Harlan Ellison wrote a novella in 1993 titled Mefisto in Onyx. Ellison always had some great titles, along with a unique voice, plus his well-known ornery behavior and outspoken personality. Regardless, his friends say he was a great guy. Isn’t that always the way?

I remember someone once trying to sum up Ellison’s legacy in a single sentence. It inspired me to make my own attempt at the feat…

“Harlan Ellison is almost as important to the art of storytelling as he is to himself.”

Whether or not Ellison was that bad, or if it was an act, or a bit of both, or he simply had no patience to suffer fools, I’m not one to say. I am not an Ellison expert. I do have a copy of his essential works. I believe I read some sort of biography about him at some point, and I saw the Ellison documentary, Dreams With Sharp Teeth.

Five things from the documentary stuck out to me:

— Ellison didn’t believe in God.

— Ellison apparently used a typewriter. Considering the richness of his voice, to write at that level without the revision ease of a word processor is a big deal.

— One time Ellison had Neil Gaiman come over to his house and distract an editor while Ellison finished a story that was overdue. This struck me because it seemed like Ellison wanted to try living out a plot from an old-time comedy short.

— Ellison wanted people who disagreed with him politically to die.

— Ellison was out eating with friends and having dessert. There was something about the way he ate his dessert that made me think Ellison had a sweet tooth.

Interesting guy. Interesting writer. While he has more famous works, whenever I think of Ellison, the first story that comes to mind is Mefisto In Onyx. I first read it in college. It was a slim, oddly shaped book. I remember getting it from the library, bringing it back to my apartment on a Friday afternoon and flopping down to read it.

The plot of Mefisto in Onyx is similar to the Denzel Washington movie, Fallen, so much so that it is surprising Ellison never brought it up. He was not shy about calling out films he believed were inspired by his works, like Terminator.

Mefisto in Onyx is about telepath who visits a serial killer on death row. The serial killer is also a telepath who can jump into the bodies of other people.

Rereading the story, I was struck by how it functions. The story lives solely on the strength of Ellison’s voice. From a plot and structure standpoint, there is really nothing to the story at all. If I had to map it out, Mefisto In Onyx breaks down like this…

80 percent first act
10 percent second act
10 percent third act

Another way to break it down would be like this…

70 percent introduction
10 percent first act
10 percent second act
5 percent third act
5 percent climax

And a large chunk of everything is exposition.

It almost seems like Ellison wrote the first part of Mefisto In Onyx with loving care and then jotted off the rest to meet a deadline.

The first 70 percent of Mefisto In Onyx is a conversation between two characters, yet Ellison’s voice is so powerful he can pull it off. Most of the conversation is explaining the history of the characters, along with a request.

The telepath then jaunts off to prison and speaks to the serial killer. Next, the story glosses over more than a year in time and lurches right into the end, summing up the main character’s journey of realization, which could have been pretty dramatic if explored, in a couple of paragraphs and then, boom, the end. The villain is dispatched with nary a hitch.

Now that I think about it, Dean Koontz had a short story with a similar premise, where a hero and villain with identical special talents face off, called Hardshell. I would say Hardshell is more satisfying structurally. It is all about confrontation rather than exposition. Yet, Mefisto in Onyx is more satisfying from a style standpoint because of Ellison’s voice.

At the end of the day, it brings up the age-old question. If a nobody writer submitted Mefisto In Onyx to a publisher, would it have gotten published, or would it have been rejected with a note saying, “all first act, ending too rushed. Not for us. Sorry.”

Who knows…

Was Ellison simply in a hurry with Mefisto In Onyx or was it genius to structure it the way he did? Did he recognize that the most important part of his story was the beginning, and an ending was only needed to justify that beginning? Did he believe that spending any real time in a second act would ruin whatever surprise he was trying to create with the climax?

I have no answer to those questions either. Analyzing Mefisto In Onyx is simply an exercise in looking at how stories work and, hopefully, learning lessons in crafting one’s own tales. Mefisto In Onyx gives one perspective on when they might want to stick to traditional structure or break traditional structure.

To say it like Ellison, one has to decide if such things will make their story as interesting as listening to an unplugged radio, as captivating as a beige station wagon, as arresting as a retired police office, and so on and so forth.

Now, where is my dessert?