New Releases by Harlan Ellison

In a world where humans have just made contact with advanced Martians, a stunning cosmic television broadcast promises to change Earth forever. As the "Big Show" reveals the Martians'' utopian society, it challenges Earthlings'' ideas about everything from technology to morality. Television producer Roy Mallory and his beautiful assistant Edith find themselves at the center of this cultural awakening. Will the revelations from Mars uplift humanity, or will long-held hang-ups prove too difficult to overcome?

A follow-up to the original groundbreaking collection, Again, Dangerous Visions features forty-six short stories from giants of the science fiction genre. Grand Master of the Science Fiction Writers of America and winner of countless awards—including the Hugo, Nebula, Edgar Allan Poe, and Bram Stoker—Harlan Ellison proved once more that he was both unpredictable and irrepressible in this second collection of innovative science fiction. Again, Dangerous Visions—the middle installment in a planned three anthology series—includes award-winning stories from incomparable writers such as Ursula K. Le Guin, Gene Wolfe, Ray Bradbury, Kurt Vonnegut, Piers Anthony, Dean Koontz, and James Tiptree, among many others. Unprecedented and electrifying, Again, Dangerous Visions cemented Harlan Ellison’s legacy as the ultimate sci-fi anthologist.

This issue, we have original mysteries from Janice Law (thanks to Acquiring Editor Michael Bracken) and our BCW’s very own Ron Miller (who moonlights as our Art Director), plus a modern masterpiece by Gina Nelson (thanks to Acquiring Editor Barb Goffman). Add a rare Golden Age mystery novel by James Hay, Jr. and we have quite a winning mix. But wait, there’s more! No issue is complete without a solve-it-yourself puzzler from Hal Charles. On the science fiction side, we have a great story by British master Philip E. High, as well as tales by Harlan Ellison, Henry Slesar, and Stephen Marlowe. Our novel is an early classic by Jack Williamson. Here’s the complete lineup— Cover Art: Ron Miller Mysteries / Suspense / Adventure: “The Lasker Circle,” by Janice Law [Michael Bracken Presents short story] “One Common Denominator,” by Hal Charles [Solve-It-Yourself Mystery] “Maggie McGrady’s Murder Mystery Cruise,” by Gina Nelson [Barb Goffman Presents short story] “I, Golem,”by Ron Miller [short story] No Clue! by James Hay, Jr. [novel] Science Fiction & Fantasy: “Infection,” by Philip E. High [short story] “Beauty Contest?” by Henry Slesar [short story] “The Passionate Pitchman,” by Stephen Marlowe [short story] “Biddy and the Silver Man,” by Harlan Ellison [novelet] The Alien Intelligence, by Jack Williamson [novel]

Twelve-year-old Biddy, a spirited girl braving the Arizona heat with her trusty burro Buck, spends her days exploring the desert. Despite her polio and leg brace, Biddy and Buck embark on imaginary adventures until they stumble upon a mysterious cave. Inside, she discovers a peculiar machine and meets Joe, a man claiming to be from the "sky bloc." Joe''s miraculous healing powers restore Biddy''s leg, igniting wonder and fear in the small town of Sage Bend. As tensions rise, the town''s suspicion and prejudice lead to a dramatic confrontation, testing Biddy''s courage and the power of hope.

This time, we have a pair of original mysteries—tales by Steve Liskow (courtesy of Acquiring Editor Michael Bracken) and M.A. Blume, plus a terrific tale by Steve Hockensmith (which typography nuts like me will enjoy, courtesy of Acquiring Editor Barb Goffman). The mystery novel is by Avery Gaul, and of course we have a solve-it-yourself puzzler from Hal Charles. On the science fiction side, we have a novel by Golden Age author Arthur Leo Zagat, an early—and quite silly—fantasy from Harlan Ellison, space opera from Edmond Hamilton, and straight-up SF tales from John Victor Peterson and Manly Bannister. Lots of fun. Here’s the lineup: Cover: Ron Miller Mysteries / Suspense / Adventure: “The Grifted Age” by Steve Liskow [Michael Bracken Presents short story] “Deadly Reunion” by Hal Charles [Solve-It-Yourself Mystery] “i” by Steve Hockensmith [Barb Goffman Presents short story] “Pretty Is As Pretty Does,” by M.A. Blume [short story] Five Nights at the Five Pines, by Avery Gaul [novel] Science Fiction & Fantasy: “Classified Object,” by John Victor Peterson [short story] “The Annals of Aardvark,” by Harlan Ellison [short story] “The Great Illusion,” by Manly Bannister [short story] “The Star-Stealers,” by Edmond Hamilton [short story] The Two Moons of Tranquillia, by Arthur Leo Zagat [novel]

