After two days of cannons to the left and cannons to the right volleying and thundering about the presence of Larry Correia and Vox Day on the Hugo ballot, if you were asked to list the writers who have not taken sides how likely is it that you’d write down the name of the left’s most contentious paladin, Harlan Ellison?

Of course you wouldn’t – Harlan once devoted a Sci-Fi Buzz commentary to roasting Gardner Dozois for allegedly using the internet to ask Hugo voters to nominate Asimov’s stories. Why would he hold back against these two guys?

But he has. Harlan has become a bit more strategic, declining to let his friends and colleagues rope him into a fight with people whose names he didn’t even know til now.

Instead, Ellison said on his forum —

I dunno. I report what is conveyed to me. It ain’t my fight, and if wannabes and the entrenched desire to unfurl banners and lob chain-link cannonballs at one another…heh heh heh…I’m a SFWA Grand Master with 4 Writers Guild Best awards, 102 books, 81/2 Hugos, 5 Nebulas, 2 Edgars and more junk metal and Lucite awards than you could cram into ten cells of a psycho ward…(have you noticed, even at age buttin’up’to 80, I don’t do humility very well)…if there’s a fight, and Big Writers think “Vox Day” is not playing fair, this is a reasoned, smart, informed and rational podium, this site, and I urge strongarm demand cozen and inveigle one and all, including the eye of the storm him/or/herself (hashtag-pseudonyms are such bullshit) to avail themselves of this forum.

While I don’t know what Vox Day has to gain by posting comments there, Harlan has distinguished himself from the pack by extending the invitation.

Update 04/22/2014: Day has written to Ellison about the controvery — http://www.harlanellison.com/heboard/unca.php (see April 22 — Ellison’s forum keeps scrolling, and does not provide links to specific comments.)