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Slippage: Previously Precariously Poised, Uncollected Stories
Harlan Ellison is undoubtedly one of the most audacious, infuriating, brazen characters on the planet. Which may help explain why he is also one of the most brilliant, innovative, and eloquent writers on earth. Slippage simply presents recent, typical Ellison. In a word, masterful. The 21 stories in this 1997 collection, which is encased in black boxes, show Ellison at the height of his powers, with several of the stories (no surprise here) major award-winners. Highlights include a black mind reader who pays a visit to a white serial killer, a husband who falls prey to a vampiric personal computer, and a love affair between a young man and a woman who may be more undead than alive. Perhaps even more fascinating are the painfully candid snapshots of autobiography running throughout the volume. Even if Ellison's unsettling fictions are not enough to dazzle you, his often bizarre life experiences as an author will still keep you compulsively turning the page like a polite voyeur. --Stanley Wiater
Contents:
The Man Who Rowed Christopher Columbus Ashore (1992)
Anywhere but Here, with Anybody but You (1996)
Crazy as a Soup Sandwich (1989)
Darkness upon the Face of the Deep (1991)
The Pale Silver Dollar of the Moon Pays Its Way and Makes Change: Version 1 (1997)
The Pale Silver Dollar of the Moon Pays Its Way and Makes Change: Version 2 (1994)
The Lingering Scent of Woodsmoke (1996)
The Museum on Cyclops Avenue (1995)
Go toward the Light (1996)
Mefisto in Onyx (1993)
Where I Shall Dwell in the Next World (1992)
Chatting with Anubis (1995)
The Few, the Proud (1989)
The Deadly "Nackles" Affair (1987) essay
Nackles (1964)
Nackles (1987)
Sensible City (1994)
The Dragon on the Bookshelf (1995) with Robert Silverberg
Keyboard (1995)
Jane Doe #112 (1990)
The Dreams a Nightmare Dreams (1997)
Pulling Hard Time (1995)
Scartaris, June 28th (1990)
She's a Young Thing and Cannot Leave Her Mother (1988)
Midnight in the Sunken Cathedral (1995)
Contents:
The Man Who Rowed Christopher Columbus Ashore (1992)
Anywhere but Here, with Anybody but You (1996)
Crazy as a Soup Sandwich (1989)
Darkness upon the Face of the Deep (1991)
The Pale Silver Dollar of the Moon Pays Its Way and Makes Change: Version 1 (1997)
The Pale Silver Dollar of the Moon Pays Its Way and Makes Change: Version 2 (1994)
The Lingering Scent of Woodsmoke (1996)
The Museum on Cyclops Avenue (1995)
Go toward the Light (1996)
Mefisto in Onyx (1993)
Where I Shall Dwell in the Next World (1992)
Chatting with Anubis (1995)
The Few, the Proud (1989)
The Deadly "Nackles" Affair (1987) essay
Nackles (1964)
Nackles (1987)
Sensible City (1994)
The Dragon on the Bookshelf (1995) with Robert Silverberg
Keyboard (1995)
Jane Doe #112 (1990)
The Dreams a Nightmare Dreams (1997)
Pulling Hard Time (1995)
Scartaris, June 28th (1990)
She's a Young Thing and Cannot Leave Her Mother (1988)
Midnight in the Sunken Cathedral (1995)
352 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1997
59 people are currently reading
881 people want to read
About the author
Harlan Ellison
1,076 books2,796 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 - 30 of 55 reviews
January 3, 2010
It is a disappointment that while authors like Isaac Asimov, Arthur C. Clark and Robert A. Heinlein have such immediate renown and recognition, the name Harlan Ellison does not often get the respect it deserves. Asimov and company were true visionaries, but Ellison was just a few too many years late onto the scene. Most famous for his short story collections, he has penned countless works over the last 50 years and is best known for editing the book “Dangerous Visions”; an anthology of tales by varied authors so wild and irreverent that they couldn’t be published anywhere else. His 1997 collection, titled “Slippage,” is a fantastic book of 25 tales so far beyond classification or genre, they almost must be considered in a category all their own. Breaking the barriers of fantasy, scifi, horror and whatever else crawled into his head that day, Ellison writes tales that will affect you. Stories that will make you think and linger in your head for days after, the ultimate sign of an excellent author.
December 9, 2018
Slippage is another great Harlan Ellison volume of short stories. It includes the great novella, Mefisto in Onyx, The Man Who Rowed Christopher Columbus Ashore, Anywhere but here, With Anyone But You, and Jane Doe 112.
I like his nearly running theme of an entity that has many forms, living hundreds of years and watching what we do. And how good is the Mark Twain thing?
She's a Young Thing and Can't Leave Her Mother, is as Harlan once said, about his wife Susan. It was nothing that I expected! It turned into a Jack Ketchum novel!
He also more or less predicts the movie Taken.
Suffice it to say, Harlan should be read and savored by us all.
I like his nearly running theme of an entity that has many forms, living hundreds of years and watching what we do. And how good is the Mark Twain thing?
She's a Young Thing and Can't Leave Her Mother, is as Harlan once said, about his wife Susan. It was nothing that I expected! It turned into a Jack Ketchum novel!
He also more or less predicts the movie Taken.
Suffice it to say, Harlan should be read and savored by us all.
November 8, 2018
Published in 1997, Slippage was the first collection of new fiction from Harlan Ellison in nearly a decade, after the seminal Angry Candy in 1988. (OK, I am fudging just a bit. Technically, there was Mind Fields, which contained 33 short-short stories inspired by the art of Jacek Yerka. However, these efforts were slight; that volume was always more a vehicle for Jacek's art than Harlan's.)
No one knew it at the time, but Harlan's health was deteriorating, and this would be his penultimate collection of new stories. Many books were still published after 1997, but they were compilations of newspaper columns, magazine essays, unproduced screenplays, forgotten fiction from the 1950's, graphic novel adaptations of his prose work, and several "best of" retrospectives.
Harlan would live another 21 years after Slippage, but his time as an active writer had effectively ceased.