Harlan Ellison’s Dangerous Visions made history on its release, receiving a special citation at the World Science Fiction Convention as that year’s “most significant and controversial SF book published.” A landmark short story collection that put New Wave Science Fiction on the literary map, Dangerous Visions won several prestigious awards and was nominated for many others. This now-classic anthology includes thirty-three stories by thirty-two award-winning authors, over half of whom have won multiple Hugo and Nebula Awards. Contributing authors include: Robert Silverberg, Frederik Pohl, Brian W. Aldiss, Philip K. Dick, Larry Niven, Fritz Leiber, Poul Anderson, Theodore Sturgeon, J.G. Ballard, Samuel R. Delany, and Ellison himself. As relevant now as it was when first published, Dangerous Visions is a phenomenal collection that deserves a place on every bookshelf.

A collection of award-winning short stories by Harlan Ellison, an eight-time Hugo Award winner, five-time Bram Stoker Award winner, and four-time Nebula Award winner. As one of the great writers of speculative fiction of the twentieth century, Harlan Ellison shaped the science fiction, fantasy, and horror genres. This inventive and provocative collection of his best-known and most-acclaimed stories is a perfect treasury for old Ellison fans as well as readers discovering this zany, polyphonic writer for the first time. Featuring these stories and many more: “‘Repent, Harlequin,’ Said the Ticktockman” — Hugo Award winner “I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream” — Bram Stoker Award winner “Mefisto in Onyx” — Bram Stoker Award winner “Jeffty Is Five” — British Fantasy Award winner “Shatterday” — Twilight Zone episode “The Whimper of Whipped Dogs” — Edgar Allan Poe Award winner “Paladin of the Lost Hour” — Hugo Award winner, Twilight Zone episode A must-read for sci-fi book lovers and fans of Ray Bradbury, Ursula K. Le Guin, and Isaac Asimov, this career-spanning compilation of classic short stories is also perfect for readers who enjoyed Dangerous Visions, A Boy and His Dog, or other Harlan Ellison books.

“An excellent collection” of vampire stories, from authors such as Harlan Ellison, Dan Simmons, Gahan Wilson, Tanith Lee, and Fritz Leiber (Publishers Weekly). Renowned editor Ellen Datlow has gathered seventeen variations on vampirism ranging from classically Gothic to postmodern satire, from horrific to erotic. These stories reflect the evolution of vampire literature from Bram Stoker to Anne Rice and beyond, resulting in a deeper exploration of their inner lives. Expanding the concept of vampirism to include the draining of a person’s will or life force, Datlow’s collection transcends the traditional “black capes and teeth marks on the neck” to reinvent an eternally fascinating subgenre of horror. In Harlan Ellison’s “Try a Dull Knife,” an empath stumbles bleeding into a nightclub, on the run from emotional vampires. A Broadway actress steals the emotions of her fellow performers in “. . . To Feel Another’s Woe” by Chet Williamson. And in “The Sea Was Wet as Wet Could Be,” Gahan Wilson offers his own surreal twist on Lewis Carroll’s “The Walrus and the Carpenter,” as two strangers on a beach lure intoxicated picnickers to a different kind of picnic . . . Blood Is Not Enough includes contributions by Dan Simmons, Gahan Wilson, Garry Kilworth, Harlan Ellison, Scott Baker, Leonid Andreyev, Harvey Jacobs, S. N. Dyer, Edward Bryant, Fritz Leiber, Tanith Lee, Susan Casper, Steve Rasnic Tem, Gardner Dozois and Jack Dann, Chet Williamson, Joe Haldeman, and Pat Cadigan.

Five stories by master speculative-fiction author Harlan Ellison, adapted to graphic novel format and fully painted in full color by illustrator Ken Steacy. Out of print since 1987, the tales recount mankind''s war with an alien race. Suggested for mature readers.

