New, fresh, and different is tricky in the storytelling business, as rare as diamonds, but, as a born storyteller, Harlan made story brave, daring, surprising again, brought an edge of the gritty and the strange, the erudite and the street-smart, found ways to make words truly come alive again in an over-worded world. From the watershed of the ’50s and ’60s when the world found its dynamic new identity, to a self-imitating, sadly all too derivative present, he has kept storytelling cool and hip, exhilarating, unexpected yet always vital, able to get under your skin and change your life. And now we have it. The Top of the Volcano is the collection we hoped would come along eventually, twenty-three of Harlan’s very best stories, every one being award-winning, brought together in a single volume at last. There’s the unforgettable power of "Repent, Harlequin!" Said the Ticktockman, The Whimper of Whipped Dogs and Mefisto in Onyx, the heart-rending pathos of Jeffty Is Five and Paladin of the Lost Hour, the chilling terror of I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream, the ingenuity and startling intimacy of Adrift Just Off the Islets of Langerhans… These stories are full of the light and life of someone with things worth saying and the skills to do it, presented in the book we had to have -- not just a Best-of (though given what’s on offer it may just fall out that way) but in one easy-to-grab volume perfect for newbies, long-time fans and seasoned professionals alike to remind them just how it can be done.

A series of essays including: Stealing Tomorrow, Down the Rabbit-Hole to TV-Land, Rolling Dat Ole Debbil Electronic Stone, Defeating the Green Slime, Fear Not your Enemies, From Albany, With Hate, Centerpunching, Voe Doe Dee Oh Doe, Cheap Thrills on the Road to H*ll, and more.

We come now to Volume 3 of the ambitions Edgeworks program, in which White Wolf and its Borealis Legends imprint continue to release damned near every book ever written by Harlan Ellison. And this time, in yet another gigantic volume featuring two complete Ellison titles, we combine a major collection of his incomparable, troublemaking, uncompromising, confrontational essays, plus a foreword by award-winning author Robert Crais, with a rare, previously unavailable (except in a $100 very limited edition) publication of Harlan Ellison's Movie, the full-length feature film he created when a producer at 20th Century-Fox said to him, "If we gave you the money, and no interference, what sort of movie would you write?" Well, that producer is not only no longer at 20th, he left the whole entire venue of moviemaking after Harlan Ellison's Movie was seen by the Suits at the studio. There's no use even trying to describe what this film is about, except to confirm the long-standing rumor that it contains a scene in which a 70-foot-tall boll weevil chews and swallows an entire farmhouse and silo on camera. (It's Scene 33C.) What you might want to do, if you have a moment before carrying this swell book to the cash register up front, is to grab the book clerk who filed Edgeworks 3 in with the crappy Star Trek novelizations and all those dumb books with unicorns lifting their legs to pee golden on an elm tree, and say to that clerk, "You really ought to cross-file this lovely volume with Current Affairs or Pop Culture or Essays or Film of Books About Movies." Because if they've got it in a section that employs the letter "s" and "f"--well, that's just the behavior of zombies.

The controversy has raged for almost 30 years--now readers can judge for themselves. Harlan Ellison wrote the original award-winning teleplay for "The City on the Edge of Forever, " which was rewritten and became the most-loved Star Trek episode of all time. Ellison sued Paramount in protest and won. This book contains the teleplay and afterwords by Leonard Nimoy, DeForest Kelley, George Takei and others.

