Harlan Ellison

Harlan Jay Ellison was born May 27, 1934 in Cleveland, Ohio. He has written over 1700 works including novellas, screenplays, essays and columns. He has won every conceivable award for fiction including 11 Hugo Awards and 5 Nebula Awards. In 2011, he received the J. Lloyd Eaton Lifetime Achievement Award in Science Fiction.

Ellison attended Ohio University for a period of time but was expelled for striking a professor who denigrated his writing. Over the next 40 years, he sent that professor a copy of every story he published. He is known for using the pseudonym Cordwainer Bird to alert his fans to situations where he feels his creativity has been mangled beyond repair.

Ellison is credited with writing The City on the Edge of Forever, possibly the most famous episode of Star Trek: The Original Series. He repeatedly criticized Gene Roddenberry for rewriting his original script and removing questionable subplots, but despite his objections allowed his name to remain attached to the episode.

Harlan Ellison served as conceptual consultant for all 5 seasons of J. Michael Straczynski’s Babylon 5 as well as submitting 2 original stories for episodes. He also worked in this capacity for all four television movies which aired in 1998 and 1999.

Ellison has continued to publish compilations of his work into the 2000s. These collections can be found at HarlanEllisonBooks.com

Alone Against Tomorrow: Stories of Alienation in Speculative Fiction

"Man plunges into space, into eternal darkness; he ventures timidly toward the unknown in uneasy alliance with his machines; he probes toward the center of his mind and fears he will discover his soul as well; cosmically speaking, little wiser than the ape-ancestor, he moves toward the future carrying with him war and hate and paranoia. Yet he will persevere. And he will prevail, for he carries one thing his ape forebears never knew...dreams. Man the Dreamer, alienated from his times, numbed by future-shock, whirled along by his noblest desires yet hamstrung by his monstrous inadequacies challenges the universe to give up its secrets. In twenty dreams of alienation and wonder Harlan Ellison, the most honored writer in the field of speculative fiction, takes you into the unknown to experience the conflict, the awe, the grandeur and terror of men and women discovering all their tomorrows, alone and unaided. These are tales of the computer conqueror, of alien beasts with love in their hearts, of men who set fires with their minds, of mutants doomed forever to ride the star-lanes in prison ships, of gods and mortals and machines. These are stories at once dark and wonderful."

Original Publication: Macmillan, March 1971
This Edition: Macmillan, March 1971
Cover Art: Brad Johannsen
Format: Hardback

Notes: Contents: The Song of the Soul, I have No Mouth, and I Must Scream, The Discarded, Deeper Than the Darkness, Blind Lightning, All the Sounds of Fear, The Silver Cooridor, "Repent, Harlequin!" Said the Ticktockman, Bright Eyes, Are You Listening?, Try a Dull Knife, In Lonely Lands, Eyes of Dust, Nothing for My Noon Meal, O Ye of Little Faith, The Time of the Eye, Life Hutch, The Very Last Day of a Good Woman, Night Vigil, Lonelyache and Pennies, Off a Dead Man's Eyes. This collection was reprinted in the UK in two volumes, All the Sounds of Fear in 1973 and The Time of the Eye in 1974.

Review:

Partners in Wonder

"No matter how many books you've read, you've never read a book like this one…because there's never been a book like this one in the history of everything. This is the first collection of collaborative stories ever created; it is unique, like the Abominable Snowperson or the Sistine Chapel ceiling. It is the ungovernable lunatic mind of Harlan Ellison, the most honored writer in the literature of the fantastic, harnessed to the fourteen wild talents of: Robert Bloch, Ben Bova, Algis Budrys, Avram Davidson, Samuel R. Delany, Joe L. Hensley, Keith Laumer, William Rotsler, Robert Sheckley, Robert Silverberg, Henry Slesar, Theodore Sturgeon, A.E. Van Vogt, Roger Zelazny - and even one story wholly and totally unassisted. Each deranged vision comes with an introduction in the patented Ellison manner explaining how the story was written and who gets the blame. In the entire canon of Ellison's work, this volume stands out as a berserk, delightful trip not to be missed."

Original Publication: Walker & Co., January 1971
This Edition: Pyramid Books, May 1975
Cover Art: Diane and Leo Dillon
Format: Paperback

Notes: Contents: Sons of Janus by Harlan Ellison; I See a Man Sitting on a Chair, and the Chair is Biting His Leg with Robert Sheckley; Brillo with Ben Bova; A Toy for Juliette by Robert Bloch; The Prowler in the City at the Edge of the World By Harlan Ellison; Sherzo for Schizoids: Notes on a Collaboration by Harlan Ellison; Up Christopher to Madness with Avram Davidson; Runesmith with Theodore Sturgeon; Rodney Parish for Hire with Joe L. Hensley; The Kong Papers with William Rotsler; The Human Operators with A.E. van Vogt; Survivor #1 with Henry Slesar; The Power of the Nail with Samuel R. Delany; Wonderbird with Algis Budrys; The Song the Zombie Sang with Robert Silverberg; Street Scene with Keith Laumer; Come to Me Not in Winter's White. with Roger Zelazny

Review:

The Other Glass Teat

"Two bomb attempts failed to stop Harlan Ellison's outspoken and irreverent television column, "The Glass Teat" (though one blew the rear end off the Los Angeles Free Press building). Two years before Watergate the gadfly Ellison woarned of the massive covert program by the corrupt Nixon axis to stifle dissent and club the mass media into silence. When the first year's columns appeared in the book The Glass Teat, a sequel was planned. But inexplicably, it was struck from the publishers list, even as the first book was being mysteriously pulled from newsstands. The Glass Teat and its unpublished sequel had been ordered deep-sixed by the second highest political office in America. Now Puramid books has brought you The Other Glass Teat, fifty teeth-bared, pungent and unrelenting views of our "days of Blood and Sorrow," as seen through the bloodshot eye of TV. And the reasons why it took five years for this book to see print are all here! Just as they were written from 1970 to 1972, while NBC, ABC and CBS were dancing to Agnew's tune and Ellison was saying Theres a conspiracy going down, watch out! Its all here...a remarkable book that makes even The Glass Teat seem tame."

Original Publication: Pyramid Books, June 1975
This Edition: Pyramid Books, June 1976
Cover Art: Diane and Leo Dillon
Format: Paperback

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