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Pulling a Train
Known worldwide for his landmark speculative fiction, Cleveland-born ELLISON initially rumbled onto the newsstands hell-bent for leather-- jackets, that is, and zipguns, and shivs, and brass knuckles, and all the accoutrements necessary for basic teen gang violence circa 1957.
Inspired as a teenager in seeing a familiar placement of consonants in the byline of author Hal Ellson's novel DUKE, young Ellison began pecking out his own gritty tales about street kids, the forgotten flotsam of society.
With a taste for printers ink, he would soon be selling stories with a vengeance to crime digests like Guilty, Trapped, Terror, and Web Detective Stories, and men's magazines including Rogue, Caper, and Knave. Sometimes he used his given name, but most often, he traveled incognito onto the newsstands, passing as Ellis Hart, Derry Tiger, Cordwainer Bird, Lee Archer, and many more.
A paperback collection of his street-wise crime tales saw proper issue in 1959 as THE DEADLY STREETS, as did his groundbreaking first novel RUMBLE, written from first person experience when Ellison (using his nom de guerre, Cheech Beldone) passed initiations into a pack of under-age Red Hook pagans on the Brooklyn waterfront.
Also in 1959, a brown-paper wrapper collection of his men's magazine stories turned up unannounced (and under the counter) as the paperback SEX GANG, the title of its novella-length lead story. The set of eleven stories was credited to "Paul Merchant", and went unclaimed by Ellison for decades.
Over the years, all of Ellison's books have enjoyed reissue, over and over again, and numerous collections of his short fiction have continued to see print. His adult-audience material, however, has remained unavailable-- until now.
For the uninitiated, we recommend consumption in very small doses. A damp towel and bed rest may be necessary.
For the lively set, prepare to blast into orbit with blade-wielding ferocity as Ellison takes you into a cobblestone wilderness fraught with hate and violence, a street level cosmos where shadowy creatures are hard, and blunt, and malicious, and where hope hangs a shingle that reads, "GET LOST".
In the realm of 1950's juvenile delinquent fiction, it was Ellison who dragged the unnamed genre from the gentle hands of the social workers into a filthy basement, where he worked it over, with great satisfaction, into an alternate universe of hate and pain. Ellison is the king of JD fiction. Of this, there can be no debate.
Inspired as a teenager in seeing a familiar placement of consonants in the byline of author Hal Ellson's novel DUKE, young Ellison began pecking out his own gritty tales about street kids, the forgotten flotsam of society.
With a taste for printers ink, he would soon be selling stories with a vengeance to crime digests like Guilty, Trapped, Terror, and Web Detective Stories, and men's magazines including Rogue, Caper, and Knave. Sometimes he used his given name, but most often, he traveled incognito onto the newsstands, passing as Ellis Hart, Derry Tiger, Cordwainer Bird, Lee Archer, and many more.
A paperback collection of his street-wise crime tales saw proper issue in 1959 as THE DEADLY STREETS, as did his groundbreaking first novel RUMBLE, written from first person experience when Ellison (using his nom de guerre, Cheech Beldone) passed initiations into a pack of under-age Red Hook pagans on the Brooklyn waterfront.
Also in 1959, a brown-paper wrapper collection of his men's magazine stories turned up unannounced (and under the counter) as the paperback SEX GANG, the title of its novella-length lead story. The set of eleven stories was credited to "Paul Merchant", and went unclaimed by Ellison for decades.
Over the years, all of Ellison's books have enjoyed reissue, over and over again, and numerous collections of his short fiction have continued to see print. His adult-audience material, however, has remained unavailable-- until now.
For the uninitiated, we recommend consumption in very small doses. A damp towel and bed rest may be necessary.
For the lively set, prepare to blast into orbit with blade-wielding ferocity as Ellison takes you into a cobblestone wilderness fraught with hate and violence, a street level cosmos where shadowy creatures are hard, and blunt, and malicious, and where hope hangs a shingle that reads, "GET LOST".
In the realm of 1950's juvenile delinquent fiction, it was Ellison who dragged the unnamed genre from the gentle hands of the social workers into a filthy basement, where he worked it over, with great satisfaction, into an alternate universe of hate and pain. Ellison is the king of JD fiction. Of this, there can be no debate.
