The Most Dangerous Science Fiction Writer: Harlan Ellison 'Greatest Hits'  

PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE COMMENTING: As I mentioned on the Community Page, I am talking a break from YT for a week, so I will not be responding to comments for some time unless there are exceptional circumstances. Thanks for your views.

He fomented whatever anti-establishment feelings I had as a teen, and he also got me into short form material. I read pretty much everything he wrote, both fiction and non. Thanks for promoting this writer to new readers.

My Top 5 from this collection: 1. I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream. 2. "Repent, Harlequin," Said the Tiktokman 3. Jeffty is Five 4. Chatting With Anubis 5. How Interesting: A Tiny Man

SMDH @40:00 picturing the sheer hubris required for someone to assume they have authority to alter the words of a dead man or superimpose their own moral outlook as the leading interpretation of his text (while profiting from it), is enough to make one dry heave in disgust.

Wasn't expecting this. I almost forgot there'd be a fresh video today Harlan Ellison. Lovely. Thank you again. This is great! Brilliant closing comments, i agree wholeheartedly.

It’s disgusting the way they treat dead authors (Dahl’s posthumous censorship weighs heavily on me), but even the living ones get screwed over. R.L.Stine had his Goosebumps and Scare Street books changed and his publisher didn’t even bother to tell him…he had to find out from his fans…

They say opposites attract. Ellison's personality could not be more different from my own. He was tenacious, aggressive, confident, driven, and headstrong. I've never been any of those things but I was so attracted to his writing as a teenager that I consumed everything I could get my hands on. He has been described as an arrogant asshole, but I feel like he had a burning desire to inspire a better society and call out the bullshit limiting our growth as human beings.

I just finished this collection and it was my first intro to Harlan Ellison. There were five that really stood out to me.

He was a serious ass-kicker. Not only in his personal life, but also in his writing. He demanded no mercy and he gave none. What you read is what you got.

Oh dear, there goes my productive morning. . .

Thanks. Thoroughly enjoyable watch/listen. I’ll be looking to buy this, had no idea it was released. Totally agree on the trigger warnings.

Lovely to see this discussion of Ellison from someone who knows. In the US, Ellison is famous for his writings, his association with Twilight Zone and Star Trek and giving outrageous interviews.

Good review. I’ve been taking notes on this book after buying it last week. I’ve been collecting his books for 40 years and he’s been a huge part of my life. I was so excited about this book. I think the selection is a sensible one, given how subjective any selection could be. I’ll be doing my own video on this in July. It’s great and rare to have a new Ellison book over here!

I HAVE NO MOUTH...IS A CULT LEVEL STORY! FABULOUS!

Ellison was the writer who made me a science fiction freak. I can't imagine kids today being allowed to read his works the way I did. Thanks for talking about him: he's still dangerous, and is still my hero.

I have a lot of Ellison books already but I’ll buy this one just to show my support for keeping authors like Ellison in print. Great cover too.

They actually made a computer game 30 years ago based on I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream. I didn't know about it until years later but purchased it right away. Unfortunately, due to it being an older game it struggled to run so I never was able to play it all the way through. It did seem like it was an honest attempt to capture the concepts of the story.

I first heard of Ellison as a teenager in the 90s due to the game adaptation of "I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream"; that game is possibly why the story has become increasingly famous. It was extremely hard to find any Ellison books when I was younger; most of what I've read by him are ebook editions that were released in the 2010s. One of those ebooks was a Vic and Blood collection. I wonder if "A Boy and His Dog" is being saved up for a new edition of that.

Agreed on the trigger warnings. Slippery slope that. It wont be long before changing the text is seen as good thing for the same reasons - it gets it into schools, more people will read them etc etc. Great vid as always - Cheers.

Great review! This book arrived through my door yesterday and I'm really enjoying the stories in it. Agree with your comments on trigger warnings here. Given the author it seems very out of place!

Describing Ellison as 'a difficult character' is a bit like describing Arthur C. Clarke as 'slightly interested in the diverting company of striplings.'

