Acclaimed science fiction writer Harlan Ellison also spent time as a TV critic

The A.V. Club

Ellison, who died last week at age 84, did some small screen work that included writing the beloved "The City on the Edge of Forever" episode of Star Trek. But as shown by his IMDB writing credits, he had a fractious relationship with writing for the small screen and the big screen -- a relationship that he got to delve into during a three-year stint in the 1970s as TV columnist for the Los Angeles Free Press. The essays, in which he'd critique everything from the host of teen music shows to newsmagazines, were compiled in the books The Glass Teat (1973) and The Other Glass Teat (1975). As William Hughes explains, Ellison was "an insider with an outsider’s soul, Ellison looked at the mass media and saw the most powerful informational weapon in the world being used primarily for the dissemination of mediocrity and meanness, and he pushed back against it with all his considerable talent, wit, and ire. He was pretty on-point about the Smothers Brothers, too."