“An enjoyable, irascible collection” of smart and sometimes-scathing film criticism from a famously candid author (Library Journal). Everyone’s a critic, especially in the digital age—but no one takes on the movies like multiple award-winning author Harlan Ellison. Renowned both for fiction (A Boy and His Dog) and pop-culture commentary (The Glass Teat), Ellison offers in this collection twenty-five years’ worth of essays and film criticism. It’s pure, raw, unapologetic opinion. Star Wars? “Luke Skywalker is a nerd and Darth Vader sucks runny eggs.” Big Trouble in Little China? “A cheerfully blathering live-action cartoon that will give you release from the real pressures of your basically dreary lives.” Despite working within the industry himself, Ellison never learned how to lie. So punches go unpulled, the impersonal becomes personal, and sometimes even the critics get critiqued, as he shares his views on Pauline Kael or Siskel and Ebert. Ultimately, it’s a wild journey through the cinematic landscape, touching on everything from Fellini to the Friday the 13th franchise. As Leonard Maltin writes in his preface, “I don’t know how valuable it is to learn Harlan Ellison’s opinion of this film or that, but I do know that reading an Ellison essay is gong to be provocative, infuriating, hilarious, or often a combination of the above. It is never time wasted. . . . Let me assure you, Harlan Ellison is never dull.”

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.

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!

Harlan Ellison, science fiction''s brightest luminary, has joined forces with multi-award winning artist Paul Chadwick, creator of the incomparable Concrete, to bring you SEVEN AGAINST CHAOS, a graphic novel that is singular, powerful and unpredictable. This extraordinary odyssey of mystery and adventure will take you to the rim of reality and beyond. In a distant future, Earth is in grave danger: The fabric of reality itself in unraveling, leading to catastrophic natural disasters, displaced souls appearing from bygone eras, and sudden, shocking cases of spontaneous combustion. The only hope for Earth''s survival is a force of seven warriors, each with his or her special abilities. But can these alien Seven Samurai learn to get along in time to find the source of the gathering chaos and save all of reality?

Tales of love, sex, and relationships as only “one of the great . . . American short story writers” can tell them (The Washington Post Book World). A one-night stand begins a tragic journey that consumes a man’s soul in “Neither Your Jenny Nor Mine.” Afraid to interact with men who would condemn her as ugly, a young woman imagines herself living the love lives of every woman she sees until one daydream becomes a nightmare in “Mona at Her Windows.” On “A Path Through the Darkness,” a man struggles to understand his attraction to a cruel, morbid woman. Multi-award-winning author Harlan Ellison shatters the rose-colored glasses view of romance in these and other stories, coming to understand the elusive power of love about in terms of the primal passions and emotional onslaughts human beings engage. Insightful and devastating, these are realistic depictions of men and women desperate to connect and communicate, only to discover that love doesn’t conquer all. Includes: “The Resurgence of Miss Ankle-Strap Wedgie,” “The Universe of Robert Blake,” “G.B.K.—A Many Flavored Bird,” “Neither Your Jenny Nor Mine,” “Riding the Dark,” “Train Out,” “Moonlighting,” “What I Did on My Vacation this Summer by Little Bobby,” “Hirschhorn, Age 27,” “Mona at Her Windows,” “Blind Bird, Blind Bird, Go Away from Me!,” “Passport,” “I Curse the Lesson and Bless the Knowledge,” “Battle Without Banners,” “A Path,” “Through the Darkness,” “A Prayer for No One’s Enemy,” “Punky & the Yale Men”

Seven stunning stories of speculative fiction by the author of A Boy and His Dog. In a post-apocalyptic world, four men and one woman are all that remain of the human race, brought to near extinction by an artificial intelligence. Programmed to wage war on behalf of its creators, the AI became self-aware and turned against humanity. The five survivors are prisoners, kept alive and subjected to brutal torture by the hateful and sadistic machine in an endless cycle of violence. This story and six more groundbreaking and inventive tales that probe the depths of mortal experience prove why Grand Master of Science Fiction Harlan Ellison has earned the many accolades to his credit and remains one of the most original voices in American literature. I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream also includes “Big Sam Was My Friend,” “Eyes of Dust,” “World of the Myth,” “Lonelyache,” Hugo Award finalist “Delusion for a Dragon Slayer,” and Hugo and Nebula Award finalist “Pretty Maggie Moneyeyes.”

Tales of terror and wonder from a winner of the Nebula, Hugo, Edgar, Bram Stoker, and many other awards. Originally published in 1962 and updated in later decades with a new introduction, Ellison Wonderland contains sixteen masterful stories from the author’s early career. This collection shows a vibrant young writer with a wide‐ranging imagination, ferocious creative energy, devastating wit, and an eye for the wonderful and terrifying and tragic. Among the gems are “All the Sounds of Fear,” “The Sky Is Burning,” “The Very Last Day of a Good Woman,” and “In Lonely Lands.” Though they stand tall on their own merits, they also point the way to the sublime stories that followed soon after and continue to come even now, more than fifty years later.