H. E. was the absolute best!

Classic! Trade paperbook looks absolutely stunning

An excellent Review of Harlan's book,It's been a long time coming.Agree wholeheartedly with your comments regarding pros and cons.Context is everything.However any collection by this Noted Writer is to be Welcomed,warts and all. Leave out the warnings no mature person needs them! are you listening Herald classics/Union square/Susan Ellison Foundation and JMS

Sounds really interesting - have ordered. Thanks for your insight, very much appreciated !

I was going to buy this book in preparation for the release of The Last Dangerous Visions later this year. But I'm a tad iffy now because of the trigger warnings/caveats. I guess Straczsynki had to compromise with the publisher, but Ellison would have blown a gasket about that if he were still alive.

Thank you for the great video! Very interesting and enjoyed learning about Ellison, whom I know virtually nothing about. Should be a nice, warm Saturday here in London for a change and I plan to get down to a Waterstones to pick this book up! EDIT: So I did go to Waterstones and bought the Ellison book and Alien Clay by Tchaikovsky. The clerk was friendly and started talking to me at-length about Tchaikovsky and Children of Time, etc. which was fine, no problem there, but it was notable to me that he did not say a single, solitary word, not even a peep, about the Ellison collection. I just thought it was amusing and made me wonder what Steve would have thought! It was a big Waterstones, though, not a mom-and-pop local bookshop.

Thank you for this video- I'm going to try the short stories out. Currently reading PKD's short stories. I was wandering if you could do a video about your reading habits ( when, where you read, what influences your reading choices and also a bit of a timeline ( what you used to read in the past etc). I have been initially drawn to your channel because I could see your love of books and reading and that resonated with me 😊

First read Ellison in an Ace Double in 1960. Dangerous Visions is one of the great anthologies.

I'd been looking for Ellison's books for so long, and to my disbelief last month I came across The Beast that shouted Love in a fairly new (opened about a year ago) used bookstore here in Athens. I didn't even look at the price, I just grabbed it immediately. (it was 12 euro) It is the same edition that you showed in your video a year or so ago. Good stuff! EDIT: The really nice thing is there is little overlap between that book and this new one, so I can get the new one without feeling bad for paying for stories I already have, which is something that always annoys me, hah. It feels like buying half a book, if you know what I mean!

This is a great video by the way. I would myself however tell people to seek out a copy of Deathbird Stories, particularly if they can get an old Pan edition with its beautiful wraparound blue-silver cover. I was recovering in hospital from a lung operation and those stories, for all their gloom and murkiness, helped me get by. Seriously one of the best collections I’ve read by any author in any genre.

"Approaching Oblivion: Road-signs on the Treadmill Toward Tomorrow" One of my all time favorite tittles / metaphors.

Great review and thanks for the head's-up about the vacuous trigger warnings. As far as I'm concerned, those trigger warnings are an insult to the reader and they can stick those warnings up their asses. I will not be purchasing this publication because of this. Anyway, I think I have most of those stories in other collections and would much rather hunt down older collections that feature these stories rather than contribute financially to a publisher who pulls this kind of nonsense.

Excellent! This is just what I have been waiting for: a detailed review of Ellison by someone who actually knows what they're talking about! I'm glad you dealt with the "trigger warning" issue, which is just... what can one say? Are they serious??? "If you want to read the great works of literature, from Homer to Shakespeare to Cervantes, you cannot be afraid of words!" is very well put. I also can't believe that they got rid of the computer language in "I Have No Mouth..." There is no doubt that Ellison would have hated that. While it is great to think that more people can now discover Ellison's stories, I very much share your concerns about creeping censorship, often driven by identity politics. I strongly suspect that this is why they have left out "A Boy and His Dog".

Terminator was also inspired by “Demon With a Glass Hand.” One of his Earth-Kyben war stories. Great review, I’m curious about this new book. “Paladin of the Lost Hour,” Twilight Zone, is on RU-vid. Director is an Alan Smithee clause. There’s a great conversation on RU-vid between Silverberg and Ellison on a radio show “Robert Silverberg interview” is the title. It’s very entertaining.

