Harlan Ellison: Paingod and Other Delusions

“Paingod” (in a slightly abridged version) originally appeared in Fantastic , June 1964; copyright © 1964 by Ziff-Davis Publishing Company. Copyright reassigned to Author 6 January 1981. Copyright © 1981 by The Kilimanjaro Corporation.

“‘Repent, Harlequin!’ Said the Ticktockman” originally appeared in Galaxy , December 1965; copyright © 1966 by Harlan Ellison.

“The Crackpots” originally appeared in IF: Worlds of Science Fiction , June 1956; copyright © 1956 by Quinn Publishing Company. Copyright reassigned to Author 25 March 1975. Copyright © 1975 by Harlan Ellison.

“Sleeping Dogs” originally appeared in Analog Science Fiction/Fact , October 1974; copyright © 1974 by Harlan Ellison.

“Bright Eyes” originally appeared in Fantastic , April 1965; copyright © 1965 by Ziff-Davis Publishing Company. Copyright reassigned to Author 10 March 1981. Copyright © 1981 by The Kilimanjaro Corporation.

“The Discarded” (under the title “The Abnormals”) originally appeared in Fantastic , April 1959; copyright © 1959 by Ziff-Davis Publishing Company. Copyright reassigned to Author 6 January 1981. Copyright © 1981 by The Kilimanjaro Corporation.

“Wanted in Surgery” originally appeared in IF: Worlds of Science Fiction , August 1957; copyright © 1957 by Quinn Publishing Company. Copyright reassigned to Author 25 March 1975. Copyright © 1975 by Harlan Ellison.

“Deeper Than the Darkness” originally appeared in Infinity Science Fiction , April 1957; copyright © 1957 by Royal Publications, Inc. Copyright reassigned to Author 18 September 1959. Copyright © 1959 by Harlan Ellison.

ONE NIGHT, SOME YEARS AGO, maybe five or six, I woke up in the darkness and saw words burning bright-red on the ceiling of my bedroom.

I crawled out of the rack and felt my way through the house to my office, sat down at the typewriter, put on the light and — still asleep — typed the words on paper. I went back to bed and forgot all about it. That night I had programmed my dreams for a Sergio Leone spaghetti western with score by Morricone. No cartoon, no short subjects.

The next morning, coffee cup in hand, I went to my typewriter and found the question waiting for me, all alone on a sheet of yellow foolscap. Rhetorical. Of course I knew how much pain there was in the world … is in the world.

But I couldn’t quite bring myself to ripping the sheet off the roller and getting on with what I should have been working at. I sat and stared at it for the longest time.

Understand something: I am not a humanitarian. I distrust selfless philanthropists and doers of good deeds. When you discover that the black natives of Lamborene hated Schweitzer, you begin to suspect noble individuals have some secret need in them to be loved, to look good in others’ eyes, to succor themselves or dissipate their guilts with benevolent gestures. Rather than the sanctimonious bullshit of politicians about “the good people of this fair state,” I would joyously vote for any candidate who had the courage to stand up and say, “Look, I’m going to steal from you. I’m going to line my pockets and those of my friends, but I’m not going to steal too much. But in the deal I’ll give you better roads, safer schools, better education, and a happier condition of life. I’m not going to do it out of compassion or dedication to the good people of this fair state; I’m going to do it because if I do these things, you’ll elect me again and I can steal a little bit more.” That joker has my vote, no arguments.

(Rule of thumb: whenever you hear a politician call it “the United States of America” instead of simply “the U.S.” — you know he’s bullshitting you. It’s like the convoluted syntax of college textbooks. When they start writing in a prolix manner that makes you read a paragraph seven times to get the message See Dick and Jane run, oh oh oh! you know someone is trying to flummox you. Same for politicians; if they start running a fast ramadoolah past you, instead of speaking simply and directly, they’re trying to weasel. This lesson in good government comes to you through the courtesy of a man who was snookered by Eugene McCarthy and George McGovern.)

So what I’m trying to tell you is that I’m last in the line of noble, unselfish, golden humanitarians. What I do for the commonweal I do for myself . I am a selfish sonofabitch who contributes to “good causes” because I feel shitty if I don’t. But if the truth be told, I’m the same as you: the deaths of a hundred thousand flood victims in some banana republic doesn’t touch me one one-millionth as much as the death of my dog did. If you get wiped out on a freeway somewhere and I don’t know you personally, I may go tsk-tsk, but the fact that I haven’t had a good bowel movement in two days is more painful to me.

So those words burning on my ceiling really threw me.

They really got to me.

I had them printed on big yellow cards so they’d pop, and I started giving them to friends. I had one framed for my office. It’s up on the wall to the right of my typewriter as I sit here telling you about it.

But if I’m not this terrific concerned human being, what’s it all in aid of? Well, it’s in aid of my coming to terms with my own mortality, something that’ll happen to all of you if it hasn’t already. And it speaks to what this collection of stories is all about, in a way. So we’ll talk about pain.

Here are a few different kinds of pain I think are worthy of our attention.

The other night I had dinner with a good friend, a woman writer whom I’ve known for about ten years. Though we’ve never had a romantic relationship, I love her dearly and care about her: she’s a good person, and a talented writer, and those two qualities put her everlastingly on my list of When You Need Help, Even in the Dead of Night, I’m on Call. Over dinner, we talked about an anguish she has been experiencing for a number of years. She’s afraid of dying alone and unloved.

Some of you are nodding in understanding. A few of you are smiling. The former understand pain, the latter are assholes. Or very lucky. We’ve all dreaded that moment when we pack it in, get a fast rollback of days and nights, and realize we’re about to go down the hole never having belonged to anyone. If you’ve never felt it, you’re either an alien from far Arcturus or so insensitive your demise won’t matter. Or very lucky.

Her problem is best summed up by something Theodore Sturgeon once said: “There’s no absence of love in the world, only worthy places to put it.” My friend gets involved with guys who do her in. Not all her fault. Some of it is — we’re never wholly victims, we help construct the tiger traps filled with spikes — but not all of it. She’s vulnerable. While not naïve, she is innocent. And that’s a dangerous but laudable capacity: to wander through a world that can be very uncaring and amorally cruel, and still be astonished at the way the sunlight catches the edge of a coleus leaf. Anybody puts her down for that has to go through me first.

So she keeps trying, and the ones with long teeth sense her vulnerability and they move in for the slow kill. (That’s evil: only the human predator destroys slowly, any decent hunting animal rips out the throat and feeds, and that’s that. The more I see of people, the better I like animals.)