The only source for this (so far) is Adam-Troy Castro’s Facebook feed. Harlan Ellison, the groundbreaking writer, critic, and editor, has had a stroke. He’s reportedly suffering some right-side paralysis and is recovering in hospital.

Ellison first gained attention with Memos From Purgatory, a memoir of his time running with a New York City street gang while researching his novel Web of the City. He’s produced dozens of books and hundreds of short stories since then, including editing the revolutionary SF anthologies Dangerous Visions and Again, Dangerous Visions which opened up the sf field to the cultural and literary influences of the 1960s.

Ellison has also been a prolific screenwriter for tv and movies. He wrote the Hugo-winning episode of the original Star Trek, “City on the Edge of Forever”. His most recent tv gig was as creative consultant for Babylon 5.

He’s a legendarily prickly individual, known especially for protracted guerilla wars with studios and anyone he felt was diluting his creative vision.

The above is written mostly from memory, as my library of Ellisonia is in storage 8 time zones away. But he was one of the formative writers of my misspent youth. I devoured the (Ace? DAW? Can’t remember.) multivolume reissue of his early works when I was in junior high.