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The Beast That Shouted Love at the Heart of the World
"It crouches near the center of creation. There is no night where it waits. Only the riddle of which terrible dream will set it loose. It beheaded mercy to take possession of that place. It feasts on darkness from the minds of men. No one has ever seen its eyeless face. When it sleeps we know a few moments of peace. But when it breathes again we go down in fire and mate with jackals. It knows our fear. It has our number. It waited for our coming and it will abide long after we have become congealed smoke. It has never heard music, and shows its fangs when we panic. It is the beast of our savage past, hungering today, and waiting patiently for the mortal meal of all our golden tomorrows. It lies waiting." --Harlan Ellison 15 stories by Harlan Ellison
280 pages, Paperback
First published June 1, 1968
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About the author
Harlan Ellison
1,085 books2,858 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 147 reviews
February 2, 2023
The great psychedelic era… Great mind-bending ideas…
Who is The Beast That Shouted Love at the Heart of the World?
He is the omniscient and omnipresent mad demiurge who sees everything and understands nothing – senile and demented creator of universe.
The anthology is shattering but A Boy and His Dog is the biggest diamond in this royal crown of stories. It is the bleakest post-apocalyptic tale I ever read.
A boy and his dog constitute a symbiotic tandem – they can’t manage without each other.
“Two are better than one; because they have a good reward for their labour.” Ecclesiastes 4:9
Who is The Beast That Shouted Love at the Heart of the World?
On the mauve level, crouched down in deeper magenta washings that concealed his arched form, the maniac waited. He was a dragon, squat and round in the torso, tapered ropy tail tucked under his body; the small, thick osseous shields rising perpendicularly from the arched back, running down to the end of the tail, tips pointing upwards; his taloned shorter arms folded across his massive chest. He had the seven-headed dog faces of an ancient Cerberus. Each head watched, waiting, hungry, insane.
He is the omniscient and omnipresent mad demiurge who sees everything and understands nothing – senile and demented creator of universe.
The anthology is shattering but A Boy and His Dog is the biggest diamond in this royal crown of stories. It is the bleakest post-apocalyptic tale I ever read.
I was out with Blood, my dog. It was his week for annoying me; he kept calling me Albert. He thought that was pretty damned funny. Payson Terhune: ha ha.
I’d caught a couple of water rats for him, the big green and ocher ones, and someone’s manicured poodle, lost off a leash in one of the downunders.
He’d eaten pretty good, but he was cranky. ‘Come on, son of a bitch,’ I demanded, ‘find me a piece of ass.’
Blood just chuckled, deep in his dog-throat. ‘You’re funny when you get horny,’ he said.
A boy and his dog constitute a symbiotic tandem – they can’t manage without each other.
“Two are better than one; because they have a good reward for their labour.” Ecclesiastes 4:9
July 15, 2016
The Beast That Shouted Love at the Heart of the World is a collection of short stories by Harlan Ellison. I mostly picked it up to read A Boy and His Dog, to experience the post-apocalyptic story as it was originally intended and to see if this version was as rapey as the movie starring Don Johnson. Here are my thoughts on some of the stories contained within.
The Beast That Shouted Love at the Heart of the World: I have no idea how to summarize this story. I'm not sure what it was actually about. Something something time travel, releasing insanity across the multiverse, possibly an allegory of Lucifer's fall. I'm still trying to digest this one.
Along the Scenic Route: When another motorist insults him on The Freeway, George challenges him to a duel. Which of the drivers and his tricked out vehicles will come out of the confrontation the winner?
This dystopian death race was a pretty cool story, two men and their weaponized cars battling it out.
Phoenix: Travelers cross a red desert, searching for a lost city that has risen from the sands.
This one was interesting with a Twilight Zone ending. The concepts were a little out there but it was a pretty satisfying read.
Asleep: With Still Hands: Deep beneath the Sargasso Sea, a team of men go to slay The Sleeper...
This was a bizarre tale of the dead and dreaming Sleeper and the world he protected. Ellison sure knows how to do endings, even if I thought this story wasn't that great.
Santa Claus vs. S.P.I.D.E.R.: Kris Kringle, greatest secret agent in the world, battles the forces of S.P.I.D.E.R. Can he stop their insidious eight-point plan in time to do his Christmas duties?
This was a cheesy, fun, spy spoof. At least it was, until a rapey moment near the end. 90% enjoyable, though.
A Boy and His Dog: Vic and his telepathic dog Blood wander a post-apocalyptic wasteland, looking to get fed and get laid.
Yeah, the novella version was just as rape-oriented as the 1970's movie.
Closing Thoughts: I have mixed feelings on The Beast That Shouted Love at the Heart of the World. In a technical sense, Harlan Ellison is a very good writer. However, most of the stories within were a product of their time. Were the 1970's as rapey a time period as some of the fiction of the period leads me to believe. 2.5 out of 5 stars.
The Beast That Shouted Love at the Heart of the World: I have no idea how to summarize this story. I'm not sure what it was actually about. Something something time travel, releasing insanity across the multiverse, possibly an allegory of Lucifer's fall. I'm still trying to digest this one.
Along the Scenic Route: When another motorist insults him on The Freeway, George challenges him to a duel. Which of the drivers and his tricked out vehicles will come out of the confrontation the winner?
This dystopian death race was a pretty cool story, two men and their weaponized cars battling it out.
Phoenix: Travelers cross a red desert, searching for a lost city that has risen from the sands.
This one was interesting with a Twilight Zone ending. The concepts were a little out there but it was a pretty satisfying read.
Asleep: With Still Hands: Deep beneath the Sargasso Sea, a team of men go to slay The Sleeper...
This was a bizarre tale of the dead and dreaming Sleeper and the world he protected. Ellison sure knows how to do endings, even if I thought this story wasn't that great.
Santa Claus vs. S.P.I.D.E.R.: Kris Kringle, greatest secret agent in the world, battles the forces of S.P.I.D.E.R. Can he stop their insidious eight-point plan in time to do his Christmas duties?
This was a cheesy, fun, spy spoof. At least it was, until a rapey moment near the end. 90% enjoyable, though.
A Boy and His Dog: Vic and his telepathic dog Blood wander a post-apocalyptic wasteland, looking to get fed and get laid.
Yeah, the novella version was just as rape-oriented as the 1970's movie.
Closing Thoughts: I have mixed feelings on The Beast That Shouted Love at the Heart of the World. In a technical sense, Harlan Ellison is a very good writer. However, most of the stories within were a product of their time. Were the 1970's as rapey a time period as some of the fiction of the period leads me to believe. 2.5 out of 5 stars.
October 18, 2024
This review is a landmark for me — my one thousandth Goodreads review.
Harlan Ellison was the hardest working man in speculative fiction (a label he suggested to replace SciFi, which he hated). He was brash. He was opinionated. He was salty, and proud of it (it was basically his brand.) Most of all, he was aggressively creative, and these stories certainly reflect that. He was an iconoclast who delighted in shocking. And remember, he was writing for a hard world where people smoked in their doctor’s office, then drove their Mustang home one handed (without a seat belt) while their other hand held an open beer. He shocked the people of that primitive era, so if you’re easily offended or require trigger warnings, run!
Ellison was an outstanding wordsmith. Even his stories here that I didn’t like are well and cleverly written. But he never made it easy for his readers. He gives us unsympathetic protagonist who often do terrible things, then pulls us along fascinated following them.
Introduction: The Waves in Rio: Ellison’s introductions are as entertaining as his stories. From existential philosophizing to his favorite rants about labels like SciFi and New Wave, this is great stuff not to be missed.
