Polly Charms, the Sleeping Woman

The Final Adventure of Harlan in Avramland by his friend, Harlan Ellison

I loved him most because he redeemed me from almost a decade of ridicule, and he did it all-knowing. It wasn’t an accident; he knew what he was doing; and I was his pal from that moment to this, even though he’s gone.

I was a hyperkinetic fan when I was a teenager. Loud, and whacky, and far too cocky for my own good. So smartalecky that I made instant enemies, just because of the brashness, just because of the ebullient manner. That I had a good heart, and meant no harm… well, that didn’t much serve to beat the bull dog, as they say. I rubbed people the wrong way. Not at all the urbane, suave, and charming self I present today, midway in my sixties.

And it came to pass that one of those who found my manner rankling, even pawky, set about humiliating me… lynching me with my own hubris.

It was something like 1952. We all wanted to sell our first story. Me, Bob Silverberg, Terry Carr, Lee Hoffman, Joel Nydahl, Bill Venable, every fan in the game. We hungered to follow Bob Tucker and Bob Bloch and Arthur Clarke and John Brunner, and all those other one-time fans who had crossed over into the Golden Land of Professionalism. I was in high school in Cleveland. And I was writing stories that Algis Budrys was reading with dismay, as he tried by mail and occasional personal contact to turn me into something like a writer.

But I kept getting rejections. Not just from Campbell at (what was then, still) Astounding, and Horace Gold at Galaxy, but from everyone. I was an amateur, a callow callow amateur, and the best I could get was a scribbled note of pity from dear, now-gone Bea Mahaffey at Other Worlds. And at The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction the world-famous and incredibly astute Anthony Boucher was returning my pathetic efforts with little 4×5 bounce notes that read (as did one dated Sep 14 51)

Harlan Ellison――THE BEER CAMPAIGN――Sorry, but—nice idea… but once you’ve stated it, that’s all. You haven’t developed it into a story.

AB

Come by the house some time. I’ll show you the original. And its many companions.

Of all the markets available to writers in the genre in 1952, the most prestigious—if you had any literary aspirations at all—was F&SF. Boucher and McComas. Oh, be still my heart! But I kept being bounced. And out there somewhere… probably still alive and still smirking… someone who had it in for that smartmouth kid was setting me up.

I sent a story to Mr. Boucher. I think it was called “Monkey Business.” Can’t tell you if it had any merit or not, because I don’t even have a copy of it. Maybe someone out there has a copy, but I don’t. And I waited for the word. All drool and expectation, dumb kid, waiting for what I knew in my heart had to be another of the many many rejections.

And one day there came an envelope from wherever it was in California that Tony Boucher edited the magazine (did I mention I was in East High School in Cleveland?). And it was in that dove-gray typewriter face that Mr. Boucher used in his letters, the typeface I knew so well by then.

And I opened the envelope when I got home from school, and it wasn’t a rejection note. It was an acceptance. Tony Boucher was buying “Monkey Business” and he said he was pleased to be able to make another First Sale author, like Richard Matheson and Charles Beaumont and Daniel Keyes and Walter Miller and so many others.

I’ll spare you. I called Bob Silverberg first, because, well, never mind why because. Just because. And he was cool, but pleased for me. I’d beaten him to publication, it appeared, by a hair, because Bob was on the edge of professional status himself. And then I called everyone in the known universe.

Well, it was a hoax, of course. Someone had gotten hold of a sheet of official F&SF stationary, and s/he had done a very good job—or at least a serviceable job—of emulating Tony’s way with the typewriter, even to the strikeovers, and had sent it on to hang me out to dry. And I’d done the rest. To a fare-thee-well.

I spent the next ten years trying to sell to F&SF, even after Mick McComas and Tony were gone, and I couldn’t even sell a story to the magazine when my own agent, Robert P. Mills, one of the finest men who ever lived, was the editor. Nope. No way.

And then Avram became editor. In 1962 he bought my short fantasy “Paulie Charmed the Sleeping Woman”—yes, I know what you’re startledly thinking—yes, of course, he was running a pun on my title with his own—yes, he did it on purpose—we were joshing pals, remember—and he published it in the August 1962 issue. And when he sent me an advance copy of the issue (I was living in Los Angeles by that time), he wrote me a note and it said, “Remember ‘Monkey Business’? This should damp the sound, bad cess to them; and may they choke on their laughter.”

I have appeared in Fantasy & Science Fiction close on a hundred times. Some of my best work over more than three and a half decades. But no triumph in those pages was ever as sweet to me as the one put in print by my now-gone friend, Avram, who was brilliant beyond the telling; funny and witty and acerbic and cranky beyond the believing; who once purposely dropped and broke my Olympia typewriter on purpose, when I was on a stepladder handing it down to him prior to our trip to the WorldCon in Pittsburgh in 1960, because it was a German-made machine, and Avram took the Holocaust very seriously and wouldn’t go anywhere near a German-made product. But he rode all the way from Manhattan where we lived at that time, to Pittsburgh, with the top down on my Austin-Healy, wearing a jaunty sporting cap, singing at the top of his voice.

He is gone, and I miss him. And that. Is that.

My last adventure, this one, in Avramland.