Finally, in 2015, 18 years later, Ellison had published enough original material for one final volume of new stories, Can & Can'tankerous. It was a wonderful five-star collection, but it was a curtain call. By then all his fans (and critics) knew the end was near. Slippage was the last book in which Harlan Ellison was still seen as a significant, strong, and contemporary voice in the field.
Here are my individual story reviews:
"The Man Who Rowed Christopher Columbus Ashore" -- The impish godlike being Levendis travels through history, sometimes doing noble good deeds, sometimes causing great pain and calamity, often avenging wrongdoing with disproportionate responses. His name is eventually revealed to mean "full of the pleasure of living". This is an interesting but baffling story with religious overtones. Selected for inclusion in The Best American Short Stories (1993).
"Anywhere But Here, With Anybody But You"--A man arrives home from work one night to find his wife gone with the kids, and a stranger sitting on his sofa telling him to leave everything he owns and everyone he loves. This is a slightly weird but thought-provoking existential tale about starting over.
"Crazy as a Soup Sandwich"--Arky Lochner is a down-on-his-luck gambler who makes a deal with a demon in order to win enough money to pay off his debts. However, when the demon tricks him, Arky must turn to his loan shark for help. This teleplay for the 1980's reboot of The Twilight Zone is light-hearted and funny, but not very memorable.
"Darkness Upon the Face of the Deep"-- Guided by a stone with incomprehensible hieroglyphics, an archeologist and a tabloid reporter journey to the mountains of Syria in search of an ancient Hittite tomb. This unsatisfying horror tale feels like Ellison was trying unsuccessfully to channel the spirit of Robert E. Howard.
"The Pale Silver Dollar of the Moon Pays its Way and Makes Change"-- Ellison includes two versions of this story, which is not so much a story as a series of autobiographical vignettes juxtaposed against the backdrop of real world events. The anecdotes are engaging and interesting by themselves. Taken as whole, they are effective meditations on how loneliness and insecurity influence relationships, personalities, and maybe even the course of human history.
"The Lingering Scent of Woodsmoke" -- A Nazi war criminal is cornered by an angry woman in the woods. The reader's expectation--she must be a Jew--is completely flipped on its head in a fantasy twist that would make Tolkien proud.
"The Museum on Cyclopse Avenue"--A nerdy professor falls for a beautiful woman who hunts mythical creatures. Imaginative.
"Go Toward the Light"--A time-drifting Jewish man from the future travels back to Jerusalem in 135 BC to give the priest a synthetic oil that will burn for eight days, thus explaining the miracle of Chanukah. The story is funny and well-written, but honestly I expect something more original when a talent like Ellison decides to tackle time travel.
"Mefisto in Onyx" -- A psychic visits a killer on death row, intending to read his thoughts, but instead he is pulled into an epic battle of mind control. This is an imaginative and suspenseful science fiction story dealing with the effects of telepathy. The author creates three interesting, contradictory, and textured characters and then ratchets up the tension with some surprising plot twists. Unfortunately, he also tries too hard to weave subtext about racism into a story that fundamentally has very little to do with race. He also threw in a couple unnecessary rants about religion, which (while funny) distracted me from the story. Tied for the 1993 Bram Stoker award, alongside Jack Cady's story "The Night We Buried Road Dog".
"Where I Shall Dwell in the Next World"--In this piece, which is part essay and part fiction, Harlan presents three unconnected vignettes that each originated from his mishearing a snippet of conversation. Similar to "Eidolons" from Angry Candy.
"Chatting With Anubis"-- A short, whimsical fantasy centered on the idea that old gods of mythology have been supplanted by the new God of the Jews and Christians, and they are not at all happy about it. Can be seen as a postscript to Ellison’s Deathbird Stories collection. Won the 1995 Bram Stoker.
"The Few, The Proud"-- Set in Harlan's Earth-Kyben cycle, this is a visceral antiwar story of a young enthusiastic soldier who loses his idealism after slaughtering a village of Kyben elders, women, and children. It seemed to be inspired by some of the atrocities of Vietnam War. The story is not subtle, but evocative.
"The Deadly Nackles Affair"-- A lengthy introduction explaining how Harlan came to be a writer on the 1985 reincarnation of The Twilight Zone television show, and why adapting this short story caused him to leave that job. (This is essentially the same set of events also related by George R.R. Martin in Dreamsongs, since Martin was the first writer to attempt the teleplay.)
"Nackles" by Donald Westlake-- A dark, funny tale built on the premise that Santa Claus is a modern-day god of commerce, and therefore there must also be an evil anti-Santa god as well.
"Nackles: The Screenplay" -- Harlan adapted Westlake's story into a screenplay, giving it a rather preachy anti-bigotry message. He caught flak from the network for, among other things, portraying a poor Puerto Rican woman lying to get more welfare money. After reading the script, it is hard to see what made CBS so nervous, but it is equally difficult to understand why Ellison was so attached to this weak script that he was willing to walk away from the TZ job altogether.
"Sensible City"-- A fun but insubstantial piece about a sadistic former sheriff and his deputy, now on the run from the law themselves, who get their comeuppance in a town full of zombies.
"The Dragon on the Bookshelf" (with Robert Silverberg) -- In a mythological world where dragons are gods, one little dragon travels across a nightmarish version of San Francisco, risking the fate of the universe to save the life of one woman he loves. One of Harlan's better collaborations.
"Keyboard"--A man is bitten by a vampire computer. This light fantasy highlights Ellison's distrust of technology and satirizes our addiction to computers in the pre-mobile device era.
"Jane Doe #112"--A man is pursued by ghosts off Bourbon Street. This is an ambitious story that never quite gels about how some people live full, passionate lives that seem to leach energy from weaker-willed individuals.
"The Dreams a Nightmare Dreams"-- A Lovecraft-ian creature of malevolence descended on earth sixty five million years ago, killed the dinosaurs, and now slumbers in the Sigsby Deep beneath the Gulf of Mexico. This story has an intriguing setup, but it only leads to a punch line ending that the only way to fight this horrible monster is with a constant stream of random computer screen saver images.
