Approaching Oblivion

Yet another collection of short stories by Harlan Ellison, probably one of the most divisive personalities in science fiction. Stories within this collection:

KNOX - A polemic story about how evil humans can be, this one felt lazy and simplistic. Take negative human behavior, add sci-fi twist, rinse, repeat. And the extra periods that are supposed to make everything more dramatic don't really pull the job off. Yes, racist people suck. The Jung quote at the end illustrates just how poignant Ellison thinks this story is.

COLD FRIEND - A cute little Last Man on Earth story.

KISS OF FIRE - Pure sci-fi gibberish. And why does Ellison think everyone cares where he was when he wrote these stories?

PAULIE CHARMED THE SLEEPING WOMAN - Great little show more musician-themed story that has enough of a Lovecraft feel to it that it ends far too soon.

I'M LOOKING FOR KADAK - Yiddish aliens.

SILENT IN GEHENNA - Future Fascist America, with shades of Slaughterhouse 5, mild messiah reference, and yet another unnecessary quote at the end.

EROTOPHOBIA - Cute little story about uncontrollable love.

ONE LIFE, FURNISHED IN EARLY POVERTY - Finally, a truly touching story, although I tend to have a soft spot for time travel.

ECOWARENESS - Earth rebels against pollution. Cute, but a little short, and the logic of the overall story feels a tad off when he starts taking out celebrity environmentalists because... why now?

CATMAN - Futuristic thieves, cops, waterfalls, sex... meh.

HINDSIGHT: 480 SECONDS: Poetic apocalypse. Best story out of the bunch, and the perfect one to end the collection. show less

Yet another collection from the amazingly prolific Harlan Ellison. While these stories were all new to me, my response to them was consistent with how I have reviewed previous Ellison collections: some of them work beautifully, some of them fall flat, but I have to admire the imagination and ambition behind all of them. Ellison is an author who wants to shake you up, who never treads on safe ground. And who seems to have no shortage of things to be angry about. My favorite stories in the collection were "Kiss of Fire," set in a distant future in which people's attempts relieve the monotony of their extraordinarily long, excruciatingly boring lives have unintended consequences; "Paulie Charmed the Sleeping Woman," a short little story in show more which an extraordinary jazz musician tries to wake the dead; and "Catman" another far future story in which the society of man has evolved in strange ways (especially and explicitly in the ways we pleasure ourselves). And while I wouldn't add "Knox" to my list of Ellison favorites, it was a very memorable story. show less

After seeing a documentary film about kind of cuckoo firebrand author, Harlan Ellison, called "Dreams with Sharp Teeth," I wanted to read his autobiographical short story of a fraught childhood in northeastern Ohio, since I share that kind of background. The story is called "One Life Furnished in Early Povery" and is contained within "Approaching Oblibivion." "...Oblivion" was not easy to locate. Several copies that New York & Brooklyn Public Libraries had were listed as 'missing' and the other few that had not been stolen were constantly checked out. It is also out of print, so it's not so easy to buy a copy, either. When I did finally get my hands on a copy, I enjoyed the story. It qualifies as science fiction in that the narrator has show more arrived back at his childhood via time travel. The spring semester 09 was starting, so I did not have time to read many more stories besides "One Life.." but from what I understand, it is atypical of his work, being light on the classic sci-fi elements. show less

Part of my mission to go back and read books I'd left unfinished for no good reason. This was one of the featured selections in the very first month of my Science Fiction Book Club subscription (in 1974). The collection is a bit raggedy and uneven, but sometimes brilliant and bold and moving. Ellison takes risks, and I admire the effort even when it doesn't work and sometimes marvel at the results when it does. This was from a time when "sci-fi" was morphing into "speculative fiction," making its bid as literature, experimental, political, graphic, and profound. It also brought back the whole time period to me, but that's another story...

I don't know how I missed entering this book when I did the first pass on all those things I'm putting into storage. It has the brief biographical nightmare that is "One Life, Furnished in Early Poverty." It provides such a window into what created that angry young writer, all those aeons ago. This also contains that most touching of dedications:

To the memory of
WALTER FULTZ,
the first editor to buy a book
from me: a good man, a fine editor,
a friend...
Who approached oblivion,
passed through it, and is gone,
for what reasons I do not know....
Though I saw him seldom,
I miss him greatly....
With luck, he's found peace
at last.

It's a great collection, from Harlan's early days.

Harlan is an incredible writer, and I'd put his non-fiction up against anyone who's ever written non-fiction. With that being said, I'm usually hit or miss with the short story collections. Some of his stuff has such an effect on me that I'm almost afraid to read them again, simply because I can remember the feelings they brought forth, or the things they made me feel. Or remember. Harlan is great about making me remember things I've carefully buried away. But some of his stories make me want to skip ahead to the next, hoping that one is one of those stories. Approaching Oblivion is one of those collections.

A new collection of Harlan Ellison stories from the late '60's, early '70's. A few clunkers, and one or two that fall prey to Ellison's exuberance of experimental style, but most are fine, with two that stand out and are quite moving: "One Life, Furnished in Early Poverty" and "Hindsight: 480 Seconds". The first is a trip by the author back to his tormented boyhood, the second a look at the last minutes of planet Earth as told by a chosen poet.