Some comments on the Audio-Book version from the library that I consumed: 1- STRANGELY, it differs from the Audible version! The version on CD, like the one from the Library, has more of Harlan reading than professional readers. The Audible version (for example) has a different reader on "How's the Nightlife on Cisalda?" Probably because the recording of Harlan, live at what was probably a college, is of poor technical quality, but is AMAZINGLY performed. 2- Harlan's style fairly jumps off of the page, but is rarely captured by professional readers. NOBODY reads an Ellison story as well as Harlan did. These readers seem more carefully selected here than usual, do a better job, and seem selected, in part, for racial/gender sensitivity to stories written in a clear voice other than HE's own. That being said, "I'm Looking for Kadak" has to be played on at least 1.5X speed to get the performance authentically. It should sound more like Jackie Mason than it does if you don't know who Jackie Mason is. Seriously. No H8 3- It Contains 2 Bonus Tracks and some story commentary from Harlan that were from the original recordings. BONUS! - "Shattered Like a Glass Goblin" - “The Prowler in the City at the Edge of the World” 4- The producers of hard copy Audiobooks have created industry lows that are so unacceptable that they MUST be the norm for audio books. : No "contents" list on the box, no titles on the discs, no insert with contents/ lists, no track listings on the discs when loaded into a computers media player. Just 350 3 minute tracks across 14 discs - hope you bought a copy of the book to find your way through!

Im just reading Dangerous Visions! 😃

His stories are not forgettable...shock is not the word, I think he traumatizes the reader. I remember reading a short story he published in a science fiction magazine, I think it was Analogue about an alien invasion that attacked the sexual organs.

Brilliant and heartfelt look at a great writer and a good man. I am sad to see the trigger warnings on his book. I think Harlan would have had them taken out - or do not publish the book. Unfortunately he is dead so he can not do anything about it. Quite convenient for the publisher. Still and all it is a joy to see his stories reprinted for a new generation of readers. You did a find video, thank you.

Deathbird Stories and Hard Candy are on the short list of fiction that blew my mind open when I was young. The policing of language is an authoritarian impulse that should be resisted, thanks for standing up for artistic freedom.

I don't quite know why, but my fav is The Beast That Shouted Love At The Heart Of The World. It left me speechless but I couldn't stop reading. He certainly was a crusty cantankerous curmudgeon, and it was his right to be. Nice take, Stephen, an excellent subject.

Stephen - it’s worth mentioning that more recent research into the Kitty Genovese case has called into question most of that original reporting. Even at the time, there were, apparently, questions about the newspaper story but its author was reputable enough that he brushed them off.

I don't think the warning is there so much for the "bad words" as some folk see them, as for the use of what is seen now as racist accents and characterizations. Accusations from a suburban middle class that does not interact with the genuinely different and exotic in any way in their safe, untraveled lives - let alone doing so in the 1960's or earlier. It really springs out when listening to the Audio book and Ellison's Twain like ear for accent and patois (to lend verisimilitude and characterizations to conversations) can be heard. I can see how these sections would scan as "racialized" to the uninformed, inexperienced ears of those coming from a place of comfort and cultural homogeneity . And the Rape scenes are (intentionally) a bit rough. I too would argue against the change in computer printouts to their translations. . . but I *get it* . We are SO FAR removed from punchcard programming that almost no reader under 40 would get what the image in the text is supposed to be representing, let alone that it is something that they could look up and translate. It takes one out of the story, in one way, as stated, and in another: Who would believe in a Sky-Net like computer that can do ANYTHING running on

When wokeness was just starting to get a foothold, H.E. was having none of it. Like an old lion, he was constantly being nipped at by the endless packs of hyenas that came after him, mostly kids in their twenties, fresh out of university indoctrination. But he always stood his ground. No one could give a tongue-lashing like Ellison. The weird thing is, just about everyone who attacked him, had never read a word he'd written. They would always snidely refer to him as a "Star Trek" writer. Even though, butchered as it was, his City on the Edge of Forever stands as one of the greatest ST episodes. I own a first ed. of Shatterday, hardbound. It was one of my greatest treasures. I also own the orig MF&SF in which "Jefty is Five" is published; another treasure. I'm not sure what the Deathrealm award is. However, there was a small press horror magazine called Deathrealm; I know, b/c I was published in it. Its editor was Stephen Mark Rainey. He's an author and is still around.

