  winning script, Harlan Ellison wrote that "Six months of my life  were spent in creating a dream the shape and color of which had  never been seen on television. The dream was called The Starlost  and between February and September of 1973 I watched it being  steadily turned into a nightmare." (Reference the Fawcett Books  novelization, "Phoenix Without Ashes", published 1975). Ellison  describes that Ben Bova and Douglas Trumbull also quit the series  after contributing to this first episode.