4 ⭐️
The Beast that Shouted Love at the Heart of the World: Told across both time and space, the story opens with a man committing three separate senseless acts of heinous mass murder. From there the story bounces along space, time and dimensions, — from a violently insane seven headed dragon attempting escape from a bizarre containment, to the meeting between Pope Leo and Attila the Hun, to a far future Pandora’s box releasing the winds of war.
Ellison claimed this story was an experiment. Not linear, it is written as if events were happening on the rim of a wheel, coming together at wheel’s center.
”You have sentenced them all. Insanity is a living vapor — a force. It can be bottled, the most potent genie in the most easily uncorked bottle, and you have condemned them to live with it always in the name of love.”
4 1/2 ⭐️
Along the Scenic Route: Along freeways of the future, aggressive driving and road rage has been officially systematized into a legally controlled highway dueling protocol, and cars are equipped with lethal weapons and defense systems. A family man out for a scenic drive with his wife allows his bad temper to bait him into an official road duel with a hot shot young blood. Insecure egos and toxic masculinity collide in this lethal thrill ride of a story.
”In the world of the freeway there was no place for a walking man.”
4 1/2 ⭐️
Phoenix: A harsh tale of a deadly, grueling exploration party attempting to find a legendary lost city rumored to be rising above the sands. The story starts with a death and keeps going in that direction, with a bitter love triangle as seasoning and a Twilight Zone style ending.
3 1/2 ⭐️
Asleep: With Still Hands: A story about the morality and utility of war that is muddy in its intent. It is open to interpretations that are polar opposites. Is it an anti war parable, commenting on the perversity of humans still seeking war after 600 years of telepathically enforced peace, or is its message that absolute free will, including the right to make war is a more important value? And why this false dichotomy? Read it twice and come away with three different answers.
3 ⭐️
Santa Claus vs. S.P.I.D.E.R.: A humorous spoof of the spy genre fused with political satire on 1960s America. Kris Kringle, Santa Claus, is a sexy, 007-like agent taking on the evil alien organization S.P.I.D.E.R. to defeat their nefarious plans. Kris must foil their puppets — Mayor Daley, Governor Reagan, LBJ, Humphrey and Nixon, all the way to the baddest puppet of them all, Governor Wallace. Funny, bawdy, and outrageous.
4 1/2 ⭐️
Try A Dull Knife: A story of a charismatic empath and the emotional vampires that feed on him, as well as speculation about his own complicity. The line between actual reality and metaphor is often blurred within the story. Appears that Ellison was making a point about the relationship between public figures and their audience.
2.5 ⭐️
The Pittll Pawob Division: A short tale that manages to work in a couple of big twists in its limited space. Despite the obfuscating language used, the story structure is easy to follow, and elements seem familiar. Cosmic bureaucracy has its headaches.
2 1/2 ⭐️
The Place With No Name: So, there’s this junky pimp who commits a murder, then makes a deal with some floating gnome man to escape, and finds his consciousness merged with Harry Timmons, an obsessed and feverish jungle explorer searching for the forbidden Place with No Name. And, oh yeah, there’s Prometheus, chained there. Ellison questions the nature of identity. And justice. And mercy. He really makes you work for it. Is it worth it?
2 1/2 ⭐️
White on White: Just a gigolo lost in the snow on Mt. Everest looking for love. Short, slight, amusing.
3 ⭐️
Run for the Stars: Benno Tallant had issues. He was a hopeless drug addict, living on an outer colony of Earth about to fall to an invading enemy alien fleet, and remaining human soldiers just caught him looting the dead. But things just got a lot worse. The fleeing human force implanted an apocalyptic Sun Bomb in his belly and left him behind as a lethal trap as they flee to warn Earth. Now Benno must overcome a lifetime of cowardice to desperately try to find a way to live.
More straightforward, less profound than Ellison’s later tales, but interesting and suspenseful.
3 1/2 ⭐️
Are You Listening?: The milk toast guy who no one ever notices just disappears altogether one day. No one, including his wife and boss, can see him, and no one misses him. He despairs until he discovers there are others.
A forgettable, pedestrian story trying to say something about an increasingly impersonal world, but neither original nor interesting.
2 ⭐️
S.R.O.: This 1956 story, like many others of its era, was of Earth invaded by extraterrestrial monsters. But these aliens take New York by storm…by performing a fabulous, long running play.
3 1/2 ⭐️
Worlds to Kill: A galactic mercenary world killer with a secret mission. Ends justify the means?
But come on, Ellison, really — President Spock?!
2 1/2 ⭐️
Shattered Like a Glass Goblin: Lovecraftian horror story or a screed against the excesses of the youth drug culture, this is a horrific tale. Rudy was discharged from the army and came to reclaim his former fiancée from the Hill — a house full of druggie, free love, freeloading kids. But the Hill claimed Rudy. When the full horror show is revealed, Ellison played on the ambiguity of whether what Rudy is experiencing is traditional horror or the hallucinations of a really bad trip, with the uncertainty amplifying the horror.
3 1/2 ⭐️
A Boy and His Dog: In a post apocalyptic world a boy and his intelligent, telepathic dog (the dog is smarter than the kid) fight to survive and search for the rare surviving females to ravish. A harsh tale about a harsh world where the protagonist Vic does terrible things and really, really loves his dog.
4 ⭐️
Harlan Ellison was the hardest working man in speculative fiction (a label he suggested to replace SciFi, which he hated). He was brash. He was opinionated. He was salty, and proud of it (it was basically his brand.) Most of all, he was aggressively creative, and these stories certainly reflect that. He was an iconoclast who delighted in shocking. And remember, he was writing for a hard world where people smoked in their doctor’s office, then drove their Mustang home one handed (without a seat belt) while their other hand held an open beer. He shocked the people of that primitive era, so if you’re easily offended or require trigger warnings, run!
Ellison was an outstanding wordsmith. Even his stories here that I didn’t like are well and cleverly written. But he never made it easy for his readers. He gives us unsympathetic protagonist who often do terrible things, then pulls us along fascinated following them.
Introduction: The Waves in Rio: Ellison’s introductions are as entertaining as his stories. From existential philosophizing to his favorite rants about labels like SciFi and New Wave, this is great stuff not to be missed.
4 ⭐️
The Beast that Shouted Love at the Heart of the World: Told across both time and space, the story opens with a man committing three separate senseless acts of heinous mass murder. From there the story bounces along space, time and dimensions, — from a violently insane seven headed dragon attempting escape from a bizarre containment, to the meeting between Pope Leo and Attila the Hun, to a far future Pandora’s box releasing the winds of war.
Ellison claimed this story was an experiment. Not linear, it is written as if events were happening on the rim of a wheel, coming together at wheel’s center.
”You have sentenced them all. Insanity is a living vapor — a force. It can be bottled, the most potent genie in the most easily uncorked bottle, and you have condemned them to live with it always in the name of love.”
4 1/2 ⭐️
Along the Scenic Route: Along freeways of the future, aggressive driving and road rage has been officially systematized into a legally controlled highway dueling protocol, and cars are equipped with lethal weapons and defense systems. A family man out for a scenic drive with his wife allows his bad temper to bait him into an official road duel with a hot shot young blood. Insecure egos and toxic masculinity collide in this lethal thrill ride of a story.
”In the world of the freeway there was no place for a walking man.”
4 1/2 ⭐️
Phoenix: A harsh tale of a deadly, grueling exploration party attempting to find a legendary lost city rumored to be rising above the sands. The story starts with a death and keeps going in that direction, with a bitter love triangle as seasoning and a Twilight Zone style ending.
3 1/2 ⭐️
Asleep: With Still Hands: A story about the morality and utility of war that is muddy in its intent. It is open to interpretations that are polar opposites. Is it an anti war parable, commenting on the perversity of humans still seeking war after 600 years of telepathically enforced peace, or is its message that absolute free will, including the right to make war is a more important value? And why this false dichotomy? Read it twice and come away with three different answers.
