Harlan Ellison was born in Cleveland, Ohio, the son of a Jewish-American family. His family moved to Painesville, Ohio, but returned to Cleveland in 1949 after the death of his father. As a child, he performed in minstrel shows, and frequently ran away from home, taking odd jobs. He attended Ohio State University but was expelled after 18 months for hitting a professor who had denigrated his writing ability. He moved to New York City in 1955 to become a science fiction writer. Over the next two years, he published more than 100 short stories and articles. In 1957, he joined a street gang in Brooklyn as research for his novel Web of the City/Rumble and short story collection The Deadly Streets. In the late 1950s, he wrote erotic fiction under the pseudonym Cordwainer Bird. Later, he used the pseudonym for works that he felt were warped beyond his original intention by editors or producers.
He was drafted into the U.S. Army in 1957 and returned to New York in 1960, before moving to Chicago, to write for Rogue magazine and work as an editor for Regency Books. In 1962, he moved to California and began writing for Hollywood film …