Harlan Ellison has been compared to an annoying gnat, a no-see ’em buzzing in your peripheral vision till you try to swat him, and he’s gone. The great English writer Michael Moorcock—and if his name does not leave you dumbstruck with awe, you should move on—called Ellison a “fox in the sf hen-coop” whose presence will “produce a brighter, faster hen, with improved survival characteristics, laying a tastier, more nourishing egg” and went on to say Ellison was “a brave and lively little beast, who makes a great show of himself to the hounds, but remains too wary ever to lead them to his lair.” The brilliant novelist Joanna Russ, in admiring frustration, opined that Ellison’s stories “have an assault on you,” but complained that “they’re not like a piece of sculpture that you can stop and walk around and look at from all sides.” Ellison’s reply: “Absolutely not; I want them to grab you by the throat and tear off parts of your body.” Ellison’s a double agent who lures you into the bush, and when you blink, he’s gone; you don’t know whether to turn left or right, or just dig a hole. He crafts enigmas set to entrap you. When Ellison sees where a story is going, he figures—since he’s writing for the smartest readers alive—you do, too. So he stops and turns left. Or right. Or widdershins. Or digs a cave with 200 tunnels. Can & Can’tankerous gathers ten previously uncollected tales from the fifth and sixth decades of Harlan Ellison’s professional writing career: a written-in-the-window endeavor that invites re-reading from the start before you’ve even finished it; a second entry in his (now) ongoing abcedarian sequence; a “lost” pulp tale re-cast as a retro-fable; a melancholy meditation for departed friend and fellow legend, Ray Bradbury; a 2001 revision of a 1956 original; an absurdist ascent toward enlightenment (or its gluten-free substitute); a 200-word exercise in not following the directions as written (with a special introduction by Neil Gaiman that weighs in at four times the word count of its subject); a fantastical lament for a bottom-line world; the 2011 Nebula Award-winning short story; and Ellison’s most recent offering, a fusion of fact and fiction that calls to mind Russ’s frustration and Moorcock’s metaphor while offering a solution to the story’s enigma in plain view. Strokes be damned! Ellison’s still here! HE’s still writing! And with more new books published in the last ten years than any preceding decade of his career, his third act is proving to be the kind other living legends envy.

Harlan Ellison's masterwork of myth and terror as he seduces all innocence on a mind-freezing odyssey into the darkest reaches of mortal terror and the most dazzling heights of Olympian hell in his finest collection. Deathbird Stories is a collection of 19 of Harlan Ellison's best stories, including Edgar and Hugo winners, originally published between 1960 and 1974. The collection contains some of Ellison's best stories from earlier collections and is judged by some to be his most consistently high quality collection of short fiction. The theme of the collection can be loosely defined as God, or Gods. Sometimes they're dead or dying, some of them are as brand-new as today's technology. Unlike some of Ellison's collections, the introductory notes to each story can be as short as a phrase and rarely run more than a sentence or two. One story took a Locus Poll Award, the two final ones both garnered Hugo Awards and Locus Poll awards, and the final one also received a Jupiter Award from the Instructors of Science Fiction in Higher Education (discontinued in 1979). When the collection was published in Britain, it won the 1979 British Science Fiction Award for Short Fiction. His stories will rivet you to the floor and change your heartbeat...as unforgettable a chamber of horror, fantasy and reality as you'll ever experience. -Gallery "Brutally and flamboyantly shocking, frequently brilliant, and always irresistibly mesmerizing." -Richmond Times-Dispatch

The original 50 cent paperback edition of this book now goes for $100 in rare book auctions. Why? Because it contains 25 of the best, hardest-to-find stories of the writer the Washington Post calls "one of the great living American short story writers," the unpredictable Harlan Ellison. 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. Contents Foreword (Gentleman Junkie and Other Stories of the Hung-Up Generation) • (1961) • essay by Frank M. Robinson Introduction: The Children of Nights • (1975) • essay Final Shtick • (1960) • short story Gentleman Junkie • (1961) • short story May We Also Speak? • (1961) • essay Daniel White for the Greater Good • (1961) • short story Lady Bug, Lady Bug • (1961) • short story Free with This Box! • (1958) • short story There's One on Every Campus • (1959) • short story At the Mountains of Blindness • (1961) • short story This Is Jackie Spinning • (1959) • short story No Game for Children • non-genre • (1959) • short story The Late, Great Arnie Draper • (1961) • short story High Dice • (1961) • short story Enter the Fanatic, Stage Center • (1961) • short story Someone Is Hungrier • (1960) • short story Memory of a Muted Trumpet • non-genre • (1960) • short story Turnpike • (1961) • short story Sally in Our Alley • (1959) • short story The Silence of Infidelity • non-genre • (1957) • short story Have Coolth • (1959) • short story RFD #2 • (1957) • short story by Harlan Ellison and Henry Slesar No Fourth Commandment • (1956) • short story The Night of Delicate Terrors • (1961) • short story

