Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.written
From: hoey@pooh.tec.army.mil (Dan Hoey)
Date: 1995/06/16
Subject: Re: Harlan Ellison's Xenogenesis

Eric Oppen (cc...@cleveland.Freenet.Edu) wrote:
: As far as I can recall, it was an article he wrote that came out
: more than five years ago in _Isaac Asimov's SF Magazine._

August, 1990, actually.  (No, not 1989).  It's mostly from his July,
1984 Guest of Honor speech to Westercon.

: The whole thing was about
: what assholes and sociopaths a small percentage of fans were, with horror
: stories from him as well as other authors he had written to.

: The title, "Xenogenesis" referred to the benign nature of ALMOST ALL fen,
: who manage somehow to produce this group of cretins who do not resemble
: them at all.

Sadly, I believe you got the point I wish he had made, rather than the
point he really did make. He ended his speech:

  [ Stuff about someone printing T-shirts that say "50 SHORT
  YEARS OF HARLAN ELLISON" without offering him a royalty. ]

  [ Observing that it mocks his height, and people wearing it
  around him ], and not one of you thinks the subject of the T-shirt
  might be hurt by such an insensitive act.  One _must_ assume none
  of you gave it a consideration, because the alternative is the
  contemplation of someone who throws warm vomit.

  And the subject of the T-shirt's logo only smiles as he signs
  your autograph, appearing properly slavishly grateful for your
  attention, and the fifty-year-old man says nothing.

  But like George Alec Effinger and Steven King and David
  Gerrold and Tim Kirk and many, many others who asked that their
  names not be mentioned . . . the short fifty-year-old man will
  resist more and more ever going among such people.

  Because they are not kind.  And one need not put up with
  unkindness from those who pretend to be all of the same family of
  noble dreamers, not when there are so many total strangers in the
  world who will be beastly without reason.

  Children of our dreams, so many of you have said.  Oh, how I
  was moved by what you wrote; oh, how you turned my life around;
  oh, how much this or that story meant to me when I was lonely and
  desperate.  Children of our dreams.

  Xenogenesis.

  The children do not resemble the parents.

  And many of you wonder why some of those literary parents
  think positively of the concept that birth control might be made
  retroactive.

So I think he's complaining that the "noble dreamers" who _write_ SF
have attracted fandom, which he finds predominantly rude and boorish.

I had more sympathy for this before I heard the tidbit that until he
sprung this on the audience at the end of a long speech about vomit-
throwers, he never said one word about disliking the shirt.  It's
reported he'd even complimented someone wearing it, saying it was
a cute gag.  Then he suddenly calls them insensitive xenogenes, in
public, while they were wearing the shirts, just to make a point.
If that isn't insensitive abuse, I don't know what is.

I might remark on how the general adulation of mostly good-hearted fen
has inadvertently fed the malignant ego of a writer who delights in
turning their admiration to insults, and their good humor to
embarrassment.  Now that's xenogenesis.

I'm tempted to see if I can get a shirt printed that says "61 YEARS OF
PETTY VINDICTIVENESS" and wear it to the NASFiC.

Dan Hoey
Hoey@AIC.NRL.Navy.Mil