The Last Dangerous Visions

The Last Dangerous Visions
Author: Harlan Ellison
Publisher: Blackstone Publishing
Total Pages: 457
Release: 2024-10-01
Genre: Fiction
ISBN:

An anthology more than half a century in the making, The Last Dangerous Visions is the third and final installment of the legendary science fiction anthology series. In 1973, celebrated writer and editor Harlan Ellison announced the third and final volume of his unprecedented anthology series, which began with Dangerous Visions and continued with Again Dangerous Visions. But for reasons undisclosed, The Last Dangerous Visions was never completed. Now, six years after Ellison’s passing, science fiction’s most famous unpublished book is here. And with it, the heartbreaking true story of the troubled genius behind it. Provocative and controversial, socially conscious and politically charged, wildly imaginative yet deeply grounded, the thirty-two never-before published stories, essays, and poems in The Last Dangerous Visions stand as a testament to Ellison’s lifelong pursuit of art, representing voices both well-known and entirely new, including David Brin, Max Brooks, Cory Doctorow, Dan Simmons, AE van Vogt, Edward Bryant, and Robert Sheckley, among others. With an introduction and exegesis by J. Michael Straczynski, and a story introduction by Ellison himself, The Last Dangerous Visions is an extraordinary addition to an incredible literary legacy.

Deathbird Stories

Deathbird Stories
Author: Harlan Ellison
Publisher: Open Road Media
Total Pages: 366
Release: 2014-04-29
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 149760477X

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”

Harlan Ellison's Watching

Harlan Ellison's Watching
Author: Harlan Ellison
Publisher: Open Road Media
Total Pages: 590
Release: 2015-03-10
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 1497604117

“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.”

Shatterday

Shatterday
Author: Harlan Ellison
Publisher: Open Road Media
Total Pages: 373
Release: 2014-04-01
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1497604389

“One of the great . . . American short-story writers” exposes the darkness of the human heart in these speculative tales of terror and tragedy (George R. R. Martin). A five-year-old boy never ages, living as an immortal in a past that no longer exists while the world encroaches upon his innocence, in the Hugo and Nebula Award–winning “Jeffty Is Five.” An alien attack leaves Earth on the brink of Armageddon, as humans find themselves unable to resist the sexual allure of their invaders in “How’s the Night Life on Cissalda?” In the Nebula Award–nominated “Shatterday” (subsequently adapted into the pilot episode of the second Twilight Zone series), a man fights for his life against a relentless enemy who knows his darkest secrets—his own doppelganger. In these and other thought-provoking stories, legendary author Harlan Ellison dissects the primal fears and inherent frailties common to all people and gives voice to the thoughts and feelings human beings bury deep within their souls. Unflinching and unapologetic, Ellison depicts men and women in all their ugliness and beauty, and humanity in all its fury and glory. Stories include “Introduction: Mortal Dreads,” “Jeffty Is Five,” “How’s the Night Life on Cissalda?,” “Flop Sweat,” “Would You Do it For a Penny?” (written in collaboration with Haskell Barkin), “The Man Who Was Heavily Into Revenge,” “Shoppe Keeper,” “All the Lies That Are My Life,” “Django,” “Count the Clock That Tells the Time,” “In the Fourth Year of the War,” “Alive and Well on a Friendless Voyage,” “All the Birds Come Home to Roost,” “Opium,” “The Other Eye of Polyphemus,” “The Executioner of the Malformed Children,” and “Shatterday.”

Angry Candy

Angry Candy
Author: Harlan Ellison
Publisher: Courier Dover Publications
Total Pages: 355
Release: 2016-10-20
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0486800385

Winner of the World Fantasy Award for best short story collection, this volume by one of the most acclaimed authors of the 20th century takes an intense look at how the specter of death haunts everyday life.

Ellison Wonderland

Ellison Wonderland
Author: Harlan Ellison
Publisher: Hachette UK
Total Pages: 167
Release: 2012-03-05
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0575123559

Originally published in 1962 and re-issued in 1974 and in 1983, Ellison Wonderland contains sixteen stories with copyrights ranging from 1956 to 1961. This edition contains an Introduction written for the 1974 edition and updated for the 1983 edition. This collection was among Ellison's first and it shows a 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 forty years later.

A Lit Fuse

A Lit Fuse
Author: Nat Segaloff
Publisher:
Total Pages: 448
Release: 2017-07-14
Genre: Authors, American
ISBN: 9781610373234

A Lit Fuse is an unguarded, uncensored, unquiet tour of the life of Harlan Ellison. In late 2011 Harlan Ellison the multi-award-winning writer of speculative fiction and famously litigious personality did two uncharacteristic things. First, he asked biographer Nat Segaloff if he d be interested in writing his life story. Second, he gave Segaloff full control. The result is the long-anticipated A Lit Fuse: The Provocative Life of Harlan Ellison. The expansive biography, which is the first such project in which Ellison has permitted large portions of his varied works to appear, is published by NESFA Press. Segaloff conducted exhaustive interviews with Ellison over the course of five years and also spoke with many of his friends and enemies in an effort to get inside the man and pin down the best-known Harlan stories. Their wide-ranging discussions cover his bullied boyhood, his storied marriages, his fabled lawsuits, and his compulsive writing process with more depth and detail than has ever before appeared in print. But it also delves deeply into the man s deeply held principles, his fears, and the demons that have driven him all of his 83 (so far) years. Friends, colleagues, and admirers such as Neil Gaiman, Patton Oswalt, Peter David, Robert Sawyer, Michael Scott, Edward Asner, Leonard Nimoy, Ed Bryant, Alan Brennert, Robert Silverberg, and many other notables add their voices. Along the way the reader is treated to an analysis of the Connie Willis controversy, the infamous dead gopher story, allegedly pushing a fan down an elevator shaft, and the final word on The Last Dangerous Visions. What emerges is a rich portrait of a man who has spent his life doing battle with his times and himself, always challenging his readers to reach for a higher plane and goading himself to get them there. It s funny, wise, shocking, and well, it's Harlan. A Lit Fuse contains a 32-page color photo section.

Redshift

Redshift
Author: Al Sarrantonio
Publisher: Roc
Total Pages: 692
Release: 2002
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 9780451459046

Thirty works of speculative fiction, including hard and soft science fiction, fantasy, horror, and experimental and conventional literary fiction. These recognized "authors have shaped the evolution of science fiction and will continue to influence the genre for years to come."