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”

Fifteen masterpieces of speculative short fiction, including Hugo and Nebula Award–winning stories from the acclaimed author of Shatterday. “These are not stories that should be forgotten; and some of you are about to read them for the first time . . . I envy you.” —Neil Gaiman, #1 New York Times–bestselling author of American Gods, from his Foreword In a post-apocalyptic future, fifteen-year-old Vic wanders the wasteland with Blood, his genetically-altered telepathic dog, in a struggle for survival against violent marauders, deadly radioactive insects, and an underground community desperate to restore the human race in the Hugo Award–nominated and Nebula Award–winning novella, “A Boy and His Dog,”—the basis of the cult classic film. An intergalactic conspiracy infects the minds of the most powerful politicians in the Republican Party—and only one jolly old elf can save them in “Santa Claus vs. S.P.I.D.E.R.” And in the Hugo Award–winning title story, disparate threads of violence, conflict, and conversation weave an intricate tapestry across worlds and times in an experimental tour-de-force of the imagination. This groundbreaking collection brings together some of Harlan Ellison’s most innovative and intriguing stories, frightening and funny visions of human nature that can only come from the peerless Grand Master of Science Fiction. “One of the great living American short story writers.” —The Washington Post Includes: “The Beast That Shouted Love at the Heart of the World,” “Along the Scenic Route,” “Phoenix,” “Asleep: With Still Hands,” “Santa Claus vs. S.P.I.D.E.R.,” “Try a Dull Knife,” “The Pitll Pawob Division,” “The Place With No Name,” “White on White,” “Run For the Stars,” “Are You Listening?,” “S.R.O.,” “Worlds to Kill,” “Shattered Like a Glass Goblin,” “A Boy and His Dog”

Includes the Nebula and Hugo Award–winning story, “ ‘Repent, Harlequin!’ Said the Ticktockman.” A special new collection of Ellison’s short stories, selected especially for this volume by the author, including the newly revised and expanded tale “Never Send to Know for Whom the Lettuce Wilts.” In a career spanning more than fifty years, Harlan Ellison has written or edited seventy-five books, more than seventeen hundred stories, essays, articles, and newspaper columns, two dozen teleplays, and a dozen movies. Now, for the first time anywhere, Troublemakers presents a collection of Ellison’s classic stories that will introduce new readers to a writer described by the New York Times as having “the spellbinding quality of a great nonstop talker, with a cultural warehouse for a mind.” Includes the award‐winning stories “‘Repent, Harlequin!’ Said the Ticktockman” and “Deeper Than the Darkness.”

With a foreword by Stephen King: Provocative and entertaining pieces from the multiple award-winning author. Pure, hundred‐proof distillation of Ellison. A righteous verbal high. Here you will find twenty of his very best stories and essays, including the four‐part ‘Scenes from the Real World,” an anecdotal history of the doomed TV series, The Starlost, that he created for NBC; “Tales from the Mountains of Madness”; and his hilariously brutal reportage on the three most important things in life, sex, violence, and labor relations. With an absolutely killer foreword by Stephen King.

An essential collection of short stories and essays from the multi-award-winning author of Deathbird Stories. “Arguably the best and most prolific author of novellas and novelettes that Anglophone letters has produced.” —Norman Spinrad, author of Bug Jack Barron, from his Foreword Despite the awards and accolades that categorize Harlan Ellison as a science fiction writer, his canon of work spans a diverse range of categories across fiction and nonfiction. He is, first and foremost, a writer of the human condition, whether he’s richly imagining characters’ experiences and adventures or commenting on the foibles and follies of those he had the misfortune to meet and observe. Over the Edge brings together ten of Ellison’s stories and three of his essays. From a sheriff’s ignoble end in an Old West town to a conspiracy on the steel beams of a construction site and an astronaut’s lonely existence and descent into madness, Ellison’s fiction resides in a genre of his own creation. Meanwhile, his commentary about topics such as writing for Star Trek and interactions with fans captures real human behavior more bizarre and horrifying than anything his imagination can conjure. Includes: “Pennies, Off a Dead Man’s Eyes,” “The End of the Time of Leinard,” “3,” “Faces of Fear: An Essay,” “Blind Lightning,” “Walk the High Steel,” “Shadow Play,” “The Words in Spock’s Mouth: An Essay,” “From a Great Height,” “Night Vigil,” “Xenogenesis: An Essay,” “Rock God,” “Ah-Wegh Thogha,” “Ernest and the Machine God”