158 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2012
8 people are currently reading
83 people want to read
About the author
Harlan Ellison
1,083 books2,837 followersHarlan Jay Ellison (1934-2018) was a prolific American writer of short stories, novellas, teleplays, essays, and criticism.
His literary and television work has received many awards. He wrote for the original series of both The Outer Limits and Star Trek as well as The Alfred Hitchcock Hour; edited the multiple-award-winning short story anthology series Dangerous Visions; and served as creative consultant/writer to the science fiction TV series The New Twilight Zone and Babylon 5.
Several of his short fiction pieces have been made into movies, such as the classic "The Boy and His Dog".
His literary and television work has received many awards. He wrote for the original series of both The Outer Limits and Star Trek as well as The Alfred Hitchcock Hour; edited the multiple-award-winning short story anthology series Dangerous Visions; and served as creative consultant/writer to the science fiction TV series The New Twilight Zone and Babylon 5.
Several of his short fiction pieces have been made into movies, such as the classic "The Boy and His Dog".
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Displaying 1 - 20 of 20 reviews
July 7, 2020
Ellison wrote these stories in the 1950's, very early in his career, and they are for the most part not good ones. They are stories he wrote swiftly and pseudonymously to buy groceries and pay his rent for men's magazines and similar markets with a strong emphasis on sex and violence. This is one of four such collections of Ellison's early work; Getting in the Wind is a companion book to this collection, and Ellison self-published two others, Honorable Whoredom at a Penny a Word and Again, Honorable Whoredom at a Penny a Word. The two Kicks Books books contain the more misogynistic of the stories; the original publication of the collection was titled Sex Gang as by Paul Merchant. Ellison contributes a very entertaining introduction to the book explaining the provenance and almost apologizing for the contents. Sex Gang is the longest story included, and actually is probably among the ten or twelve longest stories he ever published. Nedra at f:5.6 is my favorite of the six stories; it's a clever homage to Fritz Leiber. I chuckled through Both Ends of the Candle, a Mrs. Robinson kind of thing with a protagonist named Asimov, though I felt guilty about it. The Bohemia of Arthur Archer is a cute and clever story, too. One thing I thought was neat was both of the covers for the new books featured juvenile delinquent boys cowering on the ground before switchblade-bearing females, whereas the cover of Sex Gang featured the traditional gender roles of the 1950s. This is far from the best of Ellison, but it's entertaining both from an historical perspective to see an interesting view of gang life in the 1950s, and to read the early works of one of the most celebrated writers of the last century.
January 27, 2018
A collection of pulpy short stories that are very much a product of their time. If you don't expect too much and don't take the stories too seriously there is a bit of fun to be had here.
November 27, 2024
Another poison book but when in NYC...
November 11, 2023
3.5 stars. Worth a read if you're an Ellison fan. Now onto the 2nd collection.
August 17, 2012
Quite entertaining bunch of stories friom Ellison's younger days(mud-twenties). In the introduction, he quite freely admits they are not his best work. Learning his craft, recently married, they were written to provide for family. Considered porno at the time, they are quite tame by most anything you read today.
While realizing these were by a young writer honing his craft, I enjoyed them.
My favorite was BOTH ENDS OF THE CANDLE, a humorous look at a young college football player named Asimov(not an accident I think) who hooks up with two lusty women, a mother and daughter named Candle, without each knowing of the other, and the results for him.
Fun look at a great writer in his younger days.
While realizing these were by a young writer honing his craft, I enjoyed them.
My favorite was BOTH ENDS OF THE CANDLE, a humorous look at a young college football player named Asimov(not an accident I think) who hooks up with two lusty women, a mother and daughter named Candle, without each knowing of the other, and the results for him.
Fun look at a great writer in his younger days.
October 9, 2025
"This is how modern fairy tales begin."
For over half a century, the hardest to locate book from Harlan Ellison's bibliography was the 1959 short story collection Sex Gang by Paul Merchant. It was published by Nightstand Books, a line of sleazy paperbacks which Ellison was secretly editing for Bill Hamling. It was a last-minute project to fill an unexpected hole in the publishing schedule.
In 2012, the author finally agreed to bring the stories back into print. He decided to add some additional material from the same era and turn it into a double-volume set. Pulling a Train is the first volume and includes a brand-new forward by Ellison.
