Best Selling Books by Harlan Ellison

Masterpieces of myth and terror about modern gods from technology to drugs to materialism—“fantasy at its most bizarre and unsettling” (The New York Times). As Earth approaches Armageddon, a man embarks on a quest to confront God in the Hugo Award–winning novelette, “The Deathbird.” In New York City, a brutal act of violence summons a malevolent spirit and a growing congregation of desensitized worshippers in “The Whimper of Whipped Dogs,” an Edgar Award winner influenced by the real-life murder of Queens resident Kitty Genovese in 1964. In “Paingod,” the deity tasked with inflicting pain and suffering on every living being in the universe questions the purpose of its cruel existence. Deathbird Stories collects these and sixteen more provocative tales exploring the futility of faith in a faithless world. A legendary author of speculative fiction whose best-known works include A Boy and His Dog and I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream—and whose major awards and nominations number in the dozens, Harlan Ellison strips away convention and hypocrisy and lays bare the human condition in modern society as ancient gods fade and new deities rise to appease the masses—gods of technology, drugs, gambling, materialism—that are as insubstantial as the beliefs of those who venerate them. In addition to his Nebula, Hugo, World Fantasy, Bram Stoker, Edgar, and other awards, Ellison was called “one of the great living American short story writers” by the Washington Post—and this collection makes it clear why he has earned such an extraordinary assortment of accolades. Stories include: “Introduction: Oblations at Alien Altars” “The Whimper of Whipped Dogs” “Along the Scenic Route” “On the Downhill Side” “O Ye of Little Faith” “Neon” “Basilisk” “Pretty Maggie Moneyeyes” “Corpse” “Shattered Like a Glass Goblin” “Delusion for a Dragon Slayer” “The Face of Helene Bournouw” “Bleeding Stones” “At the Mouse Circus” “The Place with No Name” “Paingod” “Ernest and the Machine God” “Rock God” “Adrift Just Off the Islets of Langerhans: Latitude 38° 54'' N, Longitude 77° 00'' 13" W” “The Deathbird”

Three stories set in the post-apocalyptic world of a boy and his telepathically linked dog—inspiration for the Fallout video games and Mad Max movies. The cycle begins with “Eggsucker,” which chronicles the early years of the association between fourteen‐year‐old loner Vic and his brilliant, telepathic dog. The saga continues and expands in “A Boy and His Dog,” in which Blood shows just how much smarter he is than Vic, and Vic shows how loyal he can be. The story continues in “Run, Spot, Run,” the first part of Ellison’s promised novel of the cycle, Blood’s a Rover. Here Vic and Blood find surprising new ways to get into trouble—but getting out of it may be beyond even their combined talents.

The final act of Harlan Ellison''s Hugo and WGA Award-winning Star Trek teleplay! Is James T. Kirk willing to sacrifice the woman he loves, to save the universe as he knows it?! You may have seen the episode, but you only think you know how it ends! From the mind of literary legend Harlan Ellison!

Presents a screenplay of Asimov''s classic where the development of robot technology to a state of perfection by future civilizations is explored.

A collection of twenty thought-provoking essays from “one of the most brilliant, innovative, and eloquent writers on earth” (Publishers Weekly). Harlan Ellison—master essayist, gadfly, literary myth figure, and viewer of dark portent—has been, for the greater part of his life, a burr under the saddle of complacency. In this collection, his former assistant and confidante, Marty Clark, has culled from hundreds of rare and un-reprinted works to select twenty wide-ranging essays—nonfiction writings ranging from travelogue to media criticism, literary exploration to personal musing—that demonstrate why the monstre sacre of imaginative literature won the prestigious Silver Pen award from PEN International for his journalistic forays.

Harlan Ellison is surely one of the most creative thinkers of our time -- his stories of the fantastic have captured the imaginations of millions of people over the last four decades. In this trade paperback, some of the comics industry''s wildest and most original talents adapt Ellison''s greatest stories to the comic-book format.

For the first time ever, a visual presentation of the much-discussed, unrevised, unadulterated version of Harlan Ellison''s award-winning Star Trek teleplay script, ''''The City on the Edge of Forever!'''' This Hugo- and Writer''s Guild of America Award-winning teleplay has been much discussed for decades but only here can you see the story as Mr. Ellison originally intended!

Science fiction-noveller.

