“In the future, your dog will tell you how to survive.”

Harlan Ellison, the strikingly original — and some might add bizarre, combative, and controversial — sci-fi writer whose credits included Star Trek and many more dozens of TV shows and screenplays, died yesterday at the age of 84.

With his extremely provocative Stephen King meets Disney-style, Ellison was also one of the early innovators of the “talking dog” movie, as seen below in the 1975 apocalyptic cult classic, A Boy and His Dog, which starred a young Don Johnson.