"Pulling Hard Time"--A brief but brutal horror story. Harlan presents a future where inmates of New Alcatraz are sentenced to perpetually relive the worst moments of their lives.
"Scartaris, June 28"--In this sort-of sequel to "The Man Who Rowed Christopher Columbus Ashore", an old mythological god (implied to be Lavendis) comes to Mount Scartaris (a reference to Jules Verne's Journey to the Center of the Earth) to fulfill his destiny.
"She's a Young Thing and Cannot Leave Her Mother"--A man travels with his wife to her family's home in Scotland. As the story unfolds, the reader slowly realizes the wife may not be exactly… human. This is an interesting horror story that takes on the real-life legend of Sawney Bean.
"Midnight in the Sunken Cathedral"--An overwritten melodrama about a diver swept off the edge of the continental shelf by a mermaid and then deposited in the lost city of Atlantis, where he reunites with his dead father.
No one knew it at the time, but Harlan's health was deteriorating, and this would be his penultimate collection of new stories. Many books were still published after 1997, but they were compilations of newspaper columns, magazine essays, unproduced screenplays, forgotten fiction from the 1950's, graphic novel adaptations of his prose work, and several "best of" retrospectives.
Harlan would live another 21 years after Slippage, but his time as an active writer had effectively ceased.
Finally, in 2015, 18 years later, Ellison had published enough original material for one final volume of new stories, Can & Can'tankerous. It was a wonderful five-star collection, but it was a curtain call. By then all his fans (and critics) knew the end was near. Slippage was the last book in which Harlan Ellison was still seen as a significant, strong, and contemporary voice in the field.
Here are my individual story reviews:
"The Man Who Rowed Christopher Columbus Ashore" -- The impish godlike being Levendis travels through history, sometimes doing noble good deeds, sometimes causing great pain and calamity, often avenging wrongdoing with disproportionate responses. His name is eventually revealed to mean "full of the pleasure of living". This is an interesting but baffling story with religious overtones. Selected for inclusion in The Best American Short Stories (1993).
"Anywhere But Here, With Anybody But You"--A man arrives home from work one night to find his wife gone with the kids, and a stranger sitting on his sofa telling him to leave everything he owns and everyone he loves. This is a slightly weird but thought-provoking existential tale about starting over.
"Crazy as a Soup Sandwich"--Arky Lochner is a down-on-his-luck gambler who makes a deal with a demon in order to win enough money to pay off his debts. However, when the demon tricks him, Arky must turn to his loan shark for help. This teleplay for the 1980's reboot of The Twilight Zone is light-hearted and funny, but not very memorable.
"Darkness Upon the Face of the Deep"-- Guided by a stone with incomprehensible hieroglyphics, an archeologist and a tabloid reporter journey to the mountains of Syria in search of an ancient Hittite tomb. This unsatisfying horror tale feels like Ellison was trying unsuccessfully to channel the spirit of Robert E. Howard.
"The Pale Silver Dollar of the Moon Pays its Way and Makes Change"-- Ellison includes two versions of this story, which is not so much a story as a series of autobiographical vignettes juxtaposed against the backdrop of real world events. The anecdotes are engaging and interesting by themselves. Taken as whole, they are effective meditations on how loneliness and insecurity influence relationships, personalities, and maybe even the course of human history.
"The Lingering Scent of Woodsmoke" -- A Nazi war criminal is cornered by an angry woman in the woods. The reader's expectation--she must be a Jew--is completely flipped on its head in a fantasy twist that would make Tolkien proud.
"The Museum on Cyclopse Avenue"--A nerdy professor falls for a beautiful woman who hunts mythical creatures. Imaginative.
"Go Toward the Light"--A time-drifting Jewish man from the future travels back to Jerusalem in 135 BC to give the priest a synthetic oil that will burn for eight days, thus explaining the miracle of Chanukah. The story is funny and well-written, but honestly I expect something more original when a talent like Ellison decides to tackle time travel.
"Mefisto in Onyx" -- A psychic visits a killer on death row, intending to read his thoughts, but instead he is pulled into an epic battle of mind control. This is an imaginative and suspenseful science fiction story dealing with the effects of telepathy. The author creates three interesting, contradictory, and textured characters and then ratchets up the tension with some surprising plot twists. Unfortunately, he also tries too hard to weave subtext about racism into a story that fundamentally has very little to do with race. He also threw in a couple unnecessary rants about religion, which (while funny) distracted me from the story. Tied for the 1993 Bram Stoker award, alongside Jack Cady's story "The Night We Buried Road Dog".
"Where I Shall Dwell in the Next World"--In this piece, which is part essay and part fiction, Harlan presents three unconnected vignettes that each originated from his mishearing a snippet of conversation. Similar to "Eidolons" from Angry Candy.
"Chatting With Anubis"-- A short, whimsical fantasy centered on the idea that old gods of mythology have been supplanted by the new God of the Jews and Christians, and they are not at all happy about it. Can be seen as a postscript to Ellison’s Deathbird Stories collection. Won the 1995 Bram Stoker.
"The Few, The Proud"-- Set in Harlan's Earth-Kyben cycle, this is a visceral antiwar story of a young enthusiastic soldier who loses his idealism after slaughtering a village of Kyben elders, women, and children. It seemed to be inspired by some of the atrocities of Vietnam War. The story is not subtle, but evocative.
"The Deadly Nackles Affair"-- A lengthy introduction explaining how Harlan came to be a writer on the 1985 reincarnation of The Twilight Zone television show, and why adapting this short story caused him to leave that job. (This is essentially the same set of events also related by George R.R. Martin in Dreamsongs, since Martin was the first writer to attempt the teleplay.)
"Nackles" by Donald Westlake-- A dark, funny tale built on the premise that Santa Claus is a modern-day god of commerce, and therefore there must also be an evil anti-Santa god as well.