3 ⭐️
Santa Claus vs. S.P.I.D.E.R.: A humorous spoof of the spy genre fused with political satire on 1960s America. Kris Kringle, Santa Claus, is a sexy, 007-like agent taking on the evil alien organization S.P.I.D.E.R. to defeat their nefarious plans. Kris must foil their puppets — Mayor Daley, Governor Reagan, LBJ, Humphrey and Nixon, all the way to the baddest puppet of them all, Governor Wallace. Funny, bawdy, and outrageous.
4 1/2 ⭐️
Try A Dull Knife: A story of a charismatic empath and the emotional vampires that feed on him, as well as speculation about his own complicity. The line between actual reality and metaphor is often blurred within the story. Appears that Ellison was making a point about the relationship between public figures and their audience.
2.5 ⭐️
The Pittll Pawob Division: A short tale that manages to work in a couple of big twists in its limited space. Despite the obfuscating language used, the story structure is easy to follow, and elements seem familiar. Cosmic bureaucracy has its headaches.
2 1/2 ⭐️
The Place With No Name: So, there’s this junky pimp who commits a murder, then makes a deal with some floating gnome man to escape, and finds his consciousness merged with Harry Timmons, an obsessed and feverish jungle explorer searching for the forbidden Place with No Name. And, oh yeah, there’s Prometheus, chained there. Ellison questions the nature of identity. And justice. And mercy. He really makes you work for it. Is it worth it?
2 1/2 ⭐️
White on White: Just a gigolo lost in the snow on Mt. Everest looking for love. Short, slight, amusing.
3 ⭐️
Run for the Stars: Benno Tallant had issues. He was a hopeless drug addict, living on an outer colony of Earth about to fall to an invading enemy alien fleet, and remaining human soldiers just caught him looting the dead. But things just got a lot worse. The fleeing human force implanted an apocalyptic Sun Bomb in his belly and left him behind as a lethal trap as they flee to warn Earth. Now Benno must overcome a lifetime of cowardice to desperately try to find a way to live.
More straightforward, less profound than Ellison’s later tales, but interesting and suspenseful.
3 1/2 ⭐️
Are You Listening?: The milk toast guy who no one ever notices just disappears altogether one day. No one, including his wife and boss, can see him, and no one misses him. He despairs until he discovers there are others.
A forgettable, pedestrian story trying to say something about an increasingly impersonal world, but neither original nor interesting.
2 ⭐️
S.R.O.: This 1956 story, like many others of its era, was of Earth invaded by extraterrestrial monsters. But these aliens take New York by storm…by performing a fabulous, long running play.
3 1/2 ⭐️
Worlds to Kill: A galactic mercenary world killer with a secret mission. Ends justify the means?
But come on, Ellison, really — President Spock?!
2 1/2 ⭐️
Shattered Like a Glass Goblin: Lovecraftian horror story or a screed against the excesses of the youth drug culture, this is a horrific tale. Rudy was discharged from the army and came to reclaim his former fiancée from the Hill — a house full of druggie, free love, freeloading kids. But the Hill claimed Rudy. When the full horror show is revealed, Ellison played on the ambiguity of whether what Rudy is experiencing is traditional horror or the hallucinations of a really bad trip, with the uncertainty amplifying the horror.
3 1/2 ⭐️
A Boy and His Dog: In a post apocalyptic world a boy and his intelligent, telepathic dog (the dog is smarter than the kid) fight to survive and search for the rare surviving females to ravish. A harsh tale about a harsh world where the protagonist Vic does terrible things and really, really loves his dog.
4 ⭐️
June 6, 2021
Love Harlan Ellison and his apparently outdated morals - which aren't his morals! They are the morals of the society he's criticising. That's just something I want to put out there after reading lots of disparaging reviews of his work.
Similarly to I Have No Mouth But I Must Scream the best story in this collection is the title story, which is one of the more abstract pieces I've read by him and only comes close to making sense when finishing it, though each creek of the prose made sense to my guts as I read it.
The other stories are of varying quality, some of them feeling like rejected pitches for Twilight Zone episodes; though to be fair Harlan Ellison had a lot of rejected pitches that were miles ahead of what people would televise in the 60s and 70s. So to see these on screen would be more interesting than another "the devil sold me x ray specs so I can see through girl's panties" episodes.
All in all not as good as I Have No Mouth But I Must Scream but definitely a nice diversion and always great to hear Ellison's snarling voice in my head.
Oh, and Santa Claus vs S.P.I.D.E.R is hilarious, and should be made into a fun xmas film.
Similarly to I Have No Mouth But I Must Scream the best story in this collection is the title story, which is one of the more abstract pieces I've read by him and only comes close to making sense when finishing it, though each creek of the prose made sense to my guts as I read it.
The other stories are of varying quality, some of them feeling like rejected pitches for Twilight Zone episodes; though to be fair Harlan Ellison had a lot of rejected pitches that were miles ahead of what people would televise in the 60s and 70s. So to see these on screen would be more interesting than another "the devil sold me x ray specs so I can see through girl's panties" episodes.
All in all not as good as I Have No Mouth But I Must Scream but definitely a nice diversion and always great to hear Ellison's snarling voice in my head.
Oh, and Santa Claus vs S.P.I.D.E.R is hilarious, and should be made into a fun xmas film.
November 14, 2019
The Beast that Shouted Love at the Heart of the World -- Well ... that was a mindfuck. Crosswhen. Crosswhere. Who knows what time? Who knows where? This tale of madness released from a cosmic Pandora’s Box in the calm, soothing, peaceful center of the universe, dooming everything beyond the center to a madness that is violence and murder, is a hell of a way to start a cycle of short stories. It feels a bit like Ellison -- the infamously combative crazy Uncle of Sci-Fi (or speculative fiction as he would prefer it) -- is daring readers to put down the book after the first story. The Beast ... is a test. If we fail we don’t get to read on. If we pass we get a pass. Don’t just read it once so you can get through it and move on, though. Read this story once, then once again immediately, and go back to it once in a while as you read the rest of the book. It rewards multiple readings. It really does get better and better.
b>Along the Scenic Route -- I have no idea what logic drives the inclusion of Ellison’s short stories in this collection. From a whacky time travelling mindbender, Ellison moves us straight into a B-Movie auto-pocalypse that is half Outer Limits half Death Race 2000. He manages, somehow, to capture and combine the spirit of console driving games, gunfighters in the old west, mid-life crises and technology not that far away from what surrounds us right now. It is as intelligent as it is cheesy, and I am shocked no one has turned this specific story into a summer blockbuster yet. Ten years ago, Bruce Willis would have played George. I wonder who would do that now? Well, whomever they chose, it would need a serious update to gender attitudes. I have a feeling that is going to be a common theme in this work from the late-60s / early 70s.
Phoenix -- This story is a full out Twilight Zone episode. Four (well ... really only three) people wander lost in a desert. There’s some obligatory love triangle conflict at play while some big new technology and theory of the history of time is the driving force of the desert quest. And then there is the big Twilight Zone finale. This collection could be the basis of a pretty kickass Netflix series, especially of with a little tweaking to social attitudes to make them reflect our now. I bet this “episode” would be a fan favourite,
Asleep: With Still Hands -- Whoa! Now this story has had me spinning away for days. This is some classic 60s-70s Sci-Fi based on the meat and potatoes trope that war and suffering are what make us “great”, that they are what make life dynamic, that they are what make us strive for excellence and achievement, that without war and suffering, we stagnate as a culture and don’t live to our full potential (it’s this trope, I think, that led to Ursula LeGuin’s brilliant The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas in riposte). You name the old Sci-Fi T.V. series and this philosophy can be found somewhere in the episodes. Male Sci-Fi writers, a large number of them, bumped up against this idea time and again, so it wasn’t surprising to see old Ellison embracing the concept. I’ve always thought it was bullshit, of the same piss poor propaganda as the idea that capitalist competition leads to achievement, but this time a new layer was added to my spinning thoughts -- is this the true “toxic masculinity”? I don’t usually buy into that new moniker and think it is mostly misplaced, overused and/or misused, but here, perhaps, it may just have some efficacy. Hmm ....