The front cover depicts a scared, bloodied juvenile delinquent cowering in front of a faceless woman with a stiletto blade. This is a gender reversal of the original 1959 cover. It depicts a scene from the title novella "Sex Gang". The boy on the ground is Deek Cullen, a thief and killer who is running from the Syndicate after a gunfight in a brothel. The knife-wielding villainess is Fabia DeLuca, the leader of an all-girl street gang that wants Deek as their boy-toy.
I do not understand Ellison's hesitancy to re-release these stories. Several of them are on par with those in Children of the Streets and The Deadly Streets. The others, even the sexed-up amateur efforts, still manage to entertain:
"Nedra at f:5.6" (1957) -- A photographer is taken by an alluring model, although he is hard pressed to explain why his attraction is so strong. This moody, atmospheric story succeeds by blending horror and suspense. Inspired by Fritz Leiber's "The Girl With the Hungry Eyes". Also published under the titles "The Lustful One" and "The Hungry One".
"The Bohemia of Arthur Archer" (1957) -- Alan is a college student who falls for a Greenwich Village stripper, but he is too much a bourgeois conformist for her crowd. Originally "Bohemia for Christie".
"Jeanie with the Bedroom Eyes" (1956) -- Don falls for Jean Belamonte, a gorgeous bed-warmer in a department store window. His attraction borders on obsession, but he has to get past one of her very specific hang-ups. Originally "Girl With the Bedroom Eyes"
"Both Ends of the Candle" (year unknown) -- Juggling two girlfriends at once is no mean feat, especially when they are related: "Three months of dating Dot Candle and her daughter Valerie --without either one knowing I was romping in the hay with the other--had worn me to a fine edge of nervous hysteria." One of Ellison's funniest stories, ever.
"A Girl Named Poison" (year unknown) -- After being mugged and beaten by a street gang, Harry vows to get revenge on the icy deb who baited the trap for them.
4 stars – This may be far from Ellison’s best work, but I am still glad these stories are back in print.
For over half a century, the hardest to locate book from Harlan Ellison's bibliography was the 1959 short story collection Sex Gang by Paul Merchant. It was published by Nightstand Books, a line of sleazy paperbacks which Ellison was secretly editing for Bill Hamling. It was a last-minute project to fill an unexpected hole in the publishing schedule.
In 2012, the author finally agreed to bring the stories back into print. He decided to add some additional material from the same era and turn it into a double-volume set. Pulling a Train is the first volume and includes a brand-new forward by Ellison.
The front cover depicts a scared, bloodied juvenile delinquent cowering in front of a faceless woman with a stiletto blade. This is a gender reversal of the original 1959 cover. It depicts a scene from the title novella "Sex Gang". The boy on the ground is Deek Cullen, a thief and killer who is running from the Syndicate after a gunfight in a brothel. The knife-wielding villainess is Fabia DeLuca, the leader of an all-girl street gang that wants Deek as their boy-toy.
I do not understand Ellison's hesitancy to re-release these stories. Several of them are on par with those in Children of the Streets and The Deadly Streets. The others, even the sexed-up amateur efforts, still manage to entertain:
"Nedra at f:5.6" (1957) -- A photographer is taken by an alluring model, although he is hard pressed to explain why his attraction is so strong. This moody, atmospheric story succeeds by blending horror and suspense. Inspired by Fritz Leiber's "The Girl With the Hungry Eyes". Also published under the titles "The Lustful One" and "The Hungry One".
"The Bohemia of Arthur Archer" (1957) -- Alan is a college student who falls for a Greenwich Village stripper, but he is too much a bourgeois conformist for her crowd. Originally "Bohemia for Christie".
"Jeanie with the Bedroom Eyes" (1956) -- Don falls for Jean Belamonte, a gorgeous bed-warmer in a department store window. His attraction borders on obsession, but he has to get past one of her very specific hang-ups. Originally "Girl With the Bedroom Eyes"
"Both Ends of the Candle" (year unknown) -- Juggling two girlfriends at once is no mean feat, especially when they are related: "Three months of dating Dot Candle and her daughter Valerie --without either one knowing I was romping in the hay with the other--had worn me to a fine edge of nervous hysteria." One of Ellison's funniest stories, ever.
