Ellison Wonderland

You may be looking for the 1974 essay by Sharon Ferraro called Ellison Wonderland: A View from Trekland.

Fanwork
Title:	Ellison Wonderland
Creator:	Paula Smith
Date(s):	1982
Medium:	print
Fandom:	Starsky & Hutch and Harlan Ellison
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Ellison Wonderland is a long meta poem by Paula Smith. It has illos by Gordon Carleton.

The poem is a RPF fusion with Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's poem "Paul Revere's Ride." The subject is Starsky & Hutch and Harlan Ellison and so much more.

It was printed in Strange Justice.

Some Topics Mentioned and Discussed

• Starsky & Hutch and the actors who portrayed them
• Harlan Ellison, he of the undead
• supernatural elements
• a uterus and stillbirths
• science fiction
• selling one's soul to network television/being trapped in a television show, which is a nod to Paul Michael Glaser's battles with his contract
• a sly pun on Aaron Spelling, the producer of Starsky & Hutch

Excerpts

'Twas in the winter of '75;

Hardly a fan is not alive

Who remembers that pilot, remembers the year.

But few know the truth of the men they revere.

In a section of L.A. our heroes existed.

Two cops on municipal payroll subsisted

(I don't mean the actors, for Glaser and David SoulSoul

Were themselves out there looking for some juicy role).

But Starsky and Hutchinson really did breathe

On this earth, paid their taxes and bills, and they'd sheathe

Real guns in their holsters, and kissed whom they kissed.

That's the gist of their lives; to their fate now, please list'

The portal was low, only four feet in height.

Both the men had to stoop; when they turned round, the bright

Sourceless glare showed the panel elaborately carved

By an intelligence profound, or a humanity starved:

Blocks and knobs, squares and eyes, in a logic confusing.

Hearing Starsky gasp. Hutch turned around, though refusing

To credit his eyes for the sight they supplied.

For it was a huge globe about two meters wide.

And a murky mist swirled round a body inside.

Though full grown, from its stomach an umbilicus tied

The man-fetus to membraneous walls. With one stride

Hutch approached the oblivious child. The globe's skin

Was like flesh, soft and warm, somewhat pliant, akin

Unto living glass—were such a thing in this world.

A movement within made Hutch peer; there uncurled

The bare, bearded adult babe.

It looked like someone Too familiar...

It hit him. There lay Ellison.

Starsky sighed. "Kinda seems like you'd tire of it all.

Don'cha find life repeats on you?" "Nope, life's a ball.

Always women to love, always art to enjoy;

I've got stories to tell, enemies to annoy.

Ah, but do I detect some ennui in you. Jack?

Is policing a bore, is L.A. hard to hack?

Would you like to get loose of the same old routine?"

"I'd just like to get loose," put in Hutch, unserene.

Harlan smiled a dread smile with one half of his face.

"Well, your whim's my command," as he unzipped a case.

Took a typewriter out. "Now your life will have reason.

No meaningless pain, and you'll relive each season

In summer again. I can't change the past.

But I can set the future to something steadfast.

Because I've got the power to make timelines budge.

To effect holy justice, or settle a grudge.

As I wrote Watergate in revenge on the Spiros,

So I write my last script for the Teat — fuck you Heroes!

And a shuddering change fell on Starsky and Hutch,

Being shrunken and flattened, and pressed by the touch

Of a blackened glass screen. Claustrophobic, unsure

Of the mad scrivener's vengeance, they heard a soft whirr-

Jazzy music blared up in the background; a street

Formed around them, truncated, chopped off, incomplete;

Their beard stubble was gone instantaneously.

And their badges morphosed from "L.A." to "B.C."

An error in Spelling Starsky cried, "God, Hutch, no!"

He shivered. "We're stuck in a TV cop show!"

And the grin in the sky faded out like a cat's

As their epitaph loomed there:

"HCTUH & YKSRATS"

The Poem

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