Santa Claus vs. S.P.I.D.E.R.-- Racism is here. Sexism is here. Shitty politics are here. And so is Santa Claus. But I would expect no less from a story that recasts James Bond as Santa Claus, S.P.E.C.T.E.R. as S.P.I.D.E.R. and seems to be messing with the Fleming formula right at the height of Fleming’s success.
At first I questioned Santa Clause vs. S.P.I.D.E.R.’s bona fides as an actual satire, but once Mayor Daly of Chicago appeared, its satirical nature was pretty clear. That doesn’t mean I think it worked particularly well, nor was it easy to sit through (especially when Kris used his one remaining weapon to f*ck his nemesis to death), but it was another fascinating bit of madness from the mind of Mad Ellison, and it definitively eradicated all the expectations I had coming into this collection that there would be a clear thematic line from story to story. After this entry, The Beast that Shouted Love at the Heart of the World is officially a hodgepodge.
Try a Dull Knife -- An empath is feasted upon by empathic vampires. And by the end it felt like Eddie Burma was a thinly disguised Harlan Ellison. Yes, Harlan. Your brilliance and your fierce lust for life made everyone flitter around you like moths around an electric light. And they sucked out your soul. Poor you.
The Pitll Pawob Division -- Beings beyond our imagination see us as strangely insignificant creatures, as insignificant as the universe is ... apparently. It’s Ellison being clever. It is also Ellison being boring. Next please.
The Place with No Name -- Ellison’s drug infused take on Prometheus, with a burning Yoatl and a pimp ready to switch places. I am find Ellison’s work in this collection to be an increasing slog.
White on White -- Extremely short with almost a touch of humility, both of which are rare for Ellison. He loves to look at ugly men. I know there are plenty who believe he is a misogynist, but the more of this collection I read the more I think he is a misandrist. Maybe the men he writes aren’t out of over blown Ellison-ego but a deep self-loathing. Regardless, this is most entertaining story since Asleep: With Still Hands.
Run for the Stars -- If there is a better piece of evidence that Harlan Ellison was not the man to be writing an episode of Star Trek or that he simply couldn’t grasp Roddenberry’s vision for the Federation, I don’t know what it is. Forget all their arguments with each other and pissiness over the years, Run for the Stars and its dream dust addicted anti-hero, ??? Tallent, are the very antithesis of the sort of Sci-Fi that Roddenberry was bringing to the world. Turns out, though, that Tallent’s story is a pretty solid read, and Ellison’s take on human nature is a welcome one, but just because Ellison was an impressive writer and could pull off some pretty excellent Sci-Fi, doesn’t mean he could actually write a story that could adhere to a future with the Federation at its core.
Roddenberry’s mistake? Thinking Ellison could write to match someone else’s vision. Ellison’s mistake? Thinking that his own vision was superior to everyone else’s.
Are You Listening? -- Another episode of a potential Ellison Sci-Fi series. This time, a guy has become so boring that in a world with the distractions of television, radio, film, advertising -- all that overwhelming sixties media -- he becomes invisible to the people around him. After a couple of weeks of going a little mad in his loneliness, he discovers a couple of people just like him, and he decides that now he finally has a goal in life: he wants to become visible again. If this had been written today I’d expect the milquetoast to shoot up a school or drive a car through a crowd, but Ellison wasn’t quite there yet in this story. This was okay. Just okay.
S.R.O. -- A UFO, probably interdimensional, hovers over NYC, and some capitalist swine tosses aside the love of his life to make millions of dollars as a promoter. The aliens, it turns out, are a band of travelling performers who deliver a mind-blowing three hour show of telepathy and empathy every night for a few years. And then it ends with Ellison’s dumbest wrap-up of any story in this collection. Harlan desperately needed an editor he would listen to ... hahaha ... What am I saying? It’s impossible!
Worlds to Kill -- This short story needed to be expanded. It feels a bit like a story treatment rather than a complete story. At a much expanded novel length, Worlds to Kill could have been an Ellison masterpiece. There are peeks at Ellison’s talent in here, but another two hundred plus pages to deepen the exploration of an interplanetary mercenary bringing horrific war for lasting piece was needed to fully display that talent.
Shattered Like a Glass Goblin -- An acid trip turns into a figurative gate to urban fantasy in hippy-era San Fran. I couldn’t wait for this crap to end.
A Boy and His Dog-- I am guilty of loving the ending of this story and of loving Blood, the telepathic, girl hunting dog of the title. But despite how much I love the ending, I can’t love this story. It is a post-Apocalyptic-murder-rape fest, and when I say murder-rape I mean that the murder and rape occurs in almost measure. Our POV character, Vic, is the key murderer-rapist; he is impossible to like. And Quilla June a murderer-rape victim isn’t so much a character as a sick, misogynist fantasy of Ellison’s. She would make it easy condemn Ellison as a horrible sexist, but I think that is lazy and too easy. He IS a horrible sexist, but he is something much worse, I think. This story crystallizes the truth Ellison has been revealing all the way through this collection: he is an entitled misanthrope of the Molierean degree. The man embraces the “great person” archetype, and he writes about it in a way that reveals his belief that the “great person” (who am I kidding? the “great man”) can take anything or do anything he wants, anytime he wants, to whomever he wants -- man, woman, animal, alien, other.
It’s despicable. Ellison was despicable. And I have about had my fill of his philosophy. I will be glad to put this on the shelf and walk away. I think I could use a nice dose of Star Trek hope to wash the filthy Ellison aftertaste out of my mouth.
b>Along the Scenic Route -- I have no idea what logic drives the inclusion of Ellison’s short stories in this collection. From a whacky time travelling mindbender, Ellison moves us straight into a B-Movie auto-pocalypse that is half Outer Limits half Death Race 2000. He manages, somehow, to capture and combine the spirit of console driving games, gunfighters in the old west, mid-life crises and technology not that far away from what surrounds us right now. It is as intelligent as it is cheesy, and I am shocked no one has turned this specific story into a summer blockbuster yet. Ten years ago, Bruce Willis would have played George. I wonder who would do that now? Well, whomever they chose, it would need a serious update to gender attitudes. I have a feeling that is going to be a common theme in this work from the late-60s / early 70s.
Phoenix -- This story is a full out Twilight Zone episode. Four (well ... really only three) people wander lost in a desert. There’s some obligatory love triangle conflict at play while some big new technology and theory of the history of time is the driving force of the desert quest. And then there is the big Twilight Zone finale. This collection could be the basis of a pretty kickass Netflix series, especially of with a little tweaking to social attitudes to make them reflect our now. I bet this “episode” would be a fan favourite,
Asleep: With Still Hands -- Whoa! Now this story has had me spinning away for days. This is some classic 60s-70s Sci-Fi based on the meat and potatoes trope that war and suffering are what make us “great”, that they are what make life dynamic, that they are what make us strive for excellence and achievement, that without war and suffering, we stagnate as a culture and don’t live to our full potential (it’s this trope, I think, that led to Ursula LeGuin’s brilliant The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas in riposte). You name the old Sci-Fi T.V. series and this philosophy can be found somewhere in the episodes. Male Sci-Fi writers, a large number of them, bumped up against this idea time and again, so it wasn’t surprising to see old Ellison embracing the concept. I’ve always thought it was bullshit, of the same piss poor propaganda as the idea that capitalist competition leads to achievement, but this time a new layer was added to my spinning thoughts -- is this the true “toxic masculinity”? I don’t usually buy into that new moniker and think it is mostly misplaced, overused and/or misused, but here, perhaps, it may just have some efficacy. Hmm ....
