Recommended Read (science fiction):

Phoenix Without Ashes

Currently watching the ancient ‘Starlost’ space opera (it’s really like a soap) from the 70’s. It originated with Harlan Ellison but, as with many of his intrusions into film/hollywood … it ended disastrously. He is mentioned in the credits under the nom de plume (name of the feather-quill) ‘Cordwainer Bird’.

The story is important as it represents a metaphor of what happened to our species as we ‘advanced’ technologically… but … not socially. And how we ‘lost the old stories of origin’ and adopted bizarre mutations, instead.

I had a phone conversation with him a long time ago when I was first working on Cyanosis (my art-lit journal). He called me and yelled at me for 15 minutes about how naive I was and how I simply didn’t understand how the industry worked.

But I wasn’t interested in how industries worked.

I was interested… in making something miraculous. With the help of many others. To a degree, I succeeded. Harlan’s wrath notwithstanding…

He was, however, one of my mentors. What a severe human being. Dead now. But alive in the brilliance of much of his writing, which I highly recommend.