Ellisonian adj.

of, relating to, or characteristic of the writing of Harlan Ellison

SF Criticism

  • 1954 L. Kessler Letter in Psychotic (#7) Jan. 8 page image

    The Ellisonian column would have been better id [sic] made longer.

  • 1971 N. Spinrad in Science Fiction Review (#42) Jan. 28/2 page image Norman Spinrad

    ‘I See A Man Sitting On A Chair And The Chair Is Biting His Leg’ (the kind of title I categorically refuse to type completely more than once in a review) combines the expected Sheckley grotesque humor with a certain Ellisonian nastiness in seamless fashion.

  • 1976 S. Wood The Harlan Ellison Show in Amor (#11) 30 Oct. 7 page image

    I stood looking at the bookshelves (stripped of anything Ellisonian, for autographing purposes) and pondered the Ellison Image.

  • 1981 M. Bishop Books in Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction Jan. 49/2 page image Michael Bishop

    Stylistically, these tales run the gamut from Lovecraftian ultraviolet….to Ellisonian anguish.

  • 1995 P. Di Filippo Books in Science Fiction Age Jan. 10/2 page image Paul Di Filippo

    A combination of MIT-level blueprint sophistication and Frank Paul gosh-wow panoramas, they succeed admirably in melding the Asimovian and Ellisonian halves of the project.

  • 2006 P. Di Filippo On Books in Asimov’s Science Fiction 135/2 page image Paul Di Filippo

    ‘The New Ecology’ speaks to the Ellisonian notion of strange new gods arising to fill vacant niches, but does so in a hopeful rather than despairing fashion.

  • 2015–16 P. Kincaid Recurrent: Kincaid in Short in Vector (#282) Winter 23/2 page image Paul Kincaid

    Of course he promotes her as a singular writer who ‘has her own voice, defies comparison, probes areas usually considered dangerous, and is as close to being the pure artist as any writer I have met’ (211), though it quickly becomes apparent that what he means by ‘pure artist’ is someone who doesn’t let herself be guided by the dictates of the market, so this is an Ellisonian circumlocution for ‘not widely published’.


Research requirements

antedating 1954

Earliest cite

Lyle Kessler, in a letter to the fanzine Psychotic

Research History
Suggested by Bill Mullins.

Last modified 2021-08-15 12:21:52
In the compilation of some entries, HDSF has drawn extensively on corresponding entries in OED.