Santa Claus vs. S.P.I.D.E.R.-- Racism is here. Sexism is here. Shitty politics are here. And so is Santa Claus. But I would expect no less from a story that recasts James Bond as Santa Claus, S.P.E.C.T.E.R. as S.P.I.D.E.R. and seems to be messing with the Fleming formula right at the height of Fleming’s success.
At first I questioned Santa Clause vs. S.P.I.D.E.R.’s bona fides as an actual satire, but once Mayor Daly of Chicago appeared, its satirical nature was pretty clear. That doesn’t mean I think it worked particularly well, nor was it easy to sit through (especially when Kris used his one remaining weapon to f*ck his nemesis to death), but it was another fascinating bit of madness from the mind of Mad Ellison, and it definitively eradicated all the expectations I had coming into this collection that there would be a clear thematic line from story to story. After this entry, The Beast that Shouted Love at the Heart of the World is officially a hodgepodge.
Try a Dull Knife -- An empath is feasted upon by empathic vampires. And by the end it felt like Eddie Burma was a thinly disguised Harlan Ellison. Yes, Harlan. Your brilliance and your fierce lust for life made everyone flitter around you like moths around an electric light. And they sucked out your soul. Poor you.
The Pitll Pawob Division -- Beings beyond our imagination see us as strangely insignificant creatures, as insignificant as the universe is ... apparently. It’s Ellison being clever. It is also Ellison being boring. Next please.
The Place with No Name -- Ellison’s drug infused take on Prometheus, with a burning Yoatl and a pimp ready to switch places. I am find Ellison’s work in this collection to be an increasing slog.
White on White -- Extremely short with almost a touch of humility, both of which are rare for Ellison. He loves to look at ugly men. I know there are plenty who believe he is a misogynist, but the more of this collection I read the more I think he is a misandrist. Maybe the men he writes aren’t out of over blown Ellison-ego but a deep self-loathing. Regardless, this is most entertaining story since Asleep: With Still Hands.
Run for the Stars -- If there is a better piece of evidence that Harlan Ellison was not the man to be writing an episode of Star Trek or that he simply couldn’t grasp Roddenberry’s vision for the Federation, I don’t know what it is. Forget all their arguments with each other and pissiness over the years, Run for the Stars and its dream dust addicted anti-hero, ??? Tallent, are the very antithesis of the sort of Sci-Fi that Roddenberry was bringing to the world. Turns out, though, that Tallent’s story is a pretty solid read, and Ellison’s take on human nature is a welcome one, but just because Ellison was an impressive writer and could pull off some pretty excellent Sci-Fi, doesn’t mean he could actually write a story that could adhere to a future with the Federation at its core.
Roddenberry’s mistake? Thinking Ellison could write to match someone else’s vision. Ellison’s mistake? Thinking that his own vision was superior to everyone else’s.
Are You Listening? -- Another episode of a potential Ellison Sci-Fi series. This time, a guy has become so boring that in a world with the distractions of television, radio, film, advertising -- all that overwhelming sixties media -- he becomes invisible to the people around him. After a couple of weeks of going a little mad in his loneliness, he discovers a couple of people just like him, and he decides that now he finally has a goal in life: he wants to become visible again. If this had been written today I’d expect the milquetoast to shoot up a school or drive a car through a crowd, but Ellison wasn’t quite there yet in this story. This was okay. Just okay.
S.R.O. -- A UFO, probably interdimensional, hovers over NYC, and some capitalist swine tosses aside the love of his life to make millions of dollars as a promoter. The aliens, it turns out, are a band of travelling performers who deliver a mind-blowing three hour show of telepathy and empathy every night for a few years. And then it ends with Ellison’s dumbest wrap-up of any story in this collection. Harlan desperately needed an editor he would listen to ... hahaha ... What am I saying? It’s impossible!
Worlds to Kill -- This short story needed to be expanded. It feels a bit like a story treatment rather than a complete story. At a much expanded novel length, Worlds to Kill could have been an Ellison masterpiece. There are peeks at Ellison’s talent in here, but another two hundred plus pages to deepen the exploration of an interplanetary mercenary bringing horrific war for lasting piece was needed to fully display that talent.
Shattered Like a Glass Goblin -- An acid trip turns into a figurative gate to urban fantasy in hippy-era San Fran. I couldn’t wait for this crap to end.
A Boy and His Dog-- I am guilty of loving the ending of this story and of loving Blood, the telepathic, girl hunting dog of the title. But despite how much I love the ending, I can’t love this story. It is a post-Apocalyptic-murder-rape fest, and when I say murder-rape I mean that the murder and rape occurs in almost measure. Our POV character, Vic, is the key murderer-rapist; he is impossible to like. And Quilla June a murderer-rape victim isn’t so much a character as a sick, misogynist fantasy of Ellison’s. She would make it easy condemn Ellison as a horrible sexist, but I think that is lazy and too easy. He IS a horrible sexist, but he is something much worse, I think. This story crystallizes the truth Ellison has been revealing all the way through this collection: he is an entitled misanthrope of the Molierean degree. The man embraces the “great person” archetype, and he writes about it in a way that reveals his belief that the “great person” (who am I kidding? the “great man”) can take anything or do anything he wants, anytime he wants, to whomever he wants -- man, woman, animal, alien, other.
It’s despicable. Ellison was despicable. And I have about had my fill of his philosophy. I will be glad to put this on the shelf and walk away. I think I could use a nice dose of Star Trek hope to wash the filthy Ellison aftertaste out of my mouth.
August 13, 2017
This is one of the few books I had to buy multiple copies of because I read it and loaned it so many times it fell apart. Ellison was My Guy, and this was one his best collections. It contains some classic works, like the title story and A Boy and His Dog, and some older works from the 1950's that are the best representatives of the decade, and some works that defy easy pigeon-holing, such as Santa Claus Vs. S.P.I.D.E.R., a political examination that's just as telling now as it was when it originally appeared, forcing the reader to remember that the names may change but the song remains the same. Highly recommended!
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January 7, 2021Harlan je bezobrazan, provokativan, pametan, glasan i voli da uzme banku. Proza mu je ista takva, neke priče sam skoro pa čuo njegovim glasom. I to je super kad čitam jednu priču, ali je jako zamorno u zbirci. Tako da se ovo odužilo, jer ne znam da čitam tri knjige odjednom. Gejmen u predgovoru pominje psihodelični efekat i to stoji i 50+ godina od prvog objavljivanja, nije se ubajatilo. Same priče su uvek jako živopisne, naročito kad su sulude. Problem je što Elison voli ekstreme, a najbolje su mu priče koje su u isto vreme sulude - ali ne mnogo kao što on ume, drske ali ne mnogo kao što on ume, okrutne ali ne mnogo ko što on ume... S druge strane ume da razvali i razgali prosto kad slika, kad dovede situaciju do nekog ekstrema...
Uzimati češće ali u manjim dozama.
Uzimati češće ali u manjim dozama.
June 3, 2021
I had to create a new goodreads entry for this work. It's a hoopla audio of an older Recorded Books compilation of two Ellison short story collections. Review to follow this afternoon, hopefully!
September 13, 2019
Excellent anthology of short stories published originally in the 50s and 60s. Harlan Ellison was an activist and writer of speculative fiction. His imagination still blows me away.
