That's putting it mildly. I recall reading an article by him about his experience with City on the Edge of Forever, and boy did he have a lot of 30 year old white-hot grudges.

Interestingly, it wasn't only Roddenberry/network rewrites that bugged him. He could almost accept that was part of the deal with TV writing. What put it over the edge was Shatner counting lines, and demanding that he get more -- he was the _star_ after all.

Ellison is prickly to the say the least.

In the mid-90s he appeared on an NPR talk show in Boston. He'd told the production assistant not to say he wrote "science fiction", but "speculative fiction".

So in the opening, the host says "Today we have Harlan Ellison.... a science fiction writer who doesn't like to be called a science fiction writer. A writer who... a writer who is taking off his headset and walking out of the booth? [sound of door slam]. A writer who has apparently just changed his mind about being with us today. Er, we'll be right back..."

Ellison did indeed walk straight out of the studio. The host came back and did a pretty good show with callers only.