Uh, Harlan...? Aren't you a trifle late on this...?

[the_archfiend]

As reported by Stuart C. Hellinger on the NESFA open mailing list, a certain famous science fiction author and occasionally (okay, maybe more often than that) cranky person has sued CBS Paramount and the Writer's Guild of America over a very famous script he wrote for a very famous SF show they produced in the 60's. 

Yeah, that's right. For something that aired in 1967.

Two questions spring to mind about this:

1) Why did he wait this damn long if he was aggrieved about the end product of a script he authored over fourty years ago?

2) Is it just me, or are all of his rants (or at least the portion excerpted from the Newsarama piece) starting to seem very, very much alike? 

(Keep in mind that I'm well aware that Paramount and Ellison have had issues over this in the past and that Ellison is at least partially in the right; I'm just astounded he chose a moment nearly 42 years later to pursue legal action. Ah, litigation...)

Comments

[shsilver.livejournal.com]

I'm guessing that it is because Paramount has recently begun licensing books based on the characters Ellison created for that episode.

[the-archfiend.livejournal.com]

Wow. Look who turned up!

I'm just a bit irked that Harlan has such intense feeling for the intellectual property rights of his own work when a certain anthology he was supposed to release over thirty years ago is still sitting somewhere in his closet even after some of the authors included in it have given up the ghost. Do any of *them* (or their surviving relatives) get a say in that?

Again: I'm well aware that the Great Bird had Harlan's original script for _City_ butchered. He still should've done this decades ago, regadless of the reasons.