Eight timeless tales from the master of speculative fiction, featuring the Nebula and Hugo Award–winning story “‘Repent, Harlequin!’ Said the Ticktockman.” Robert Heinlein says, “This book is raw corn liquor—you should serve a whiskbroom with each shot so the customer can brush the sawdust off after he gets up from the floor.” Perhaps a mooring cable might also be added as necessary equipment for reading these eight wonderful stories. They not only knock you down . . . they raise you to the stars. Passion is the keynote as you encounter the Harlequin and his nemesis, the dreaded Tictockman, in one of the most reprinted and widely taught stories in the English language; a pyretic who creates fire merely by willing it; the last surgeon in a world of robot physicians; a spaceship filled with hideous mutants rejected by the world that gave them birth. Touching, gentle, and shocking stories from an incomparable master of impossible dreams and troubling truths.

The Hugo and Nebula Award–winning author probes topics ranging from departed pets to Lenny Bruce and San Quentin in this provocative collection of essays. A major collection of Harlan Ellison’s incomparable, troublemaking, uncompromising, confrontational essays and newspaper columns, The Harlan Ellison Hornbook mines deep into the author’s colorful past. Failed love affairs, departed pets, a defense of comic books—in lesser hands, these subjects would be pabulum or treacle. When Harlan Ellison is behind the typewriter, the mundane becomes an all‐out intellectual brawl. Emotionally moving and verbally stimulating, these columns cannot be missed, especially Ellison’s article on controversial comedian Lenny Bruce or the chilling account of the author’s trip to visit a death row inmate in San Quentin State Prison.

An irreverent, brilliant, and outspoken collection of essays by the Hugo and Nebula Award–winning author of Strange Wine. At the beginning of the 1980s, Harlan Ellison agreed to write a regular column for the L.A. Weekly on the condition that they published whatever he wrote with no revisions and no suggestions for rewrites. What resulted was impassioned, persuasive, abusive, and hilarious. Part essay, part conversation, all Ellison—these pieces provide a glimpse into a great mind, at ease in tackling both grand ideas and the minutiae of the day to day. Collected here in An Edge in My Voice, these works also open a window to a decade when a newspaper would accept such a risky venture from such a powerful voice,

A remarkably trenchant collection of early stories by “the dark prince of American letters” exploring the injustice and desperation of a forgotten America (Pete Hamill, author of A Drinking Life). Bold and uncompromising, Gentleman Junkie and Other Stories of the Hung-up Generation is a watershed moment in Harlan Ellison’s early writing career. Rather than dealing in speculative fiction, these twenty-five short stories directly tackle issues of discrimination, injustice, bigotry, and oppression by the police. Pulling from his own experience, Ellison paints vivid portraits of the helpless and downtrodden, blazing forth with the kind of unblinking honesty that would define his career. Reviewing this collection, Dorothy Parker called Ellison “a good, honest, clean writer, putting down what he has seen and known, and no sensationalism about it.”

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.”

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

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.

"Get it straight right now: these aren''t kids playing games of war. They mean business. They are junior-grade killers and public enemies one through five thousand..." In Rusty Santoro''s neighborhood, the kids carry knives, chains, bricks. Broken glass. And when they fight, they fight dirty, leaving the streets littered with the bodies of the injured and the dead. Rusty wants out - but you can''t just walk away from a New York street gang. And his decision may leave his family to pay a terrible price. First published more than half a century ago and inspired by the author''s real-life experience going undercover inside a street gang, Web of the City was Harlan Ellison''s first novel and marked the long-form debut of one of the most electrifying, unforgettable, and controversial voices of 20th century letters. Appearing here for the first time together with three thematically related short stories Ellison wrote for the pulp magazines of the 1950s, Web of the City offers both a snapshot of a lost era and a portrait of violence and grief as timely as today''s most brutal headlines.

"The Region Between" first appeared in Galaxy back in 1970. It had originally been commissioned as one of a set of stories by different authors who all used a common starting point as set out in the story''s prologue, written by Keith Laumer. Ellison''s contribution was a longer work than one usually expects from him, but it nevertheless sustains its bombardment of ideas and feelings throughout. What''s more, Ellison created a story that demanded a different format to allow for full expression. The result was a typesetter''s nightmare but, as you will see, the experience now only makes this story all the more fascinating, it actually takes you into the story itself. Mike Ashley