"Nackles: The Screenplay" -- Harlan adapted Westlake's story into a screenplay, giving it a rather preachy anti-bigotry message. He caught flak from the network for, among other things, portraying a poor Puerto Rican woman lying to get more welfare money. After reading the script, it is hard to see what made CBS so nervous, but it is equally difficult to understand why Ellison was so attached to this weak script that he was willing to walk away from the TZ job altogether.
"Sensible City"-- A fun but insubstantial piece about a sadistic former sheriff and his deputy, now on the run from the law themselves, who get their comeuppance in a town full of zombies.
"The Dragon on the Bookshelf" (with Robert Silverberg) -- In a mythological world where dragons are gods, one little dragon travels across a nightmarish version of San Francisco, risking the fate of the universe to save the life of one woman he loves. One of Harlan's better collaborations.
"Keyboard"--A man is bitten by a vampire computer. This light fantasy highlights Ellison's distrust of technology and satirizes our addiction to computers in the pre-mobile device era.
"Jane Doe #112"--A man is pursued by ghosts off Bourbon Street. This is an ambitious story that never quite gels about how some people live full, passionate lives that seem to leach energy from weaker-willed individuals.
"The Dreams a Nightmare Dreams"-- A Lovecraft-ian creature of malevolence descended on earth sixty five million years ago, killed the dinosaurs, and now slumbers in the Sigsby Deep beneath the Gulf of Mexico. This story has an intriguing setup, but it only leads to a punch line ending that the only way to fight this horrible monster is with a constant stream of random computer screen saver images.
"Pulling Hard Time"--A brief but brutal horror story. Harlan presents a future where inmates of New Alcatraz are sentenced to perpetually relive the worst moments of their lives.
"Scartaris, June 28"--In this sort-of sequel to "The Man Who Rowed Christopher Columbus Ashore", an old mythological god (implied to be Lavendis) comes to Mount Scartaris (a reference to Jules Verne's Journey to the Center of the Earth) to fulfill his destiny.
"She's a Young Thing and Cannot Leave Her Mother"--A man travels with his wife to her family's home in Scotland. As the story unfolds, the reader slowly realizes the wife may not be exactly… human. This is an interesting horror story that takes on the real-life legend of Sawney Bean.
"Midnight in the Sunken Cathedral"--An overwritten melodrama about a diver swept off the edge of the continental shelf by a mermaid and then deposited in the lost city of Atlantis, where he reunites with his dead father.
June 7, 2024
Overall, a solid collection of stories. This was my first real introduction to Ellison's writing, and in general he didn't disappoint. I appreciated the erudition involved in the creation of the stories, as many of them referenced historical figures, mythology, other literature, etc, which added a level of depth to the stories. Ellison is a consistently creative writer, although he does not always seem to reach the full potential some of his ideas merit.
The best were:
"The Man Who Rowed Christopher Columbus Ashore" - A bit disorienting a first but turns into a memorable story of a strange being interacting with different people.
"Mefisto in Onyx" - The highlight of the collection, featuring an interesting concept and memorable characters. One of the final story twists was a bit cheesy, but the overall story was strong.
"Keyboard" - A fantastical comment on the relationship between humans and technology that gets its point across well.
"Where I Shall Dwell in the Next World" - A series of vignettes, each based around a misheard phrase that Ellison encountered.
"Pulling Hard Time" - short, haunting dystopian commentary on the prison system
"She's a Young Thing and Cannot Leave Her Mother" - An effective, ambiguous reworking of an old Scottish legend.
The weaker ones:
"Darkness on the Face of the Deep" - An interesting set-up that Ellison didn't seem to know how to conclude.
"The Museum on Cyclops Avenue" - An entertaining story with a premise that could have been more fleshed out.
"Jane Doe #112" - Likewise, an interesting concept that is only properly described towards the end of the story, by which point it feels too late.
"Midnight in the Spain Cathedral" - Not a badly story, but just a conceptually odd story that felt like it was mashing a couple different ideas together.
Overall, a solid collection with only a handful of truly weak stories.
The best were:
"The Man Who Rowed Christopher Columbus Ashore" - A bit disorienting a first but turns into a memorable story of a strange being interacting with different people.
"Mefisto in Onyx" - The highlight of the collection, featuring an interesting concept and memorable characters. One of the final story twists was a bit cheesy, but the overall story was strong.
"Keyboard" - A fantastical comment on the relationship between humans and technology that gets its point across well.
"Where I Shall Dwell in the Next World" - A series of vignettes, each based around a misheard phrase that Ellison encountered.
"Pulling Hard Time" - short, haunting dystopian commentary on the prison system
"She's a Young Thing and Cannot Leave Her Mother" - An effective, ambiguous reworking of an old Scottish legend.
The weaker ones:
"Darkness on the Face of the Deep" - An interesting set-up that Ellison didn't seem to know how to conclude.
"The Museum on Cyclops Avenue" - An entertaining story with a premise that could have been more fleshed out.
"Jane Doe #112" - Likewise, an interesting concept that is only properly described towards the end of the story, by which point it feels too late.
"Midnight in the Spain Cathedral" - Not a badly story, but just a conceptually odd story that felt like it was mashing a couple different ideas together.
Overall, a solid collection with only a handful of truly weak stories.
September 23, 2015
The Basics
Slippage is a short story collection, which shouldn’t surprise any Ellison fans. Many of his collections have a theme, and this one has to be the saddest of all. At the time, he’d been through the wringer, and this was his last collection of new material. The term “slippage” is one he uses to emphasize a life being pushed in a direction it never wanted to go. A bad one.
My Thoughts
I’ll start out by saying that this has to be one of my favorites of his collections. There is so much strong work here. It’s extra depressing to know that because of health problems, he had to drop his heavy work schedule, and while he has done some writing since, he’s nowhere near as prolific as he once was. There’s not a weak spot among these stories. They are all worthy of attention, and some of them are definitely worth some large praise.