An original anthology celebrating Rod Serling''s landmark television series When it first aired in 1959, The Twilight Zone was nothing less than groundbreaking television. Freed from much of the censors'' strict oversight because of the show''s classification as "science fiction," the 156 filmed episodes explored powerful and moving human themes—love, hate, pride, jealousy, terror—in their own unique style.The show has since inspired two revivals, as well as fiction, comic books, and magazines, and even a pinball game and theme park rides. Just as important, it sparked the imaginations of countless writers, filmmakers, and fans around the world, and is considered a seminal show for broadening the horizons of television. This anthology will be an all-new collection of stories written in the vein of the original television show. Edited and featured and introduction by Carol Serling, the anthology will include brand new stories by science fiction and fantasy luminaries such as Whitley Strieber, Loren D. Estleman, Joe Lansdale, R. L. Stine, Timothy Zahn, and Peter S. Beagle, as well as writers from the original series, Earl Hammer and Harlan Ellison®, all in honor of Rod''s incredible vision. At the Publisher''s request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

Terrifying tales of teenage gangs and life on the mean streets from the multiple award-winning author of A Boy and His Dog. Remember Charles Bronson stalking the streets of New York blowing holes in muggers in Death Wish? Remember Glenn Ford standing off the vicious juvenile delinquents in Blackboard Jungle? Well, it is more than fifty years and two different worlds from 1955 to now. And something the author of these stories knows that you are scared to admit is that reality and fantasy have flip‐flopped. They have switched places. The stories that scare you today are the ones about rapists and thugs, psychos who will carve you for a dollar and hypes who will bust your head to get fixed. Glenn Ford’s world was yesterday, and Bronson’s is today. And in the stalking midnight of this book, one of America’s top writers, Harlan Ellison, invades the shadows of both!

When he''s down, kick for the head and groin. Avoid cops. Play it cool There aren''t many rules in the primer for gang kids, but they all count. They''re all easily understood because they use a simple and sound philosophy it''s a stinking life, so get your kicks while you can. The gang is home, take what you want, tell them nothing and don''t get caught. Two gangs of juvenile delinquents run riot in New York City. They constantly try to outdo each other with their clothes, weapons, language and lack of morals. They are not just kids playing at war they mean business. The only person who can infiltrate the gang is someone they can trust, someone like themselves. Someone who knows how to handle a knife and a gun

Harlan Ellison''s Hugo and WGA Award-winning teleplay, visualized for the first time! Captain Kirk, Mr. Spock and Yeoman Rand return to the Enterprise following their first encounter with the Guardians of Forever, only to find a darker, more vicious crew of renegades awaiting them! Can they return the timestream to its proper state? And will they even survive long enough to try?

A revolutionary classic from one of science fiction''s most highly regarded authors, this collection of 16 brilliant stories remains as scathing and influential today as it was when it was first published more than 20 years ago. These category-defying stories combine science fiction, horror, and fantasy with ironic humor, sardonic social criticism, and intense self-revelation. From "Jeffty is Five," the tragedy of an innocent child wrenched out of an idyllic past, to humanity''s encounter with dangerously seductive aliens in "How''s the Night Life on Cissalda?" and "Shatterday," the dark allegory of an identity-stealing doppelgänger replacing his inferior twin, this incendiary collection re-establishes its legendary author''s place at the cutting edge of the short story form.

In the late 1960s, Harlan Ellison launched a weekly column for the Los Angeles Free Press, where he uncompromisingly discussed the effects of television on modern society. He assaulted everything from television sitcoms to corrupt politicians, talk shows to military massacres. Today, more than four decades later, almost all of his criticism still holds true.

Hemingway said, "A man should never write what he doesn''t know." In the mid-fifties, Harlan Ellison--kicked out of college and hungry to write--went to New York to start his writing career. It was a time of street gangs, rumbles, kids with switchblades and zip guns made from car radio antennas. Ellison was barely out of his teens himself, but he took a phony name, moved into Brooklyn''s dangerous Red Hook section and managed to con his way into a "bopping club." What he experienced (and the time he spent in jail as a result) was the basis for the violent story that Alfred Hitchcock filmed as the first of his hour-long TV dramas...This autobiography is a book whose message you won''t be able to ignore or forget. "Harlan Ellison is the dark prince of American letters, cutting through our corrupted midnight fog with a switchblade prose. He simply must be read." --Pete Hamill "Ellison writes with sensitivity as well as guts--a rare combination." --Leslie Charteris, creator of The Saint

