Harlan Ellison, Frequent Jeopardy! Flyer

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JeopardyIt’s reliably reported on Harlan Ellison’s forum that he was featured as a Jeopardy! game show answer on July 21. According to Brian Phillips it was an answer worth $2,000:

The answer was something along the lines of, “An evil supercomputer named AM features in Harlan Ellison’s story, “I Have No Mouth, And I Must ____”

And that’s good for business —

While trying to find a link to that for the Scroll, I discovered the J-Archive has unexplained gaps. One of the missing shows is July 21.

In the meantime, I found nine other times that Harlan Ellison factored into a Jeopardy! answer. It’s interesting that almost all of them are about the same two works.

harlan with bird

#3196, aired 1998-06-22 — AUTHOR, AUTHOR $800: Last name shared by “Invisible Man” author Ralph & “A Boy and His Dog” author Harlan

  • Ellison

#4208, aired 2002-12-11 — PEN NAMES $1600: “I have no mouth, and I must scream” that this science fiction writer has been Jay Solo & Paul Merchant

  • Harlan Ellison

#5182, aired 2007-03-06 — AT THE MOVIES $1200: Don Johnson & a talking pooch were the stars of this 1975 film based on a Harlan Ellison story

  • A Boy and His Dog

#5544, aired 2008-10-16 — COMPLETE THE HUGO AWARD-WINNING TITLE $1600: 1968: “I Have No Mouth, and I Must _____ ” by Harlan Ellison

  • Scream

#5611, aired 2009-01-19 — SCIENCE FICTION $600: This 1969 novella by Harlan Ellison tells the story of Blood, a telepathic canine who teaches his master to read

  • A Boy and His Dog

#5815, aired 2009-12-18 — LITERARY “EL” MEN $1200: Surname of authors Ralph & Harlan

  • Ellison

#6608, aired 2013-05-15 — NOVELLAS $800: Harlan Ellison won a Best Novella Nebula Award for his story about “a boy” & his intelligence-enhanced this

  • a dog

#6969, aired 2014-12-25 — NOT TO BE CONFUSED $200: Harlan Ellison is a sci-fi writer; he is the founder & CEO of Oracle

  • Larry Ellison

About that last one — knowing how Ellison dislikes being tagged “a sci-fi writer” (generally, and that he particularly loathes the term “sci-fi”) I visualize him flinging a shoe at the TV screen. But that’s my imagination at work, he probably never watches at all…

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5 thoughts on “Harlan Ellison, Frequent Jeopardy! Flyer”

  1. J! Archives are maintained by an all volunteer crew, so the recent games are sometimes spotty based on who was assigned to enter them and how busy their daily lives are.

  2. I can confirm the question and answer appeared. My housemate is a Jeapardy addict, and I saw that one. If I remember correctly, none of the contestants got the answer. (I did, of course.)

  5. I found an error in his recent non fiction book where he wrote about “Tuckerising” and how it cost him money. It was over Judith Merrill, and he wrote that Merrill was once married to Theodore Sturgeon. I always thought they were joined at the hip for a few seasons.

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