Harlan Ellison simply refused ever to be nailed down to a genre even while he revolutionized them. We all have heard the stories where Ellison suffers the ten-millionth reporter or critic or TV personality who is demanding to know what descriptive word comes before "writer" in this case. Sci-fi? Fantasy? Horror?

"What's wrong with just… writer?" Ellison says softly in his most cordial cobra hiss.

Well, what's wrong with it is that the semi-literate have feeble but tidy little minds filled with tidy little boxes, and no matter how much one struggles, the newspaper article (or review, or radio intro, or TV superimposed title) will read something akin to "sci-fi guy says his sci-fi stuff not sci-fi."

And the next step is for someone to stand up at a convention (sorry, a Con), grab the microphone, and shout "How come you're always saying in interviews and stuff that you're not just a science fiction writer? I'm proud to be associated with science fiction!" (Or horror. Or fantasy. Or… fill in the blank.)

The crowd roars, righteousness fills the air, hostility lies just under the surface as if you're a black at a Huey Newton rally who's been caught "passing" revealed as an oreo, or a Jew in the Warsaw ghetto who's been caught helping the Nazis with the railroad timetables, or worse yet, a Dead Head at a Grateful D. concert who's been found listening to Mozart on his Walkman.

I mean, you are at this guy's convention. (Sorry, "Con.")

How do you explain to the guy gripping the mike that there are a thousand pressures forcing a writer down narrower and narrower alleys agents trying to make you marketable and pulling their hair out because you insist on staying a jump ahead of a readership, publishers trying to shape you into a commodity, editors trying to get you to Chrissakes be consistent for once, booksellers complaining because your new SF novel just came out and it looks silly racked with your World Fantasy Award winning novel (which is really about Calcutta and has no fantasy in it), which, in turn, is next to your Sci-Fi opus and your fat horror novel (it is horror, isn't it?