Like Odysseus to the sirens'' song, Harlan Ellison-that hero of many a myth-was pulled time and again to television, that femme fatale of storytelling mediums that offered up a chance for the writer to get a hunger for Sally Field that led to a lust-inspired romp with The Flying Nun, strip Anne Francis down to a bearskin in an unproduced Honey West and to bump off a fashion mogul in noir style for his Burke''s Law swansong. Add a long-lost Twilight Zone short-based on Ellison''s story "Gnomebody"-and the treatment for Two from Nowhere-another Ellison creation that failed to find a spot on the airwaves-and this beauty is worth being broken on the rocks. BID FAREWELL TO AMOS BURKE: Ellison''s tenure at Burke''s Law came to a fashionable close with a murder set in Los Angeles''s garment district and a silent guest spot by Hollywood legend Buster Keaton. READ WHAT ABC''S CENSOR NEVER WANTED YOU TO SEE: The shadow of Adrian Samish eclipsed a number of Ellison scenarios destined for ABC''s airwaves. "Honey Goes Ape " is another casualty, one that would have seen Anne Francis''s eponymous Honey West donning a bearskin to protect a wealthy heiress from assassination by one or another member of her Charles Addams-inspired family. SEE HOW FAR ELLISON WILL GO FOR A DATE: As has been well documented, Ellison wrote an episode of The Flying Nun expressly to get to Sally Field. While he never realized his carnal designs, his auctorial intent can at last be appreciated with the publication of both his treatment and teleplay for "You Can''t Get There from Here," a story that hit the airwaves with the dreaded Cordwainer Bird credited as its author. JOIN ELLISON IN EXILE AS HE ATTEMPTS TO UPLIFT MANKIND: Two from Nowhere, an unproduced network television treatment from the late 1970s, follows Kert-an extradimensional prince endowed with extraordinary abilities-to our Earth, where-in a dramatic series with a conscience-he would have helped guide humanity toward a better way while eluding forces from Erewhon bent on his capture. The thirteen-page synopsis is followed by seven pages of script that establish the premise, an eleven-page treatment of the first episode, five initial story premises, and four more created later in the series''s doomed development. DISCOVER TWO LOST EXCURSIONS INTO THE TWILIGHT ZONE: Ellison''s 1997 collection SLIPPAGE documented his departure from the 1985 incarnation of The Twilight Zone due to CBS''s abortion of his disturbing Yuletide directorial debut, "Nackles," but what wasn''t widely known was that his exodus pulled the plug on an adaptation of the author''s 1956 fantasy "Gnomebody," exhumed herein. When Ellison returned to the syndicated Zone in the late 1980s, he submitted two storylines. One, "Crazy as a Soup Sandwich," was produced, but the other-"Love Amid the Ruins"-had been kicking around since the 1970s, when Ellison used part of the premise as the basis for his Logan''s Run episode "Crypt" (in BRAIN MOVIES, Volume 5). The four-page premise for that tale-which Ellison still hopes to realize one way or another-makes its debut here.

“A dynamite piece of storytelling”—the Hugo and Nebula Award–winning author turns to musical fiction in a novel of a rock star’s tumultuous career (AllReaders.com). If you thought the only thing Ellison writes is speculative fiction, craziness about giant cockroaches that attack Detroit, or invaders from space who look like pink eggplant and smell like chicken soup, this dynamite novel of the emergent days of rock and roll will turn you around at least three times. No spaceships, no robots, just a nice kid from Louisville named Stag Preston with a voice like an angel, seductive moves like the devil, and an invisible monkey named Success riding him straight to hell . . .

Disenchanted attorney Lee Kraiter travels to the roof of the world, where he discovers the secrets of The Dark Forces in an unfilmed pilot created by Harlan Ellison in 1972. "It steals righteously from Lost Horizon and the marvelous works of H.P. Lovecraft and the caveats of Charles Fort and even the Dr. Strange comics (with a nod to Billy Batson, Captain Marvel, and the old wizard Shazam)," exclaimed Ellison in his NBC-TV pitch. And if Kraiter''s magical exploits don''t satisfy your crime-fighting desires, checkout Ellison''s unproduced Batman outline pitting the dynamic duo against Two-Face. Still not enough? How about an episode of The Rat Patrol guest starring der Fuhrer? Maybe Ellison''s original outline for "Crypt" from Logan''s Run? Still not satisfied? Why not discover "Who Killed Andy Zygmunt?" in Ellison''s third script for Burke''s Law? Or, you could plunge back to the beginning of Ellison''s tv career with his first-ever teleplay: an installment of the skydiving series Ripcord, Ellison''s heartfelt homage to a Hemingway who had just suicided. The scripts in this book were reproduced from Harlan Ellison''s file copies. The pages originated on a manual typewriter, hence the idiosyncrasies that set them apart from the sanitized, word-processed pages of today.

Harlan Ellison''s Hugo- and WGA Award-winning teleplay adaptation continues! As Kirk and Spock bide their time in 1930s New York, Kirk finds himself doing the unthinkable-- falling in love with a woman of the past! And all the while, a murderer from their own era draws ever closer, threatening to alter the very fabric of history! Harlan Ellison''s Hugo and WGA Award-winning teleplay, visualized for the first time!

Includes a chronology of books by Harlan Ellison, 1958-2014.