"Mefisto in Onyx." What do I even say about a story that blew me away like this one did? It should be a movie, though Ellison has some understandable reservations (that’s an understatement) about Hollywood that would make that kind of impossible. A better way to put it is it deserves to be a movie. A really good movie with all the bells and whistles. If I were to list a top five of his favorite stories, this would easily be in it. I don’t want to give anything about it away. Just know it needs to be read by everyone.
"The Museum on Cyclops Avenue" is another that needs to be gushed about. It’s one of those where the idea is just so good, so exciting and apt to make you grin, that it could ride on that alone and be great. But it does even more. Ellison has to be one of the only writers I’ve ever read who writes first person narratives and actually has a different voice for each one. He’d not writing as himself every time. That really shines here.
Lastly, “The Few, The Proud.” I say “lastly” because we’d be here all day if I didn’t limit myself to three stories to vomit praise all over. Trust me, choosing three from a collection this strong is no small task. In the case of “The Few, The Proud” it brought back around the story of the war with the Kyben. This time from the perspective of a deserting soldier on our side. So not only was it a chance to revisit a universe I found really interesting, but it was also a really fantastic anti-war story.
Those are just the tip of the iceberg. I think in making it my personal mission to read every collection I can get my hands on, I’ve inadvertently made it my personal mission to urge everyone who reads these reviews to check out Ellison’s work. So go on. Stop reading this and go read that.
Final Rating
5/5
Slippage is a short story collection, which shouldn’t surprise any Ellison fans. Many of his collections have a theme, and this one has to be the saddest of all. At the time, he’d been through the wringer, and this was his last collection of new material. The term “slippage” is one he uses to emphasize a life being pushed in a direction it never wanted to go. A bad one.
My Thoughts
I’ll start out by saying that this has to be one of my favorites of his collections. There is so much strong work here. It’s extra depressing to know that because of health problems, he had to drop his heavy work schedule, and while he has done some writing since, he’s nowhere near as prolific as he once was. There’s not a weak spot among these stories. They are all worthy of attention, and some of them are definitely worth some large praise.
"Mefisto in Onyx." What do I even say about a story that blew me away like this one did? It should be a movie, though Ellison has some understandable reservations (that’s an understatement) about Hollywood that would make that kind of impossible. A better way to put it is it deserves to be a movie. A really good movie with all the bells and whistles. If I were to list a top five of his favorite stories, this would easily be in it. I don’t want to give anything about it away. Just know it needs to be read by everyone.
"The Museum on Cyclops Avenue" is another that needs to be gushed about. It’s one of those where the idea is just so good, so exciting and apt to make you grin, that it could ride on that alone and be great. But it does even more. Ellison has to be one of the only writers I’ve ever read who writes first person narratives and actually has a different voice for each one. He’d not writing as himself every time. That really shines here.
Lastly, “The Few, The Proud.” I say “lastly” because we’d be here all day if I didn’t limit myself to three stories to vomit praise all over. Trust me, choosing three from a collection this strong is no small task. In the case of “The Few, The Proud” it brought back around the story of the war with the Kyben. This time from the perspective of a deserting soldier on our side. So not only was it a chance to revisit a universe I found really interesting, but it was also a really fantastic anti-war story.
Those are just the tip of the iceberg. I think in making it my personal mission to read every collection I can get my hands on, I’ve inadvertently made it my personal mission to urge everyone who reads these reviews to check out Ellison’s work. So go on. Stop reading this and go read that.
Final Rating
5/5
January 19, 2013
I love Harlan Ellison. Every-in-your-face, cocky, let's turn what you think upside-down and inside-out word of him. The man can write. He can write so darn well that he can tell you about his bypass surgery and make you think it's freakin' awesome. He can spin a tale about living through an earthquake on a mountain top and make you wish you had been there. And that's just in the introduction, folks. Haven't even made it to the "real" short stories yet.
I've said it before (back when I read his collection of stories in Shatterday)--Harlan Ellison is not for everybody. He can run the entire gamut of fiction from dark comedy to ghost story to time travel to gangster occult to straight science fiction to the nightmare tales that you thought nobody knew but you. He's a manic, multi-personality storyteller who switches gears faster than you can turn the page. Not everyone's cup of tea. But he's fantastic in every genre he tries.
In Slippage, he seems to switch up his genres even more than usual--following the theme of tectonic shift that springs from the shifts in his life--from learning he's not immortal (thanks to the bypass surgery) to having his home dismantled by mother nature's own destruction team (a la earthquake). We find ourselves facing long-forgotten gods and killers we thought buried in the legends of time. We are given three stories where criminals are given their just desserts--but we have to question the justice of the third. We learn the power of thought and the power of love. We are reminded how dependent we've become on technology and just how much of our life's energy those electronic beasts may be draining away. And he introduces us to the opposite of Santa Claus and teaches us to be careful what we imagine....because it just might come true.
These are cautionary tales...no matter how fantastic the story, Ellison is doing what he does best--writing about human nature in all of its terrible baseness and horrible possibility. But he also gives us humanity with all its hope and incredible glory. Just shy of the quality of Shatterday--I give it 4 1/2 stars.
My favorites:
"Darkness Upon the Face of the Deep"
"The Lingering Scent of Woodsmoke"
"Go Toward the Light"
"Sensible City"
This was first posted on my blog My Reader's Block. Please request permission before reposting. Thanks.
I've said it before (back when I read his collection of stories in Shatterday)--Harlan Ellison is not for everybody. He can run the entire gamut of fiction from dark comedy to ghost story to time travel to gangster occult to straight science fiction to the nightmare tales that you thought nobody knew but you. He's a manic, multi-personality storyteller who switches gears faster than you can turn the page. Not everyone's cup of tea. But he's fantastic in every genre he tries.
In Slippage, he seems to switch up his genres even more than usual--following the theme of tectonic shift that springs from the shifts in his life--from learning he's not immortal (thanks to the bypass surgery) to having his home dismantled by mother nature's own destruction team (a la earthquake). We find ourselves facing long-forgotten gods and killers we thought buried in the legends of time. We are given three stories where criminals are given their just desserts--but we have to question the justice of the third. We learn the power of thought and the power of love. We are reminded how dependent we've become on technology and just how much of our life's energy those electronic beasts may be draining away. And he introduces us to the opposite of Santa Claus and teaches us to be careful what we imagine....because it just might come true.
