Some events send ripples back through time. Two weeks ago, I paused to watch a few minutes of The City on the Edge of Forever, one of my favorite StarTrek episodes. “By chance,” a few days ago I started to read “I have no mouth but I must scream.” As I reached the end of the first page, the author, Harlan Ellison, died.

In his wake, many are talking about how that greatest StarTrek episode wasn’t really what he wrote, but toned down enough to enrage him. Writers and editors circle each other, inky knives drawn.

Many know that Ellison sued Cameron for ripping off an Outer Limits episode Ellison wrote, which, at least, inspired Terminator. I think they both ripped off a great Michael Rennie movie, Cyborg 2087, but you never hear about that.

In that ocean of life, in that bay of human existence, in that puddle of literature, that drip is Ellison. He had to die now for the sake of the timeline.