Hugo and Nebula Winner Harlan Ellison''s classic post-apocalyptic saga of Vic, a Boy, and his dog, Blood, and the telepathic union that binds them together in a struggle for survival. The cycle begins with ''Eggsucker'', which chronicles the early years of the association between fourteen-year-old loner Vic and his brilliant, telepathic dog, Blood. The saga continues and expands in ''A Boy and His Dog'', in which Blood shows just how much smarter he is than Vic, and Vic shows how loyal he can be. The story continues in ''Run, Spot, Run'', the first part of Ellison''s promised novel of the cycle, BLOOD''S A ROVER. Here Vic and Blood find surprising new ways to get into trouble - but getting out of it may be beyond even their combined talents.

Eleven side trips to the dark edge of imagination by master storyteller Harlan Ellison, From the Land of Fear presents some of the author’s early work from his start in the late fifties. Here you can see a vibrant, imaginative young writer honing his craft and sowing the seeds of what would become his brilliant career, including the standout piece “Soldier,” a clever antiwar tale included both in short‐story form and as a screenplay for TV’s The Outer Limits. True Ellison fans will enjoy this collection as a chance to see the writer’s growth over time. As Roger Zelanzy says in his wonderful Introduction, “He is what he is because of everything he’s been up until the Now.”

Designed as both an introduction to Harlan Ellison''s vast body of work and as a manual for would-be writers, Harlan 101 collects the best of the author''s short fiction, seven essays on the craft of writing, and a collection of rarely seen oddities from Ellison''s extensive archives. This 400-page paperback features: An introduction by New York Times bestseller Neil Gaiman, author of the Hugo Award-winning novels American Gods and The Graveyard Book, and creator of Vertigo Comics'' Sandman series. The first appearance in a widely available Ellison collection of his newest short story-the 2011 Nebula Award-winning "How Interesting: A Tiny Man." Five Hugo Award-winning short stories, including "''Repent, Harlequin '' Said the Ticktockman," "I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream," "The Deathbird," "Jeffty Is Five," and "Paladin of the Lost Hour." "Snake in the Crypt"-The never-before-republished story that Ellison rewrote to become "The Deathbird." See how this average tale was re-worked into a Hugo Award-winning novelette. The lost ending to "Paladin of the Lost Hour"-This ending only appeared in the very first publication of the short story in the 1985 anthology Universe 15; it has never been reprinted. A disturbing and, as-yet, unfinished short story titled "Pet." Seven informative, yet entertaining essays on the craft of writing (four which have never appeared in an Ellison collection). Plus sixteen other stories-some subtly revised for this publication-spanning Ellison''s career. From the 1950s comes "The Sky is Burning." The 1960s are represented by "All the Sounds of Fear" and "Pretty Maggie Moneyeyes." The Ellison of the 1970s appears in "At the Mouse Circus," "Basilisk," "Hindsight: 480 Seconds," "The Man Who Was Heavily Into Revenge," "Shatterday," "Shoppe Keeper," and "Strange Wine." The 1980s offerings include "Broken Glass," "Grail," "On the Slab," and "Prince Myshkin, and Hold the Relish," while the 1990s bring forth "The Man Who Rowed Christopher Columbus Ashore" and "Sensible City."

"A major collection of his incomparable, troublemaking, uncompromising, confrontational essays."--V. 3, cover.

Harlan Ellison introduced you to Vic and Blood in 1969''s Nebula Award-winning novella, "A Boy and His Dog." You thrilled to their on-screen adventures in the 1975 Hugo Award-winning feature film adaptation billed as "a kinky tale of survival." 1977 and 1980 brought brief reunions in "Eggsucker" and "Run, Spot, Run," and the promise of another story-and a third solo, Spike, to make the Dystopian Duo a Tribulation Trio-but only audiobooks and comics followed, revisiting the same tales.Now, nearly fifty years after they first set off across the blasted wasteland, Vic and Blood are back.Harlan Ellison and his editor, Jason Davis, have painstakingly assembled the whole story of Vic and Blood and Spike from the author''s files, using revised-and-expanded versions of the novella and short stories, interstitial material developed for Richard Corben''s graphic adaptation, and-for the first time-never-before-published material from the aborted 1977 NBC television series Blood''s a Rover to tell the complete story of A Boy and His Dog, and a Girl who is tougher than the other two combined.And let''s not forget...the wit and wisdom of Blood.

33 top science fiction writers examine the dark side of human nature and the inner workings of the mind.

Presents the complete script for one of the most popular episodes of "Star Trek" as it was originally written--before it was radically altered for filming--and includes commentary by the author on the transformation of his story and his decades-long feud with Gene Roddenberry over the story''s presentation.

Discover among these tales the spirits of executed Nazi war criminals who walk Manhattan streets; the damned soul of a murderess escaped from Hell; gremlins writing the fantasies of a gone-dry writer; and the exquisite Dr. D''arque Angel, who deals her patients doses of death.