These are cautionary tales...no matter how fantastic the story, Ellison is doing what he does best--writing about human nature in all of its terrible baseness and horrible possibility. But he also gives us humanity with all its hope and incredible glory. Just shy of the quality of Shatterday--I give it 4 1/2 stars.
My favorites:
"Darkness Upon the Face of the Deep"
"The Lingering Scent of Woodsmoke"
"Go Toward the Light"
"Sensible City"
This was first posted on my blog My Reader's Block. Please request permission before reposting. Thanks.
December 31, 2013
I love magical realism, speculative fiction whatever you want to call it (anything grounded in reality but where anything can happen as well) so I really, really, really wanted to like Harlan Ellison. Overall his stories were good, but I can't say I fell in love with the guy.
I'd give this book five stars for creativity, four stars for social commentary but only two stars for delivery. I can't stand an author is too smart for his own story/creativity and Harlan Ellison is right up there with the best of the worst. His paragraphs go on to long. He uses thesaurus inspired words for no reason than just to use them and show of his grammatical range. He peppers his stories with references to obscure historical, mythological and biblical citations like he has a library full of reference books and can't find any other use for them.
I do have another collection by him at home which I will attempt to read someday because its possible that this book wasn't his best stuff. Or maybe its all the same and I just won't be able to jump on the band wagon.
I will say that he is not a man I would like to sit down and have a beer with, that's for sure.
I'd give this book five stars for creativity, four stars for social commentary but only two stars for delivery. I can't stand an author is too smart for his own story/creativity and Harlan Ellison is right up there with the best of the worst. His paragraphs go on to long. He uses thesaurus inspired words for no reason than just to use them and show of his grammatical range. He peppers his stories with references to obscure historical, mythological and biblical citations like he has a library full of reference books and can't find any other use for them.
I do have another collection by him at home which I will attempt to read someday because its possible that this book wasn't his best stuff. Or maybe its all the same and I just won't be able to jump on the band wagon.
I will say that he is not a man I would like to sit down and have a beer with, that's for sure.
January 3, 2015
Even when treading familiar ground, Ellison puts a twist on things so that you keep guessing. He pulls no punches and is always true to the genre: speculative fiction should ask "what if" questions and run with them as far as it can. That's what you'll get here, plus some enjoyable bits of autobiography which provide you with an inside view into one of the genre's most contentious authors.
September 14, 2014
This took me about six months to read. Not because this was hard but because the language and imagery is so dense and after finishing each story, I felt a need to sit back and ponder what I had just read. Each word choice Ellison made is deliberate and careful, thus the lot of the reader to discern the intent and meaning is layered. There are several standout stories - too many to list.
May 14, 2015
This is an uneven collection that includes some very good stories, and an equally good description of the author's living through the Northridge [California, USA] earthquake. The more interesting stories are horror, and--while they might not meet E. Burke's criterion of 'sublime'--they are well told.
Read
September 25, 2018Harlan Ellison always challenges both my mind and my imagination. I appreciate him so much, he writes the way I don't quite have the courage or skill to yet. I may never get there, but it's a good goal.
August 18, 2022
The best passages of Ellison -- whether they be essays or the most fantastical of fiction -- always give the reader such an enormous and impressive clarity of both vision and personality. You know exactly who Ellison is, what Ellison wants, and why what Ellison is doing is so necessary. To be honest, even at his absolute worst there is no lack of understanding of why Ellison is clacking the typewriter in these exact sequences.
Per usual, I love him at either his most gushingly, ambitiously romantic ('The Man Who Rowed Christopher Columbus Ashore', 'The Dragon on the Bookshelf' (a collaboration with Silverberg), 'Midnight in the Sunken Cathedral') or his most gruesome ('Pulling Hard Time', She's a Young Thing and Cannot Leave Her Mother'). The final string of loosely interconnected stories form a wonderful sequence about love, mortality, and religion in that grand, swing-for-the-fences Ellisonian fantasy mode.
Meanwhile, the centerpiece novelette 'Mefisto in Onyx' is such a clever piece of storytelling, and would have probably been one of the great contemporary fantasy and/or sf novels if Ellison would have expanded it. Notably, despite not being without its thorny elements, it attests to the power the of goodness in the human spirit to ultimately triumph over the fearsome depths of evil. Truly, as you'll see just about everywhere with Ellison, you can't have expressions of love without being reminded of the holocaust; or enlightenment without the nagging, ugly presence of lynchings, rape, cannibalism, etc.
The worst stuff ('Keyboard', 'The Few, The Proud', and the agonizingly eye-rolling 'Crazy as a Soup Sandwich') is kind of like getting slammed in the head with a sledge hammer, or maybe yelled at very very close to the ear. Sometimes even this is kinda cute.
Per usual, I love him at either his most gushingly, ambitiously romantic ('The Man Who Rowed Christopher Columbus Ashore', 'The Dragon on the Bookshelf' (a collaboration with Silverberg), 'Midnight in the Sunken Cathedral') or his most gruesome ('Pulling Hard Time', She's a Young Thing and Cannot Leave Her Mother'). The final string of loosely interconnected stories form a wonderful sequence about love, mortality, and religion in that grand, swing-for-the-fences Ellisonian fantasy mode.
Meanwhile, the centerpiece novelette 'Mefisto in Onyx' is such a clever piece of storytelling, and would have probably been one of the great contemporary fantasy and/or sf novels if Ellison would have expanded it. Notably, despite not being without its thorny elements, it attests to the power the of goodness in the human spirit to ultimately triumph over the fearsome depths of evil. Truly, as you'll see just about everywhere with Ellison, you can't have expressions of love without being reminded of the holocaust; or enlightenment without the nagging, ugly presence of lynchings, rape, cannibalism, etc.
