VOX:

Harlan Ellison, the legendary, legendarily irascible speculative fiction writer who died this week at age 84, wrote the greatest episode of Star Trek ever made. And he hated it.

“The City on the Edge of Forever” aired on April 6, 1967, late in the original series’ first season, and won acclaim for capturing everything Star Trek could do at its best while suggesting weighty themes and emotional depths only hinted at in previous episodes. It won the Hugo Award for Best Dramatic Presentation and the Writers Guild of America Award for Best Episodic Drama on Television. Ellison accepted both. Neither salved his bitterness that the episode had been rewritten.

Ellison passed away last week and there are condolences and obituaries of and for him all over the web. But this story encapsulates Ellison for me – a brilliant writer who pissed off almost everyone he came in contact with.