There are some things in this life that one definitely does not do.

You don't make jokes about air piracy as you go through the metal detector at O'Hare Airport. You don't drive down to East L.A. and scream ¡Puto pendejo! at a Chicano street gang. You don't eat unidentifiable mushrooms while on a forest stroll. You don't tug on Superman's cape, you don't spit into the wind, you don't pull the mask off that old Lone Ranger, and you don't mess around with Jim.

While in Paris, during a sober interview on French television, because I was pissed as Parisian rudeness, I vouchsafed the opinion that the one thing the French know nothing about is love. You can tell the French that their cooking sucks, that their army is comprised of cowards, or that their admiration for Jerry Lewis proves they have no taste, but you do not tell them they don't understand love. There remains an active warrant for my arrest in France.

Similarly, one does not tell [science fiction] fans they have no sense of humor. That fans are clever beyond belief is Accepted Wisdom with which one does not tamper. To write an essay of this length, pointing out what nearly every sf professional knows but will never say aloud, is tantamount to suicide.

Harlan Ellison, Harlan Ellison's Watching (Installment 28)
Published originally in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, February 1988
Copyright © 1987 by The Kilimanjaro Corporation. All rights reserved.
Lyrics from "You Don't Mess Around With Jim" by Jim Croce.

Posted 7 December 1996

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