The worst stuff ('Keyboard', 'The Few, The Proud', and the agonizingly eye-rolling 'Crazy as a Soup Sandwich') is kind of like getting slammed in the head with a sledge hammer, or maybe yelled at very very close to the ear. Sometimes even this is kinda cute.
August 9, 2018
It has been along time since I read my Harlan Ellison books and my memory of them was dark. Since his death I have been rereading his books and this one I just bought with stories I had never seen before. It brought it all back, the edge of the seat, the twist endings, the darkness and the light, the fabulous use of words and images and the fast pace at which the words and the story carry you along. I had read his reviews (Two Glass Teats and Watching) which give you a flavour of his personality and opinions. But to delve into his actual storytelling is a whole new experience. I had forgotten exactly why I loved his writing, why I collected all of his books, why I have carried them from home to home to home over the years. I am so sorry he is gone and so happy that there are stories he has written that I have not yet read.
July 29, 2018
Det var en lite udda upplevelse med just den här samlingen, förmodligen den bästa jag läst av Ellison utom kanske "I Have No Mouth...". De första är, med undantaget "The Museum on Cyclops Avenue", helt habila men inget speciellt. De duger bra men kommer inte vara några jag lägger på minnet, precis. Men efter den riktigt bra och Zelazny-doftande "The Dragon on the Bookshelf", som han skrev med Robert Silverberg, så tar det sig ordentligt. Det finns inte en enda efteråt som inte är minst lika bra som nämnda samarbete. "The Dreams A Nightmare Dreams" och "Midnight in the Sunken Cathedral" (Ellison har bitvis en fantastisk känsla för bra titlar) är nog höjdpunkterna, då båda har ett språk som formligen glöder.
January 13, 2024
I'm not sure how to rate this; there were moments of absolute brilliance, and moments when I felt I was reading a stack of papers someone swept off his desk and shunted off to a publisher without really looking at them. Don't get me wrong: I'd probably read a grocery list if that's what he felt like writing, but it took me longer than usual to get through this particular volume.
I'm apparently all out of order here, as I don't believe in learning anything about writers until they've had a chance to introduce themselves properly. So it's back in time for my next Harlan fix. It won't be long. Genius like this doesn't come around often, and thankfully, he left a good body of work.
I'm apparently all out of order here, as I don't believe in learning anything about writers until they've had a chance to introduce themselves properly. So it's back in time for my next Harlan fix. It won't be long. Genius like this doesn't come around often, and thankfully, he left a good body of work.
February 25, 2018
It's been over twenty years since this book appeared, which is the last collection of Ellison's uncollected new and recent stories. Tempus sure do keep fugiting, don't it? The centerpiece is Mefisto in Onyx, a novella originally published alone as a small-press offering, and many of the other pieces are short, lyrical mood works, some of which first appeared in Ellison's Dream Corridor comic. It's a strong collection, full of the emotion, angst, and feeling which made him so famous in the '60s, but with perhaps a bit more thought and polish. It's Ellison at the top of his form.
February 1, 2022
To me, short fiction has always packed the biggest punch, and Harlan Ellison is one of the pound-for-pound greats. Uncompromisingly original in both style and substance, a number of these stories are bound to live on in your head.
Some favorites of mine you shouldn't miss:
- The Man Who Rowed Christopher Columbus Ashore
- Mefisto in Onyx
- Darkness Upon the Face of the Deep
- The Lingering Scent of Woodsmoke
Some favorites of mine you shouldn't miss:
- The Man Who Rowed Christopher Columbus Ashore
- Mefisto in Onyx
- Darkness Upon the Face of the Deep
- The Lingering Scent of Woodsmoke
July 12, 2017
Twenty-one short stories from Harlan Ellison. There are a few 5-Star stories: Darkness Upon The Face Of The Deep, The Dreams A Nightmare Has, and especially the last one Midnight In The Sunken Cathedral. I didn't care for "She's A Young Thing And Cannot Leave Her Mother" at all. Be forewarned. The rest of the short stories I enjoyed the descriptive and creative storytelling in them.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
October 17, 2019
I have been a massive Harlan Ellison fan ever since i grabbed "Essential Ellison" and was astounded at the audacious and astounding brilliant writing. It has been a while since I read this book, but I remember loving it because its Ellison after all. I have yet to read another author with his imagination and skill and bravado and angry intelligence.
Read and revel.
Read and revel.
January 14, 2020
I picked up this book because a friend said "You MUST read 'The Man Who Rowed Christopher Columbus Ashore'". And he was right. Loved most of the protagonists, varied as they were. A mix of mythology, history (though sometimes skewed), literature (including the Bible), and human interactions. What a great collection. A what great storytelling. Thoroughly enjoyed.
March 4, 2025
Amazing, god how does he do it. His screen plays are something completely different than all others. Seeing his original writing as a short story then transform into the screenplay was amazing and it is worth reading both as they completely change how I viewed the stories. The sunken church and jaunting stories were 10/10
July 12, 2017
23 or so shorts. Some show their age while others still hold up pretty well.
October 26, 2019
Great collection of some very unique short stories.
June 8, 2022
As usual, Harlan is on the edge here--interesting, angry, and out there. This collection is weird and (mostly) wonderful.
November 28, 2024
The best dangerous visions are Harlan’s own. And this collection testifies to that.
January 11, 2025
Memories, ideas, lonely gods, horrors foreign, domestic & cosmic. More diverse than other Ellison collections but equally entertaining.
September 28, 2008
I don't have much to say about Slippage. I had never (consciously) read any Harlan Ellison before and because of how celebrated the man's name is, I decided it was worth giving his werk a shot.
Maybe Slippage just isn't one of his better collections. I'm certainly open to the possibility that I got the bad egg from the dozen, if you catch my meaning.