Only two people have ever won four Hugo awards for excellence in science fiction: Harlan Ellison and Robert Heinlein. He was also a militant anti-war social activist, and his stories reflect the hypocrisy of justifying war as conflict resolution.
Ellison, like Flannery O'Connor and Shirley Jackson, vividly understood the naturally dark subterranean nature of man. Some of the stories are light-hearted parody, one is a acid trip nightmare, and almost all are dystopian. All are a fascinating and worthwhile journey through a frightening mind field of ideas.
Only two people have ever won four Hugo awards for excellence in science fiction: Harlan Ellison and Robert Heinlein. He was also a militant anti-war social activist, and his stories reflect the hypocrisy of justifying war as conflict resolution.
Ellison, like Flannery O'Connor and Shirley Jackson, vividly understood the naturally dark subterranean nature of man. Some of the stories are light-hearted parody, one is a acid trip nightmare, and almost all are dystopian. All are a fascinating and worthwhile journey through a frightening mind field of ideas.
July 20, 2009
A depressingly large amount of old science fiction exhibits something of a misogynistic attitude, but rarely is it as skin-crawlingly blatant as it is here.
September 27, 2023
I had to really think about The Beast That Shouted Love at the Heart of the World to reach some semblance of what I would consider an understanding of it.
For me, this wild, overly prose-y and vague story is about the perpetual cycle of evil and hate and madness.
Somewhere in the future, or sideways from it, is a paradisiacal world where people live without evil, yet drop it outside their backyards like a pollutant. This mirrors the relations between first-world countries and the global south, or companies against nature and communities. There is a selfishness in the name of peace. Everything else must be worsened in the pursuit of this progress, and the beastly actions are all in the name of love... I promise!
In this story, the "paradise" is dumping its hate—a thing that exists as an essence—by literally draining it from its citizens and shooting it to... anywhere and any-when else. This madness is compared to Pandora's Box in a scene where a man literally opens a container, sees horrors escape, and also sees one little smoke puff of what is likely Hope. The Hope is the future, the sideways place, the paradise. And in fact, the people in that paradise believe that, by existing, they have created a bastion for refugees who may one day find them and also be free from madness in their bubble. And maybe that works! Maybe it all adds up, and the suffering is worth it!
Eventually, humanity finds a way of ridding themselves of these horrors by shooting it in their past. This creates a temporal causality loop of madness, where evil is inescapable because eventually it is escaped. Paradise is the small, pristine hope of the future, but it is also the cause of all the chaos before it.
The story's trippy and obtuse. I went from disliking this book, to hating it, to LOATHING it, to liking it. Maybe, one day, when I forget all of the weird Ellison-isms (Ellison loves adding real-world events to his stories, like in the case of Atilla the Hun here, to make his story feel more profound) and dump those bad feelings backwards through time, I will reach my own mental paradise where I love this book.
Until then, 3/5.
For me, this wild, overly prose-y and vague story is about the perpetual cycle of evil and hate and madness.
Somewhere in the future, or sideways from it, is a paradisiacal world where people live without evil, yet drop it outside their backyards like a pollutant. This mirrors the relations between first-world countries and the global south, or companies against nature and communities. There is a selfishness in the name of peace. Everything else must be worsened in the pursuit of this progress, and the beastly actions are all in the name of love... I promise!
In this story, the "paradise" is dumping its hate—a thing that exists as an essence—by literally draining it from its citizens and shooting it to... anywhere and any-when else. This madness is compared to Pandora's Box in a scene where a man literally opens a container, sees horrors escape, and also sees one little smoke puff of what is likely Hope. The Hope is the future, the sideways place, the paradise. And in fact, the people in that paradise believe that, by existing, they have created a bastion for refugees who may one day find them and also be free from madness in their bubble. And maybe that works! Maybe it all adds up, and the suffering is worth it!
Eventually, humanity finds a way of ridding themselves of these horrors by shooting it in their past. This creates a temporal causality loop of madness, where evil is inescapable because eventually it is escaped. Paradise is the small, pristine hope of the future, but it is also the cause of all the chaos before it.
The story's trippy and obtuse. I went from disliking this book, to hating it, to LOATHING it, to liking it. Maybe, one day, when I forget all of the weird Ellison-isms (Ellison loves adding real-world events to his stories, like in the case of Atilla the Hun here, to make his story feel more profound) and dump those bad feelings backwards through time, I will reach my own mental paradise where I love this book.
Until then, 3/5.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
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April 12, 2025Another 15 stories of Harlan Ellison.
He was labelled an "Angry Young Man of the New Wave Writers". 15 stories to enforce the readers to think for themselves, and they are far from a manual for ignorant nulls ready to digest with just two neurons and a synapse.
In the world of literature, Harlan Ellison is unique; his voice is unmistakable. And as James Cameron discovered when he created "Terminator", "middle ground" doesn't exist in Ellison's dictionary.
The Beast That Shouted Love At The Heart Of The World
In Ellison's words: This story was intended as an experiment. Consciously so.
But it is, probably, the strangest and metaphysically spiritual story in Ellison's catalogue.
In the "Crosswhen" where everything happens, this plot revolves around events on Earth, in an alien community, and inside the space of metaphysical fundamental nature of reality beyond human comprehension.
Being, Existence, Purpose, Universals, Causality, Space, Time, and everything else outside of human sense and perception that you care to think about is here, compressed in 12 pages.
What would you think if you could "drain" madness and bottle it? What would you do with it?
It's better not to mention that the story ends "the next day" when World War IV starts.
Along The Scenic Route
This one begins at full speed and rushes in boiling anger to the precipice inevitably ahead. Ellison describes to us what it's like to live life in the "fast lane," literally. No, I'm not talking about "The Eagles".
You are a "Male": You are angry and your "manhood" is on the line, and you are determined, but you are out-gunned! What now...?
At some point in life, all of us prototype aspirants to alpha-male, while behind the steering wheel on a highway, we have at least those sentiments of silent (or noisy, that depends...) anger in a Pavlovian reaction to an aggressive, reckless manoeuvre of another driver.
We have two visions of the same sequence of events: we see it from the point of view of the angry eyes of the perpetrator, or from the fearful eyes of the spectator.
Both visions are highly emotional in their vivid details of the horror and helplessness when we step into a "no way out" situation.
Phoenix
We, all of us, have already been told at least once, in our early lives, to believe in a "Dream" and set in its pursuit; what no one tells us is that chasing dreams can kill you.
And the problem with "Dreams" is that even if you achieve them and survive, in the end, you can't find in yourself the justifications for such pain and suffering.
At first read, it's a story as inspirational as a cucumber; A hero without any qualities, a perfect egotist measuring the weight of Time to find a lost treasure that is not money. A ghost hovering over him, and two unwanted and hateful partners in business.
Greed, Pride and Lust: the favourite sins of the Devil!
And then suddenly I saw the "Light" in this story: there are no heroes. Only normal people following their own stupidity.
Asleep: With Still Hands
What if a lab-manufactured demi-god was set to enforce Peace on Earth? That and the insurgency of transmigration of souls who want war back to stimulate progress are the settings for this story.
Despite the philosophical considerations typical of Harlan Ellison, this is one of his few stories that disappoint the reader, even a fan like me.
The writing, however, as usual with Ellison, establishes a sumptuous fast pace.
Santa Claus vs. S.P.I.D.E.R.
Forget 007! Santa is the "real deal": He is fat, jolly, bearded, and possibly the deadliest man in the world. And his name is Kris.... He is very fond of reindeer, especially Blitzen, to whom he always has a sugar cube drenched in LSD in his pocket.
