Why Sci-Fi Author Harlan Ellison's Lawsuit Over A TV Show Involved Isaac Asimov

ABC

One could fill a book with stories of all the times famed sci-fi author Harlan Ellison was angry at Hollywood, or took legal action against a studio for stealing his ideas. The stories are notorious. Ellison was once so angry that a publisher printed cigarette ads in one of his books that he mailed them a dead gopher (a story confirmed by a fellow author). He sued James Cameron over "The Terminator," claiming Cameron ripped off an episode of "The Outer Limits" Ellison had written. He sued a studio when he saw the 2011 movie "In Time" for the same reason. And he had nothing good to say about writing the "Star Trek" episode "The City on the Edge of Forever." (/Film has written about the "Star Trek" controversies before.) 

Indeed, Ellison has little good to say about anything, ever. In a notable 1979 interview with the Comics Journal, the author raved about how Hollywood was out of original ideas, and that the common showbiz practice of regurgitating sci-fi premises or ideas is tantamount to rampant theft. Reading that interview will give the reader a great idea as to Ellison's contentious personality. 

That same interview mentioned a specific complaint Ellison had about the TV industry around the little-seen, one-season 1976 series "Future Cop." "Future Cop" starred Ernest Borgnine as a curmudgeonly Los Angeles police officer who, as part of a new tech experiment, is paired with a robot partner named John Haven (Michael J. Shannon). Ellison sued ABC over "Future Cop," claiming that the network ripped off the idea from a 1970 short story called "Brillo" that he wrote with Ben Bova.

ABC defended itself by saying that "Brillo" had, in spirit, already ripped off a noted Isaac Asimov ("Foundation") story called "The Caves of Steel." 

ABC

Ellison brought up the "Future Cop" lawsuit in the natural course of his raving, as he had just come from court on the matter. He doesn't name names, but he claimed he and Bova wrote a pitch packet based on the short story "Brillo," and in a roundabout way, that ended up as "Future Cop."

It should be noted that "Future Cop" was not a successful TV series in the least. It launched with a 1976 TV movie, but only ran for seven episodes throughout 1977. ABC then tried to re-skin "Future Cop" as "Cops and Robin" in 1978, but it didn't work, and "Future Cop" fell into obscurity. It's now a mere footnote for fans of failed television. 

But the fact that ABC even tried to rip off his idea was enough for Ellison to demand $3,000,000 in damages. For him, the plagiarism was as clear as day. Ellison said: 

"I spent an entire day today in deposition. I'm suing ABC-TV and Paramount for three million dollars. The lawsuit was filed two years ago; we're going to trial. We've got pre-trial hearings on October 25, we'll probably be in the courts in December. They ripped off my 'Brillo' story and teleplay, which I did for ABC, and was then shown to NBC, to a guy who is an executive at NBC, who then went to Paramount and put together 'Future Cop' and sold it back to the same people who had rejected 'Brillo' at ABC!"

But when Ellison heard the defense from ABC, he was even more outraged. ABC accused Ellison of plagiarizing Isaac Asimov. Needless to say, Ellison didn't take the accusation very well. 

ABC

Ellison was furious over the matter, but ABC was seemingly prepared to handle his complaints in court. As Ellison recounted it: 

"The sum total of their case is that 'Ellison's hands aren't clean, because Brillo' — the story I had in Analog, with Ben Bova — 'Ellison stole the idea from The Caves of Steel by Isaac Asimov.' Now, anyone who's ever read both of those damn things will know how berserk that whole thing is. I mean, even the suggestion that I would steal from Isaac, who has been one of my closest friends for 25 years ... I mean, you don't steal from your friends." 

"The Caves of Steel" was a novel that Asimov published in 1954 about a human cop named Elijah Bailey, who begins working with an android rookie cop named R. Olivaw. The plot is a film noir-style murder investigation, and similar stories were seen in "Future Cop." Asimov's book, however, was set in the distant future on an overpopulated Earth, while "Future Cop" takes place in the present. Bova and Ellison didn't steal from Asimov, but they also weren't the first to come up with the "cop with a robot partner" idea. Still, Ellison was horrified, adding:

"[I]f I were going to steal, I would really have to be some kind of a great schmuck to steal from a book like 'The Caves of Steel,' that everybody in the world has read, right?" 

It was later reported, in a 1980 issue of the Eugene Register-Guard, that Ellison won his case against ABC, although it was only to the tune of $337,000, and not the three million Ellison says he asked for.