"A Girl Named Poison" (year unknown) -- After being mugged and beaten by a street gang, Harry vows to get revenge on the icy deb who baited the trap for them.
4 stars – This may be far from Ellison’s best work, but I am still glad these stories are back in print.
July 12, 2025
Fascinating demonstration, in a primitive sense, of what a lot of men get off to - but not even remotely intriguing, provocative, or well-written. It is nothing more than pulpy smut of the most basic variety (and to be fair, it is very upfront about being exactly that), full of endless breasts breasting boobily, beatings, rapes, everyone thirsting for the titular guy, and some outstanding levels of dehumanizing misogyny, which made my skin crawl. I love Harlan Ellison's short stories, and when you squint you can see, even here, far cry glimpses of the heavy-hitters he is going to produce, but this is frankly embarrassing in its total luck of subversiveness, and quite ugly.
January 13, 2025
Beyond giving us a picture of a young writer finding his voice, this collection isn't very good. It's a future legend churning out sexploitation early in his career when he needed money. There are glimpses of the Ellison talent the world would come to know, but those are few and far between. These stories were originally published under pen names, and it's not difficult to understand why. Compared to the run-of-the-mill sexploitation paperbacks of its time, these are good, maybe even great. But in terms of Harlan Ellison's work or trying to find literary merit? There's just not much there.
February 6, 2017
Short stories of gangs in the late 50;s. Probably only of interest to Harlan Ellison junkies, which I am. It is interesting to see what was titillating in the 50's. Harlan could always write and this is no exception.
July 5, 2018
Hilariously badly written prose. Even though it's a short book, I can't believe I actually finished it. It's so bad.
May 4, 2023
some great "for the money" shorts from the start of his career, not SF, Men's mags stories!
March 15, 2024
Terminally horny tales. Young Harlan Ellison was writing all these stories one-handed, clearly.
December 22, 2025
Standard pulp fiction. Nothing to write home about...
Read
April 12, 2025I lost count of the number of times I introduced Ellison to friends' readers. He manages to shock and make you laugh within a paragraph, and sometimes even in the same sentence. His sense of humour can be crass and brutal or very subtle. He's caustic at worst and sarcastic at best.
Regardless of the fury and rawness or the poetic sensibility he used to write his stories, essentially, he wrote about what it means to be human, even when in full wild delirium mode.
I have repeated over and over again that Ellison was a writer we can love or hate, but cannot ignore.
I always recommend reading "The 3 most important things in life"; the text can be found on the NET, on "harlanellison.com". Funny, enlightening and chilling.
Science fiction bordering dystopian landscapes is one of the literary genres with the most power to highlight the fundamental errors of blind, stupid and savage societies, influence readers and promote change. And Harlan Ellison was one of its most powerful champions.
But this collection of stories, written in the 50s when Ellison was in his 20s, is a little out of his usual or best. They have two dominant themes: sex and violence.
They were commissioned to integrate adult male pulp magazines. Therefore, we are basically talking about the idea of “sex sells”. And since Harlan Ellison wasn't the kind of writer to shy from a challenge he started right with the title: "Pulling a train" typically meant group sex involving one woman and multiple men, submitting a woman to this without her consent, essentially a gang rape powered by misogyny at full steam.
Pulp magazines were definitely for a more adult and mature audience. And the ones oriented to adult males always had scandalous covers (for the epoch) and told their own story in just one image designed to shock and grab the reader's attention in a glance, frequently with a half-dressed woman and a male hero coming to her rescue or a half-dressed woman and a male attacker coming to harm her.
Frequently the content reflected the cover image and the stories were full of rough sex, straightforward rape, murder, violence, drugs and all the other anxieties of a post-war decadent society with identity issues.
Creativity and originality weren't the most common in stock in these magazines; usually, the "authors" of the stories weren't considered writers but "scribers" repeating plots with slight variations. But this is Harlan Ellison entering the "scene", and the game changed immediately. Even if he kept these stories faithfully to the themes and demands of the market, he did it in his own style, and that makes all the difference.
