The TV series was called "The Starlost", about a multi-generation colony ship that's apparently on auto-pilot. Harlan took the pilot episode "Phoenix without Ashes" and wrote it into a novel (the TV series renamed the episode "A New Beginning"). At the back of the novel is an essay by Ellison about his troubles with the TV producers. They were spending large amounts of budget to build a control room (the premise is the cast is looking for the control room, when they find it, end of story), they thought the 'back-up controls' made the ship back up, they gave the premise to a high school writing class and then had a contest to produce scripts for the show, etc. It's an interesting read.
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