are these contradictory? Ellison was the obverse of the Walt Whitman quote.
"Do I contradict myself? Very well, I contradict myself! Because fuck you, that's why."
The world is greater for his having been in it. The world is lesser for his having left it. Beyond that, I don't know how I feel. It's complicated. But I wish he were still alive.
And one last point to make. Just one. It is often couth, and kind, and compassionate to not speak about the recently departed in negative terms. There are people grieving, after all.
If you are holding your tongue about Harlan Ellison because he's died, and you don't want to speak ill of the dead or you want to be kind to those he left? Harlan Ellison will come back from the grave and scream his eldritch head off at you.
The best way -- the most honest way -- to remember Harlan Ellison? Is to *remember him.* Loudly. Including when he was an insufferable prick, which was often.
Just be sure you also remember him standing up for civil rights or helping others just because it was the right thing to do, because he did that too.