A mind bending voyage into the reaches of the imagination. Winner of The Hugo & Nebula awards. In Praise of His Spirits Noble & Otherwise by Roger Zelazny Where the Stray Dreams Go contains 3 unfinished stories: The/One/Word/People, Moth on the Moon & Snake in the Mind The Sky Is Burning/If Aug ’58 My Brother Paulie/Satellite Dec ’58 The Time of the Eye/The Saint Detective Magazine May ’59 Life Hutch [Kyben]/If Apr ’56 Battle Without Banners/Taboo, New Classics House, 1964 Back to the Drawing Boards/Fantastic Universe Aug ’58 A Friend to Man/Fantastic Universe Oct ’59 We Mourn for Anyone [Mourners for Hire]/Fantastic May ’57 The Voice in the Garden/Lighthouse Jun ’67 Soldier [Soldier from Tomorrow]/Fantastic Universe Oct ’57 Soldier [tv script]/American Broadcasting Corporation Sep ’64

An Ellison potpourri: rewrites of tales 1st appearing in 50s pulp magazines (one a Joe L. Hensley collaboration), recent tales & four excellent nonfiction items. The nonfiction: some witty autobiographical sketches: an in-person account of events at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory as data from Voyager I's Saturn fly-by arrives; the full story behind his acrimonious battle with Hollywood over the short-lived TV series The Starlost; & the story of how he ran away from home at age 13 to join a carnival, learning "more about the darker side of human nature than any kid should ever know." The fiction, alas, pales by comparison. There are several dressed-up variations on the Quest for the Grail. The sf tales offer so-so variations on familiar notions (Earthlings discovering their roots on an alien planet; robot megalomania; Adam & Eve; teeny weeny alien invaders). An Ellisonian satire is aimed at a TV show devoted to humiliating its guests--plus two other, more effectively humorous pieces on Aladdin's lamp & the Nativity. Less vivid than Ellison's best, with too many tired old variations & flabby retreads--but sparkling in spots.--Kirkus (edited)

Love has ten thousand names and a million different faces. History will surely agree that America's most destructive contribution to 20th century living has been that damaged product called plastic romance. It twists and savages us. After a lifetime of lies about what love is supposed to be, are you finally angry and depressed enough to be part of a "recall" on that shabby, mildewed merchandise? If so, join the remarkable Harlan Ellison as he dissects the soul and body of love in Our Time. In 16 scalpel-sharp stories that range from the legalized whorehouses of Nevada to the steaming lynch towns of Georgia, from the abortion mills of Tijuana to the sound stages of Hollywood, the writer whom Oui magazine charmingly named "the perpetually angry young punk of the bizarre" rips the Saran-Wrap off love and hate and sin and twittering passion--to disclose the raw meat beneath. Here are sixteen poisoned arrows from fantasy's most improbable Cupid in which he presents a world of hearts & flowers guaranteed to revise your thinking about where love is found and how it looks.

The New York Times called him "relentlessly honest" and then used him as the subject of its famous Sunday Acrostic. People Magizine said there was no one like him, then cursed him for preventing easy sleep. But in these stories Harlan Ellison outdoes himself, rampaging like a mad thing through love ("Cold Friend", "Kiss of Fire", "Paulie Charmed the Sleeping Woman"), hate ("Knox", "Silent in Gehenna"), sex ("Catman", "Erotophobia"), lost childhood ("One Life, Furnished in Early Poverty") and into such bizarre subjects as the problems of blue-skinned, eleven-armed Yiddish aliens, what it's like to witness the end of the world and what happens on the day the planet Earth swallows Barbra Streisand. Oh yeah, this one's a doozy!

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.

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.

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

A TOUCH OF INFINITYHARLAN ELLISONINTRODUCTION.RUN FOR THE STARSBACK TO THE DRAWING BOARDSLIFE HUTCHTHE SKY IS BURNINGFINAL TROPHYBLIND LIGHTNING