And then we have S.P.I.D.E.R., the Enemy, whose acronym stands for:
"Society for Pollution, Infection and destruction of Earthmen's Resources"
or,
"Special Politburo Intent on Destroying Everybody's Race"
or,
"Scabrous Predatory Invaders Determined to Eliminate Rationality"
or,
"Secret Preyers Involved in Demolishing Everything Right-minded"
or... whatever...
Harlan Ellison's most hilarious, ecological and political statement.
And don't forget the Aliens.
You'll never think of Santa Claus the same way again.
Try A Dull Knife
They have no lives of their own. Oh, this poisoned world... they have only the shadowy images of other lives - the lives of movie stars, fictional heroes, and cultural clichés. So they borrow from me, and never intend to pay back. They borrow at the highest rate of interest: my life. They are succubi, draining me, draining my soul
It is Ellison at his best as a social critic. It is so rooted in his personal life, there is no doubt as to the truth behind the tale. And that can be very disturbing.
With the vessel drained, the vampires moved to other pulsing arteries.
And no, believe me, it's not a vampire's story.
The Pitll Pawob Division
Incompetent aliens at the end of Creation!
This is a very, very, very short story. But a precious jewel in Ellison's catalogue.
The bureaucratic dullness so familiar in our own lives applied to the workings of divine order strikes the attention of the little grey cells of all the Poirots that we are.
What would it be like to be the Creator and have the creation constantly whining, pleading, and demanding? Or what would it be like to not be the One, and still have the "critters" whining, pleading, and demanding? What if there is a Creator, but mankind has failed to properly identify the Deity?
The Place With No Name
How to link the myth of Prometheus, Jesus Christ, and the Rig-Veda with a junkie pimp who becomes a murderer and "doors" to another world...? Ellison explains it to us.
We have "Soul Dualism", also called dualistic pluralism or multiple souls: a range of beliefs that a person has two or more kinds of souls. In many cases, one of the souls is associated with body functions ("body soul") and the other one can leave the body as a"free soul" or "wandering soul". We have one in this story, if as a consequence or not of metempsychosis, Mr Ellison lets the dilemma for us to ponder about, into the place where Legends are born and die.
It is not a "garbage collector" but a Sanitation Disposal Engineer; a "truck driver " is a Transportation Facilitation Executive; a "janitor" becomes a Housing Maintenance Overseer;
And what about an Entertainment Liaison Agent? Nah! it's a Pimp.
This and other euphemisms penetrate the reader's brain as a hot knife in butter.
Oh...and could Jesus Christ and Prometheus have been homosexual alien lovers?
Think about it...
White On White
A 3 pages story.
A gigolo in search of eternal love. And he found it! but as usual, one should be careful about what one's wishes, they might be granted...
Run For The Stars
Revenge!
What could trigger a powerful need for revenge? Betrayal for sure; abandonment and a total lack of compassion that wipes out any empathy and triggers a whirlwind of violence and thirst to kill.
What could corrupt the soul to the point of implosion in an orgy of blood? Do the wrong thing for the right reasons or do the right thing for the wrong reasons?
Koan, in Zen Buddhism, is a short, convoluted assertion or question used as a meditation exercise, intended to drain the analytic intellect of any egoistic wish, shaping and altering character under strain circumstances; each such exercise constitutes a test. However, since we always take the easiest possible route to understand, the law of less effort, more often than not, leads to misunderstandings, and we lose sight of the goals to attain. But this is how our brains are built, and being neurologically taxed is the work of academics, not junkies.
Ellison brings back Frankenstein syndrome's struggle to survival, which naturally twists morality and tries to justify the hypocrisy of the Creator and the subsequent actions of the unleached "monster"; What is fed by evil grows to be evil, even when it is done in the name of all that is right, and justified to our satisfaction. And now he was God on is own.
Are You Listening?
Everyone who felt socially excluded has triggered a "Neurological Fear of Rejection". We all suffered it at some point in our lives. It can be lonely and painful.
But what if you become so "invisible" that life loses whatever meaning it can have? So, in a society where, more than ever, notice and be noticed become so primordial that almost asking what makes life meaningful outside the other's eyes is an empty exercise. If, as an individual, we have no value outside the roles assumed or appointed by third parties, we are put aside and that "role" is terminated; without that role to fill and justify our existence, we are meaningless.
The quest to discover the nature of life's meaning has been a hot topic since the first two synapses shook hands and agreed to become enough intellect to separate man from beasts.
And Harlan Ellison just raised the heat of his burning indignation at the meaning of life in our societies.
S.R.O
James Lovelock stated that there are no other intelligent life forms in the Universe: Our existence is a freakish one-off.
But for the sake of the argument, let's imagine that Aliens are out there in the vast darkness of the Universe. And those aliens are so intelligent and advanced that they can cross billions of light-years in nanoseconds and come to "visit" us.
Why would they do that? It is a dream, right? But dreams can be very ambiguous and too cryptic to interpret, and it's better not to forget that nightmares are dreams too.
So, after those dreams were entirely dreamed, we couldn't go back to "normal business as usual", but when dreams come true...
Beware of the dreams you wish for.
Worlds To Kill
AIs are becoming smarter than human beings, and Ellison hinted at it before Lovelock and the existence of working artificial intelligence. Alan Touring did the initial "kick", and now the ball is on the side of the machines that will become the future of mankind. But what if a machine wants to become God?
The mistake concerning deciphering aliens' thoughts is that, well...they are aliens! As a completely different species, how can we expect their reasoning to be like humans? It's not because mathematics is "Universal" that everyone applies it exactly the same way or uses it for the same purposes. And the bloody human mercenary mentality can be more useful for something else than profit.
What is the message behind war and carnage to attain a higher purpose? "Ends Justify The Means" and again the paradox of doing the wrong thing for the right reasons.
This story opens an entirely new Pandora's Box in the moral dimensions. It reads easily while leaving an astounded reader in a state of crashed thoughts trying to process the implications of the deep moral dilemmas this little straightforward story tells us, like a computer overloaded with too many simultaneous operations crashing in the famous "blue death screen".
Why should this god be any more successful than all the other gods who have failed?
Shattered Like A Glass Goblin
Terror is the only word for this one. We can "taste" the fear in the events following a Lovecraftian pattern.
As events dive into each other, the distinction between reality and hallucination wavers and fuses.
This story is too real, and too painfully true, and more than ever, in actuality, only we just wish it weren't.
A Boy And His Dog
A Dystopian, Post-Apocalyptic tale about real friendship.
When all the frontiers are volatile under the paroxysm of violence and orgy of destruction, which values can we preserve?
No belief is unchallenged, and no comforting answers are offered, as the story runs its length through the range and depth of human destruction.
Good and Bad, Right and Wrong, Hero and Villain, Winning or Losing! All moral values are haze and scattered widely; disseminated.
Reality has proven us to be totally unviable of belief in any higher form of the human condition and shown us only capable of pursuing our gluttony, greed and bestial instincts.
He was labelled an "Angry Young Man of the New Wave Writers". 15 stories to enforce the readers to think for themselves, and they are far from a manual for ignorant nulls ready to digest with just two neurons and a synapse.
In the world of literature, Harlan Ellison is unique; his voice is unmistakable. And as James Cameron discovered when he created "Terminator", "middle ground" doesn't exist in Ellison's dictionary.
The Beast That Shouted Love At The Heart Of The World
In Ellison's words: This story was intended as an experiment. Consciously so.
But it is, probably, the strangest and metaphysically spiritual story in Ellison's catalogue.
In the "Crosswhen" where everything happens, this plot revolves around events on Earth, in an alien community, and inside the space of metaphysical fundamental nature of reality beyond human comprehension.