While I liked a lot of Harlan Ellison's short stories and screenplays; Repent, Harlequin! is a favorite. The Outer Limits episodes Demon With A Glass Hand and Soldier are basically "The Terminator." He wrote one of the most innovative SF stories ever published, "The Region Between." It appeared in the March 1970 issue of Galaxy and in the Keith Laumer "Five Fates" anthology of the same year. It is a wild ride and quite different from anything else I am aware of. The issue is on the internet archive, and if you use a cell phone, it could probably be read. Not so much on a PC. Ellison was a great role model in defense of all forms of SF and writers.

ps.. I can only find Harlan Ellison in audio book format, I'm listening the Boy Who Shouted Love At The Heart Of The World and other stories, read by Michael di Loreto, I think he does it justice. Very good stuff... and the nice thing is some of these very old titles are gratis fir a short while..

I Have No Mouth And I Must Scream was adapted in the 90s as a PC game with Ellison's blessing. I have it, and have played it a few times, but I'm really not a gamer. One unique aspect of the game is that the decisions you make in the game determine your character's story arc. Apparently Ellison wanted that particular detail in the game.

just vlike the AUthor:M Jerzy Kosinski. He was sooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo difficult too! love him!

Sounds like a good collection. Having only read the Paingod collection and a few other strays I may need to pick this up. But the JMS editorializing you mention at the end is disappointing.

As a Trekkie and being (just) in my 40s my only exposure to Harlan is with his episode City on the Edge of Forever. I have also read the graphic novel which came out some time ago. He always said he wasn't happy with the parts that were cut from his original story for the aired epsidoe so he worked with IDW to develop the graphic novel which follows his script almost exactly. Very interesting. I will pick this up as it intrigues me and I'd love to finally read more from him

On the subject of trigger warnings, I have a copy of the H.G. Wells novel "The Sleeper Awakes", published in the early 2000s with an introduction by Gregory Keyes. In the introduction Keyes gives his description of what SF is and what SF is not. But towards the end he felt a need to warn readers about the way certain racial groups are represented in "The Sleeper Awakes", reminding us about the social conditions that influenced Wells in the 19th century, etc etc. I guess Keyes was worried about modern readers branding Wells as a racist? It was the first time I'd come across a warning like that.

Thanks Steve 🫡

Thanks!

This feels like the warm up act for the Last Dangerous Visions, coming in th autumn

Picked up my copy last week here on Novelty Island! I was surprised but pleased that my local(ish) book retailer had a copy; It was filed in the horror section though! 🙄 I’ll watch the video once I’ve read the book. It’s not like I haven’t read any of them before! Some of them are new to me and some haven’t been read in a heck of a long time so it’ll be good to go in sort of fresh! In the meantime, have a like!

Bought it. Never heard of this author before but I've seen A Boy and His Dog in the early 90's during a Sunday afternoon SF state television show. I was very impressed. I would be curious to know what does it mean to be difficult with publishers. Personally, I find the concept of the work of a writer being sold to a corporate publisher and owned by a corporation in perpetuity reaping the fruits of the artist's labour n-fold abhorrent. Stephen King mentioned, I believe in About Writing, how Carrie got him 200,000 $ which at the time he couldn't believe, but how the novel later earned a lot of money ( with the film, and becoming a horror classic) of which he has seen nothing. Also, Isaac Asimov mentions in his autobiography, which is a great read, greater than his novels which didn't make much of an impression on me, how he refused the translation of, I believe, I, Robot, because the book was bringing him no money and how his new publisher fought with the I, Robot publisher in the court to recover his author rights.

Love Ellison (have 22 of his titles on my bookshelf). Love the review. Agree entirely about the trigger warnings, and if the computer punched tape had to be changed and 'brought up to date', what's wrong with generic binary/ASCII? Don't they teach that in IT classes? 01100011 01101111 01100111 01101001 01110100 01101111 00100000 01100101 01110010 01100111 01101111 00100000 01110011 01110101 01101101 (so many do not!)

Oh, I don't know about a "Lighter Side Section." Would prefer the tone be managed the way Harlan tended to do it, by interspersing such material (DEATHBIRD notwithstanding). "Chocolate Alphabet" is in STRANGE WINE, but it is probably included because it was published on its own in an illustrated edition.

