Harlan Ellison is offering his never-produced scripts

The author of the classic Star Trek episode, "City on the Edge of Forever" has put out a book with his TV scripts that never made it to the small screen. I might be interested in getting a copy, but he's so prone to suing everyone that I'm not sure I want anything to do with him.

Aspiring Mogul said:

The author of the classic Star Trek episode, "City on the Edge of Forever" has put out a book with his TV scripts that never made it to the small screen. I might be interested in getting a copy, but he's so prone to suing everyone that I'm not sure I want anything to do with him.

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Well, if you're afraid of him suing you for legitimately buying his book, the logical solution is to secretly pirate it! Right?

There we go again .

Zensteve said:

Well, if you're afraid of him suing you for legitimately buying his book, the logical solution is to secretly pirate it! Right?

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Good one Zensteve!

Ellison is a friend and was my mentor for several years. I made my
first TV sale because of him. He is prone to suing people who violate
his copyright. Those of us who make a living from our creative
endeavors do not see that as something bad, as something to be
wary of.

Not for buying his book, but for allegedly stealing his ideas.

He'd be stupid to try that with me, and he's been playing a dangerous game, but I don't want the hassle.

I was going for the hung for a sheep as lamb gag, but oh well.

I just saw "City on the Edge of Forever", and I've done some digging around the internet, so I know something of the background. His initial draft is not as good as the final product, but, then again, I only SAW the final product. That said, "City" is a good SF episode, because it has a SF element - time travel - without which the plot would have failed. As Heinlein said, that element has to be crucial to the story or it would not be good SF.

As an aside, he sued James Cameron because Cameron allegedly stole the idea for Terminator from two of Ellison's TV episodes. Actually, "City's" storyline would be closer to Terminator than those episodes, but, of course, Ellison never owned the rights to "City".

I'm doing a SF series, as some of you know, and I've written down quite a bit in terms of my series bible and draft episodes. I'm wondering if I should read more on how "City" was produced, the trials and tribulations. Does anyone know of any works on the making of that episode?