This is not to say that there was nothing redeeming or at all enjoyable about this collection. "This Story Is Titled the Man Who Rowed Christopher Columbus Ashore" had a fun little irreverent streak to it. And "Darkness Upon the Deep" was good (it was certainly readable) but it also felt like a warmed-over and slightly updated Lovecraft(†). Several stories came off this way to me -- as low-impact knock-offs from other writers. Or else as simply low-impact Twilight Zone-esque prose(‡). As I progressed through the pages, the short fiction got better but was best when it was shortest. Ultimately I decided to abandon the collection. Perhaps I'll come back to it later?
But maybe I just walked into the whole mess a bit resentful when I mistook Ellison's introduction for the inceptive short fiction.
---
† = On that note, I found myself thinking about Ellison's reputation as mean-spirited and litigious and secretly wished the zombie Lovecraft would dig his way out of his Providence grave and go after punitive damages. Possibly as a literal pound of flesh.
‡ = Yes, I am aware that Ellison has written rather extensively for The Twilight Zone.
---
TANGENTIAL ASIDE: Anyone have a clue as to what is up with the typeface and/or typesetter? All the periods seem clumsy and too large -- like "BOLD" was turned on for just the periods. But just the periods. The terminating punct for exclamation points and question marks wasn't that big. Did anyone else find this distracting?
Maybe Slippage just isn't one of his better collections. I'm certainly open to the possibility that I got the bad egg from the dozen, if you catch my meaning.
This is not to say that there was nothing redeeming or at all enjoyable about this collection. "This Story Is Titled the Man Who Rowed Christopher Columbus Ashore" had a fun little irreverent streak to it. And "Darkness Upon the Deep" was good (it was certainly readable) but it also felt like a warmed-over and slightly updated Lovecraft(†). Several stories came off this way to me -- as low-impact knock-offs from other writers. Or else as simply low-impact Twilight Zone-esque prose(‡). As I progressed through the pages, the short fiction got better but was best when it was shortest. Ultimately I decided to abandon the collection. Perhaps I'll come back to it later?
But maybe I just walked into the whole mess a bit resentful when I mistook Ellison's introduction for the inceptive short fiction.
---
† = On that note, I found myself thinking about Ellison's reputation as mean-spirited and litigious and secretly wished the zombie Lovecraft would dig his way out of his Providence grave and go after punitive damages. Possibly as a literal pound of flesh.
‡ = Yes, I am aware that Ellison has written rather extensively for The Twilight Zone.
---
TANGENTIAL ASIDE: Anyone have a clue as to what is up with the typeface and/or typesetter? All the periods seem clumsy and too large -- like "BOLD" was turned on for just the periods. But just the periods. The terminating punct for exclamation points and question marks wasn't that big. Did anyone else find this distracting?
August 30, 2016
I had read about Ellison's writing style and wanted to check out his works, so I figured a collection of his short works would be perfect. That's why I bought Slippage.
Since the book itself was a bunch of different stories (about 22, but "The Pale Silver Dollar of the Moon Pays Its Way and Makes Change" had two versions), it was hard to give an overall rating for the work. Obviously, I liked some stories more than others.
I'm glad that I took the time to read his work though, since his characters are typically witty, sarcastic, and cynical (which I'm sure derives from Ellison himself, just read how his book intro was written.) Normally I love narrators and characters like this, but there was just something about Ellison's writing style I did not enjoy. Sometimes I felt he was unnecessarily wordy to the point where I wondered when he would stop talking about this disgusting cat the neighbors owned ("Anywhere but Here with Anyone but You").
The aspect I disliked most about his writing style though, was his use of adjectives. To describe something as metallic is fine, to continue on and go so far as to call it "diseased" gives the reader a clearly negative idea in their heads- perfect! But sometimes I felt that he overdescribed aspects and became repetitive, especially when he would use synonyms for his already wordily-used adjectives.
Yet, like I said before, I'm glad I have the book. The stories were quick and a few were genuinely disturbing while still humorous.
Since the book itself was a bunch of different stories (about 22, but "The Pale Silver Dollar of the Moon Pays Its Way and Makes Change" had two versions), it was hard to give an overall rating for the work. Obviously, I liked some stories more than others.
I'm glad that I took the time to read his work though, since his characters are typically witty, sarcastic, and cynical (which I'm sure derives from Ellison himself, just read how his book intro was written.) Normally I love narrators and characters like this, but there was just something about Ellison's writing style I did not enjoy. Sometimes I felt he was unnecessarily wordy to the point where I wondered when he would stop talking about this disgusting cat the neighbors owned ("Anywhere but Here with Anyone but You").
The aspect I disliked most about his writing style though, was his use of adjectives. To describe something as metallic is fine, to continue on and go so far as to call it "diseased" gives the reader a clearly negative idea in their heads- perfect! But sometimes I felt that he overdescribed aspects and became repetitive, especially when he would use synonyms for his already wordily-used adjectives.
Yet, like I said before, I'm glad I have the book. The stories were quick and a few were genuinely disturbing while still humorous.
February 25, 2008
This is the first Harlan Ellison collection i read, and it started me on a mad rampage of speculative fiction addiction which i am still wallowing in to this day. I think the short story is an excellent format for weird fiction, because you don't have to develop ideas and characters for hundreds of pages. I call them 'vignettes' and it makes possible all manner of whimsy and inspiration and odd quirky moments. I don't particularly remember which stories are included in this collection, although Mephisto in Onyx does stand out to me as well, as mentioned in a previous review. I would recommend this to almost anybody that likes to read. It renewed my passion for literature and writing. It is strange, unsettling, and moving, and also a great deal of fun to read. Three thumbs up!!!
April 1, 2014
Though overrated, I admire Ellison's rage. There's a huge chunk of this book that's about the battle with television censorship over one of his stories. At first, you take his side. Then you learn what it was he wanted to get approved and you're like: "Well, of COURSE no network is going to approve that!" I enjoyed the non-fiction stuff more. There's not a lot of that in here, but I liked reading that more. Appropriately, this book feels like "The Twilight Zone." The best thing about Harlan Ellison is this piece of creative advice for anyone who makes art: "Pay attention." He's probably not the first person to ever say it, but he's the most memorable.
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