Christopher Priest is not the only one who dosen't think much about Ellison. In his The History of Science Fiction, Adam Roberts is also pretty dismissive about his work. I like his stuff, some of it is really brilliant, some less so, but that tends to be the case with prolific authors. Nat Segalof's biography of Ellison, A Lit Fuse, is terrific. Agree about Hugo, by the way. For me it lost all meaning when they gave award to Paladin of Souls over Dan Simmons's Ilium.

I’ve been wondering if I should pick this up. I don’t know the contents, but I’m willing to bet I already own 80% of this material. Ignoring all the paperbacks, I picked up the Essential Ellison once at a library sale (for $1 - envy me), so hopefully this covers a lot of post-1991 material.

'From A to Z in the Chocolate Alphabet' was published as a comic book in 1978 with illustrations by Larry Todd. He wrote it in three days in the window of a bookstore. I agree that it is slight, even disappointing by Ellison standards. I also LOVE 'A Boy and his Dog.'

*Heads up!* All of those who bought their copy from a UK bricks 'n' mortar bookshop rest assured you did the right thing! 👍 Amazon UK has gone from "this item will be released 25 June" [tomorrow] to *zip. Nada.* They don't have it. 😁

The Criterion Collection has started editing their movies to remove questionable scenes. . . The ironic hubris is fucking irritating. If some publisher has the balls to change the authors work, with or with out permission, you had better publish the original next to the edited portion or it is considered to be literally graffiti or trash at that point. The idea that we need to be saved from a book harming us is parallel to dragging knuckles

The problem with Ellison now is, as with so many authors in his league, that there's no serious critical work about him (that I know of) ... the Gary Wolf book came out 30 years ago, and his biography was a non-starter. What other work is out there that takes a look at what exactly he was trying to do? His online fan base is largely simpering and sycophantic, which I imagine HE would have hated. Fandom can keep people from taking a real serious, critical look at the man and giving his work the attention it deserves. If you know anything like that, please lmk.

As commented in a previous video, yep I have everything in it - and yet I was still more than happy to buy this! 😁 Indeed, it's such a handsome paperback *I bought TWO copies* ! 👍 And from a bricks 'n' mortar bookshop no less! 😌 Is _Shatterday_ as a collection 'underrated' ? 🤔 I'm not sure. But as I was saying on Ira's latest video _Strange Wine_ is DEFINITELY underrated; that's a terrific "album". *A+++*

We need to get a good wireless microphone Dad, maybe a hollyland lark m2 combo pack, a rode wireless go 2, something to make the audio better

Hi Stephen. Ah, somebody who appreciates the great man - good to see. Actually your mention of the cons have put me in two minds whether to buy this or not. Ellison would have been apoplectic at these editorial interferences, probably involving violence. Having read all the stories and taking into account your reservations I really am on the fence here. Nice looking volume though.

36:16 not a fan of NG also! he he

Let us all thank Stephen King's DANSE MACBRE (1981) for introducing scores of readers over the years to Harlan Ellison and his groundbreaking work. King was an obvious fan, and thus now so am I and countless others.

wtf... where's Eve Babitz? (looking forward to this one!)

Terminator

I am of two minds on the content warnings: My first thought is that Ellison would have RAGED against a content warning like Dylan Thomas! Then I remembered talking to him personally about the content warning in "Deathbird Stories." Long Story Short, the publisher asked for it because the proof readers of that book could not get through the whole manuscript w/o falling to despair, and Ellison agreed. He WROTE it. It would've been unexpected at that time to have had to even THINK about warning adults that a book could f*ck you up, but he didn't want readers to be inadvertently suffering. He got so much shit from reviewers for that sincere concern - being called "arrogant" and "grandiose" for that warning, that he sometimes considered removing it. . . and later on figured "Nah, F@#K those Assholes." When I think of the sallow delicate young readers who come to this book today, I KNOW that THEY are NOT ready for this. It seems fair to warn them in an age where one may find a trigger warning on a soda can. . . It seems the obvious alternative would be to edit his words and I GUARANTEE you Harlan WOULD NOT have taken to that! This, given that JMS wants to get HE into the hands of the younger generation, seems the lesser of two evils.

Enough psychic powers displayed in SF? I just perused the Ellison volume not one hour ago . . ⏰🪞

TESTIFY!!!

Thanks!