Harlan Ellison has spent much of his life evading labels. It is difficult to make a general statement about him, or about his work, that must not be followed immediately by a qualifying negation: Ellison both is and is not a science-fiction writer; Ellis...

Described by fellow author J. G. Ballard as "an aggressive and restless extrovert who conducts his life at a shout and his fiction at a scream," Harlan Ellison is a writer who actively resists being labeled. Though he has written or edited sixty books an...

In the following essay, Fain compares five published versions of “I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream” in order to support his argument that Ted, the narrator of the story, is “alone … both fully human and fully godlike in the story.”

In the following essay, Brady explores the godlike features of computers in Ellison's “I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream” and Michael Fayette's “The Monster in the Clearing.”