Paingod and Other Delusions

I read a lot of Harlan Ellison when I was young enough to think that the kind of horror he writes so well wasn't around every corner. It isn't "young adult" fiction, it's angry young person who still thinks it might get better someday somehow fiction. Beware, but be aware he is also an extremely good writer.

The Basics

If you know Ellison, then you know he’s almost exclusively a writer of short fiction. This is a collection of just a small fraction of that fiction. A very small fraction, as there are only eight stories to be found here. Yet there is something interesting about this one. There’s a theme: pain.

My Thoughts

I really love Harlan Ellison. And before I nitpick one story in this collection in particular, which will probably happen at the end of this review, can I just say that even his weakest stories are stronger than other people’s best work? He’s that kind of writer. His worst can still be some of the best stuff you’ve ever read, and yet you wind up holding him to such an immense standard that you can’t excuse it show more either. That’s the power of this guy.

Trying to review a collection of short stories can be difficult. But I’ll start by saying that “‘Repent, Harlequin!’ Said the Ticktockman” can be found in this one. It’s considered one of his most famous works, and if you are interested in Ellison, you can’t pass it up. I was delighted to finally get a chance to read it here after hearing about it for so long. It’s that perfect blend of absurdity and ultimately sadness that makes the theme of pain resonate with even more power. It also goes to show that dystopia, as a genre, has more life in it than most authors can muster.

Another gem I have to mention is “Deeper Than the Darkness”. I feel a bit like a kid obsessed with hyperbole when I think of this one, because I really just want to scream from the mountaintops that it was awesome. It’s about a man who’s a firestarter. Like think Stephen King Firestarter. With a lot of the same struggles for the main character. It just goes to show that there is an innate fear of a simultaneous lack of control while being controlled by others that can be a story-telling goldmine in the right hands.

Here comes the nitpick. “Wanted In Surgery”. Machines have been created to replace doctors. The age-old fear of being obsolete. That’s a very real thing, the idea that you’re replaceable. It becomes even more real as technology advances. But the fears the main character, a surgeon outsourced by a robot, feels come off as pure melodrama. The machines haven’t even committed any crimes, but he finds he instinctively hates them. Ellison tries so hard to impart how soulless and heartless and unfeeling a machine is, that you need a human with a good bedside manner to make a good doctor. But none of it really came across for me.

He wanted the reader to get angry at even something as mundane as cleaning robots and feel a passionate resistance against any technological assistance of any kind, and it just makes me wonder how horrified he must be at where we’ve arrived. Which is valid, but this was the sort of story that wants to grab you and shake you and make you agree. And if you don’t, you’ll find yourself more amused by the protagonist’s hangups than anything.

Final Rating

4/5 show less

Like Philip K. Dick, Ellison is one of those sci-fi (okay, "speculative fiction." Christ, like anyone gives a shit, Harlan) writers that comes in and out of style as the years go by. Also like Dick, Ellison was one of the big shakers and movers that helped take science fiction out of the 1950s "Golden Age" (no one has ever been able to explain to me how a group of stodgy old fascists, such as Robert Heinlein, constituted a "golden age." And how exactly does L. Ron Hubbard, who never bothered to master basic verb agreement so much as learn to write a decent story, fit into the whole "golden age" concept? You know, if you add a colon before a closing parentheses it makes a smiley face. Smiley time.:)

So anyway, this is a pretty solid show more collection of Ellison's slowly-going-out-of-print stories. The title piece is an interesting concept that doesn't quite come off, but "The Discarded" is a perfect combination of science fiction and the fierce social commentary Ellison made his name by. Overall there are more hits than misses, making the collection a good introduction to Ellison's work for people not partial to tackling the "Essential Ellison" anthology right off the bat.

(This review originally appeared on zombieunderground.net) show less

This is not so much Sci-Fi as it is reprints of some of his earlier magazine fictions. Harlan tries to write about the sorrow and pain caused by ugly situations and people. His life has not been without exposure to grim moments as they produced these fictions…This anthology works pretty well, these tales are not for the faint-hearted.

Disturbing, poignant, thought-provoking - all terms to describe these intense stories about pain, struggle and courage. All except "Repent, Harlequin!" were new to me and I found some new Ellison favorites in The Discarded, Bright Eyes and Wanted in Surgery.

Back in the early days, most of what I read was from the library, or borrowed from friends (and passed on to others), and I was very grateful when my favorites were published by Pyramid (and others) so that I could have them, and read them as often as I pleased. This marvel contains one of my favorite Ellison stories (and I have many):

"Repent, Harlequin!" Said the Ticktockman

Go. Read the new introduction. Read the original introduction. Ellison is at his fiery best in this collection, and you should savor it.

Wow! Harlan Ellison has an axe to grind and he hones it to a fine edge. I enjoyed every story in this collection.