CLEVELAND, Ohio - It all started in "The Twilight Zone." That land of shadow and substance is where I met Harlan Ellison, the much-celebrated, notoriously outspoken writer from Cleveland.

Thirty-three years ago, a CBS publicist asked if I wanted to interview anyone connected with the network's revival of the beloved anthology series. I didn't have to think twice. Harlan Ellison had been hired as the creative consultant on the show, and, by then, I had read acres of Ellison.

Cleveland native Harlan Ellison is depicted on the cover of his collection of essays "An Edge in My Voice."

I had read his landmark TV criticism collected in the volumes "The Glass Teat" and "The Other Glass Teat." I had read his stunning short stories in such books as "Ellison Wonderland," "Strange Wine" and "Shatterday." And I had gloried in his work for television, which included two of the best episodes of "The Outer Limits" ("Demon With a Glass Hand" and "Soldier") and what may be the best episode of the original "Star Trek" series, "City on the Edge of Forever."

But I also had read of Ellison interviews that had turned into close encounters of the third-degree kind. I had done my homework. I was well-prepared. Nothing, however, would completely dispel the gnawing apprehension . . . nothing that is, except Harlan himself.

"One ground rule," he said before I asked the first question. The homework was about to pay off.

"I can't call you a science-fiction writer," I said matter-of-factly.

"God bless you," the Cleveland native said.

"You don't believe in God," I told him, knowing he was an atheist.

"That's how much I mean it," he said with the timing and delivery of a stand-up comedian.

And that was the start of an ongoing 33-year conversation and friendship, terminated only by his death Thursday at age 84.

It wasn't that Harlan wasn't proud of writing landmark science fiction, by the way. He loved the genre and fought passionately to elevate it.

He was many kinds of writer, however, and he hated having the label reduced to three words placed before his name: science-fiction writer. And he'd go to war over that, or many a lesser annoyance.

Look, I know Harlan could be contentious, controversial and combative. I know that many only saw the angry and challenging side. Harlan would be the last to want things sugarcoated and softened by a little thing like death.

He was the first to say he "was a hard pill to swallow." In the excellent 2008 documentary about him, "Dreams With Sharp Teeth," he allowed that he had great stories to tell and was fabulous company over dinner. "But if you had to live with me 24-7, you'd put a gun either in your mouth or my mouth," he said.

The flip side to all of those angry rants was that Harlan had an incredibly sweet, almost childlike side, as well (a temperamental child, perhaps, but a child nonetheless). He was a loyal, caring and devoted friend to a wide range of people.

We were friends for 33 years, yet that wasn't at all an impressive run in the annals of Ellison friendships. There were many more people who were friends with him for many more years.

If he thought he hurt your feelings, he would brood about it, finally having to ask, "Are we square?" We always were.

Neil Gaiman, a writer with his own impressive pile of fantasy credits, says in "Dreams With Sharp Teeth" how much he loved taking people to Harlan's amazingly eccentric house in the hills of Sherman Oaks, California, dubbed Ellison Wonderland and the Lost Aztec Temple of Mars. Showing someone that house was like seeing it again for the first time.

Exactly right. But the true magic of the house was the warmth generated by its occupants, Harlan and his wife, Susan. She was the one who, in the words of the late Robin Williams, quieted his demons. They were married for 32 years.

During one visit to the house, Harlan showed me the unedited version of the yet-unreleased "Dreams With Sharp Teeth." We reached a point in the film where Gaiman remarked on how Harlan was, at the same time, one of the greatest writers of the 20th century and "an alternately impish and furious" 11-year-old.

I became aware of Harlan impishly and furiously pounding the arm of his chair, repeating, "I'm 7. I'm 7." When I finally turned and asked him what he was mumbling, he said, "I'm 7. He's got it wrong. I'm 7 years old."

Great artists often are in touch with their inner child. Harlan not only was in touch with that child, he could tell you the age of that child. And it was the hurt of being bullied as a child that made him so sensitive to slights or people not taking him seriously.

Perhaps that's why he had a particular attraction to the character of Pinocchio. Once, when my hair had taken on a proper degree of white and I arrived at his home in a particularly wind-blown condition, he greeted me by yelling, "Geppetto!" I yelled, "Pinocchio!" And we fell into the usual embrace, which he professed to hate.

The universe rewarded me twice: first with Harlan Ellison's writing, then with his friendship. The writing will endure. But I sure miss my friend.

The last conversation was a few weeks ago. Harlan called, and I got the strong impression he was saying goodbye. So one of the last things I said to him was, "I know you hate this, but too bad, I'm giving you a hug, even if it is long-distance."

On Thursday, I learned he died in his sleep, and I was reminded of what Vice President Thomas R. Marshall had said when Theodore Roosevelt died in his sleep in 1919: "Death had to take him sleeping, for if Roosevelt had been awake, there would have been a fight." That was Harlan. That was the Harlan Ellison who said, "We live to say 'No!' to death."