In this collection, Ellison offered us :
Sex Gang
Assault, murder, rough sex, rape, prostitution and the revenge of feminism over misogyny. A cautionary tale to all male apes: wits are more important than "balls"...
Nedra
Already reviewed in "No doors, no windows", another collection of short stories.
The Bohemia of Arthur Archer
A scornful satire about the supposed intellectual artistic life and the Greenwich Village lifestyle in the 50s. How to act, walk, talk, dress and, worst of all, think like a "Village bohemian".
Jeanie with the Bedroom Eyes
An Amsterdammer window girl in the USA? Brothel windows of Amsterdam: In the narrow alleys of the Red Light District, you will find all imaginable (and unimaginable) types of sexual services. The prostitute rents a window plus workspace from a window operator for a certain period of time, often per day or part of a day. Ellison plays full with the motto "sex sells"... mattresses.
Both Ends of the Candle
When a guy thinks with the "wrong head" it means trouble! Double trouble in this case. Almost hilarious if it wasn't for the misogyny and stupidity. Moral: When you chew more than you can swallow, you are sure to suffocate. A tale in the form of a "wet dream" of all teenagers, fuelled by hormones.
A Girl Named Poison
Revenge is a poison that kills slowly. This is a story of revenge and redemption. In the words of Harlan Ellison, a "modern fairy tale". But they won't live happily ever after, no one ever does...
Ellison wasn't very proud of these stories; as he says in his introduction: “No point in apologizing for these original stories. I did ‘em for the buck. I was married at the time and needed the money and did what everybody does. I pulled the plow. It was my third book published and the stories are simplistic, not the greatest literature ever proffered but I got a thousand dollars for the tome. That was big money in the Fifties. .
If you’re a Harlan Ellison fan, this is a must-buy; If you are a casual reader, you will find plenty to enjoy in this collection, being the aggressive, gritty writing style of Ellison the least of the surprises you can find reading his stories.
Regardless of the fury and rawness or the poetic sensibility he used to write his stories, essentially, he wrote about what it means to be human, even when in full wild delirium mode.
I have repeated over and over again that Ellison was a writer we can love or hate, but cannot ignore.
I always recommend reading "The 3 most important things in life"; the text can be found on the NET, on "harlanellison.com". Funny, enlightening and chilling.
Science fiction bordering dystopian landscapes is one of the literary genres with the most power to highlight the fundamental errors of blind, stupid and savage societies, influence readers and promote change. And Harlan Ellison was one of its most powerful champions.
But this collection of stories, written in the 50s when Ellison was in his 20s, is a little out of his usual or best. They have two dominant themes: sex and violence.
They were commissioned to integrate adult male pulp magazines. Therefore, we are basically talking about the idea of “sex sells”. And since Harlan Ellison wasn't the kind of writer to shy from a challenge he started right with the title: "Pulling a train" typically meant group sex involving one woman and multiple men, submitting a woman to this without her consent, essentially a gang rape powered by misogyny at full steam.
Pulp magazines were definitely for a more adult and mature audience. And the ones oriented to adult males always had scandalous covers (for the epoch) and told their own story in just one image designed to shock and grab the reader's attention in a glance, frequently with a half-dressed woman and a male hero coming to her rescue or a half-dressed woman and a male attacker coming to harm her.
Frequently the content reflected the cover image and the stories were full of rough sex, straightforward rape, murder, violence, drugs and all the other anxieties of a post-war decadent society with identity issues.
Creativity and originality weren't the most common in stock in these magazines; usually, the "authors" of the stories weren't considered writers but "scribers" repeating plots with slight variations. But this is Harlan Ellison entering the "scene", and the game changed immediately. Even if he kept these stories faithfully to the themes and demands of the market, he did it in his own style, and that makes all the difference.
In this collection, Ellison offered us :
Sex Gang
Assault, murder, rough sex, rape, prostitution and the revenge of feminism over misogyny. A cautionary tale to all male apes: wits are more important than "balls"...
Nedra
Already reviewed in "No doors, no windows", another collection of short stories.
The Bohemia of Arthur Archer
A scornful satire about the supposed intellectual artistic life and the Greenwich Village lifestyle in the 50s. How to act, walk, talk, dress and, worst of all, think like a "Village bohemian".
Jeanie with the Bedroom Eyes
An Amsterdammer window girl in the USA? Brothel windows of Amsterdam: In the narrow alleys of the Red Light District, you will find all imaginable (and unimaginable) types of sexual services. The prostitute rents a window plus workspace from a window operator for a certain period of time, often per day or part of a day. Ellison plays full with the motto "sex sells"... mattresses.
Both Ends of the Candle
When a guy thinks with the "wrong head" it means trouble! Double trouble in this case. Almost hilarious if it wasn't for the misogyny and stupidity. Moral: When you chew more than you can swallow, you are sure to suffocate. A tale in the form of a "wet dream" of all teenagers, fuelled by hormones.
A Girl Named Poison
Revenge is a poison that kills slowly. This is a story of revenge and redemption. In the words of Harlan Ellison, a "modern fairy tale". But they won't live happily ever after, no one ever does...
Ellison wasn't very proud of these stories; as he says in his introduction: “No point in apologizing for these original stories. I did ‘em for the buck. I was married at the time and needed the money and did what everybody does. I pulled the plow. It was my third book published and the stories are simplistic, not the greatest literature ever proffered but I got a thousand dollars for the tome. That was big money in the Fifties. .
If you’re a Harlan Ellison fan, this is a must-buy; If you are a casual reader, you will find plenty to enjoy in this collection, being the aggressive, gritty writing style of Ellison the least of the surprises you can find reading his stories.
September 8, 2018
this was incredible. I mean, the stories run from really quite horrifying to short and cute, and several are like "what would happen if you hired a really incredible writer to write 'penthouse letters'" which turns out exactly as fun as it sounds.
Oh, and it comes with an absolutely classic Ellison introduction:
"I am Hemingway at the ship’s railing, and my youthful indiscretions have risen from the deep, have ascended to print, and if you sat on a dune in the Gobi for a billion years, you could not know how discomfiting it is to be writing this introduction. "
I mean, I think that captures a lot of the beauty in Ellison's introductions... the casual... well, in anyone else, it would be incredible arrogance. But he pulls it off. And the whole introduction is like this. I'm telling you; the introductions to his books are really fun by themselves.
Oh, and it comes with an absolutely classic Ellison introduction:
"I am Hemingway at the ship’s railing, and my youthful indiscretions have risen from the deep, have ascended to print, and if you sat on a dune in the Gobi for a billion years, you could not know how discomfiting it is to be writing this introduction. "
I mean, I think that captures a lot of the beauty in Ellison's introductions... the casual... well, in anyone else, it would be incredible arrogance. But he pulls it off. And the whole introduction is like this. I'm telling you; the introductions to his books are really fun by themselves.
May 22, 2016
Not a 3-star review - more like a 3.5 star review. I'm a fan of pulp-style 'trash' list, but in limited doses. The 'main' story was actually the least interesting story in the bunch. What makes 'Pulling A Train' a worthy read is the other collection of short stories. Some are thrilling, some are quite funny, and almost all are as predictable as your typical pulp/trash novel. A quick read - perfect for a 3-4 hour flight on an airplane.
March 26, 2015
Unapologetically trashy, but embarrassingly entertaining. A couple of these early stories have appeared in Ellison's real collections, with one an homage to Fritz Leiber, but those are the outliers. The rest star juvenile delinquents and men on the run who tangle with loose women with breasts "like the rubber bumpers on a Cadillac" (to quote one typical description).
December 1, 2012
Sex Gang ***oo
Nedra at f:5.6 ***oo
The Bohemia of Arthur Archer ***oo
Jeanie with the Bedroom Eyes ***oo
Both Ends of the Candle ***oo
A Girl Named Poison ***oo
Nedra at f:5.6 ***oo
The Bohemia of Arthur Archer ***oo
Jeanie with the Bedroom Eyes ***oo
Both Ends of the Candle ***oo
A Girl Named Poison ***oo
October 1, 2025
Always and forever Harlan Ellison
April 18, 2017
Interesting time capsule of stories Ellison did in his early days for low rent men's magazines, mostly under pseudonyms. No great literature here, but one of the stories is intended as an homage to Fritz Lieber and another brings to mind Woody Allen. Worth a look for Ellison fans and pop culture archeologists.
Displaying 1 - 20 of 20 reviews