Being, Existence, Purpose, Universals, Causality, Space, Time, and everything else outside of human sense and perception that you care to think about is here, compressed in 12 pages.
What would you think if you could "drain" madness and bottle it? What would you do with it?
It's better not to mention that the story ends "the next day" when World War IV starts.
Along The Scenic Route
This one begins at full speed and rushes in boiling anger to the precipice inevitably ahead. Ellison describes to us what it's like to live life in the "fast lane," literally. No, I'm not talking about "The Eagles".
You are a "Male": You are angry and your "manhood" is on the line, and you are determined, but you are out-gunned! What now...?
At some point in life, all of us prototype aspirants to alpha-male, while behind the steering wheel on a highway, we have at least those sentiments of silent (or noisy, that depends...) anger in a Pavlovian reaction to an aggressive, reckless manoeuvre of another driver.
We have two visions of the same sequence of events: we see it from the point of view of the angry eyes of the perpetrator, or from the fearful eyes of the spectator.
Both visions are highly emotional in their vivid details of the horror and helplessness when we step into a "no way out" situation.
Phoenix
We, all of us, have already been told at least once, in our early lives, to believe in a "Dream" and set in its pursuit; what no one tells us is that chasing dreams can kill you.
And the problem with "Dreams" is that even if you achieve them and survive, in the end, you can't find in yourself the justifications for such pain and suffering.
At first read, it's a story as inspirational as a cucumber; A hero without any qualities, a perfect egotist measuring the weight of Time to find a lost treasure that is not money. A ghost hovering over him, and two unwanted and hateful partners in business.
Greed, Pride and Lust: the favourite sins of the Devil!
And then suddenly I saw the "Light" in this story: there are no heroes. Only normal people following their own stupidity.
Asleep: With Still Hands
What if a lab-manufactured demi-god was set to enforce Peace on Earth? That and the insurgency of transmigration of souls who want war back to stimulate progress are the settings for this story.
Despite the philosophical considerations typical of Harlan Ellison, this is one of his few stories that disappoint the reader, even a fan like me.
The writing, however, as usual with Ellison, establishes a sumptuous fast pace.
Santa Claus vs. S.P.I.D.E.R.
Forget 007! Santa is the "real deal": He is fat, jolly, bearded, and possibly the deadliest man in the world. And his name is Kris.... He is very fond of reindeer, especially Blitzen, to whom he always has a sugar cube drenched in LSD in his pocket.
And then we have S.P.I.D.E.R., the Enemy, whose acronym stands for:
"Society for Pollution, Infection and destruction of Earthmen's Resources"
or,
"Special Politburo Intent on Destroying Everybody's Race"
or,
"Scabrous Predatory Invaders Determined to Eliminate Rationality"
or,
"Secret Preyers Involved in Demolishing Everything Right-minded"
or... whatever...
Harlan Ellison's most hilarious, ecological and political statement.
And don't forget the Aliens.
You'll never think of Santa Claus the same way again.
Try A Dull Knife
They have no lives of their own. Oh, this poisoned world... they have only the shadowy images of other lives - the lives of movie stars, fictional heroes, and cultural clichés. So they borrow from me, and never intend to pay back. They borrow at the highest rate of interest: my life. They are succubi, draining me, draining my soul
It is Ellison at his best as a social critic. It is so rooted in his personal life, there is no doubt as to the truth behind the tale. And that can be very disturbing.
With the vessel drained, the vampires moved to other pulsing arteries.
And no, believe me, it's not a vampire's story.
The Pitll Pawob Division
Incompetent aliens at the end of Creation!
This is a very, very, very short story. But a precious jewel in Ellison's catalogue.
The bureaucratic dullness so familiar in our own lives applied to the workings of divine order strikes the attention of the little grey cells of all the Poirots that we are.
What would it be like to be the Creator and have the creation constantly whining, pleading, and demanding? Or what would it be like to not be the One, and still have the "critters" whining, pleading, and demanding? What if there is a Creator, but mankind has failed to properly identify the Deity?
The Place With No Name
How to link the myth of Prometheus, Jesus Christ, and the Rig-Veda with a junkie pimp who becomes a murderer and "doors" to another world...? Ellison explains it to us.
We have "Soul Dualism", also called dualistic pluralism or multiple souls: a range of beliefs that a person has two or more kinds of souls. In many cases, one of the souls is associated with body functions ("body soul") and the other one can leave the body as a"free soul" or "wandering soul". We have one in this story, if as a consequence or not of metempsychosis, Mr Ellison lets the dilemma for us to ponder about, into the place where Legends are born and die.
It is not a "garbage collector" but a Sanitation Disposal Engineer; a "truck driver " is a Transportation Facilitation Executive; a "janitor" becomes a Housing Maintenance Overseer;
And what about an Entertainment Liaison Agent? Nah! it's a Pimp.
This and other euphemisms penetrate the reader's brain as a hot knife in butter.
Oh...and could Jesus Christ and Prometheus have been homosexual alien lovers?
Think about it...
White On White
A 3 pages story.
A gigolo in search of eternal love. And he found it! but as usual, one should be careful about what one's wishes, they might be granted...
Run For The Stars
Revenge!
What could trigger a powerful need for revenge? Betrayal for sure; abandonment and a total lack of compassion that wipes out any empathy and triggers a whirlwind of violence and thirst to kill.
What could corrupt the soul to the point of implosion in an orgy of blood? Do the wrong thing for the right reasons or do the right thing for the wrong reasons?
Koan, in Zen Buddhism, is a short, convoluted assertion or question used as a meditation exercise, intended to drain the analytic intellect of any egoistic wish, shaping and altering character under strain circumstances; each such exercise constitutes a test. However, since we always take the easiest possible route to understand, the law of less effort, more often than not, leads to misunderstandings, and we lose sight of the goals to attain. But this is how our brains are built, and being neurologically taxed is the work of academics, not junkies.
Ellison brings back Frankenstein syndrome's struggle to survival, which naturally twists morality and tries to justify the hypocrisy of the Creator and the subsequent actions of the unleached "monster"; What is fed by evil grows to be evil, even when it is done in the name of all that is right, and justified to our satisfaction. And now he was God on is own.
Are You Listening?
Everyone who felt socially excluded has triggered a "Neurological Fear of Rejection". We all suffered it at some point in our lives. It can be lonely and painful.
But what if you become so "invisible" that life loses whatever meaning it can have? So, in a society where, more than ever, notice and be noticed become so primordial that almost asking what makes life meaningful outside the other's eyes is an empty exercise. If, as an individual, we have no value outside the roles assumed or appointed by third parties, we are put aside and that "role" is terminated; without that role to fill and justify our existence, we are meaningless.
The quest to discover the nature of life's meaning has been a hot topic since the first two synapses shook hands and agreed to become enough intellect to separate man from beasts.
And Harlan Ellison just raised the heat of his burning indignation at the meaning of life in our societies.
S.R.O
James Lovelock stated that there are no other intelligent life forms in the Universe: Our existence is a freakish one-off.
But for the sake of the argument, let's imagine that Aliens are out there in the vast darkness of the Universe. And those aliens are so intelligent and advanced that they can cross billions of light-years in nanoseconds and come to "visit" us.
Why would they do that? It is a dream, right? But dreams can be very ambiguous and too cryptic to interpret, and it's better not to forget that nightmares are dreams too.
So, after those dreams were entirely dreamed, we couldn't go back to "normal business as usual", but when dreams come true...
Beware of the dreams you wish for.
Worlds To Kill
AIs are becoming smarter than human beings, and Ellison hinted at it before Lovelock and the existence of working artificial intelligence. Alan Touring did the initial "kick", and now the ball is on the side of the machines that will become the future of mankind. But what if a machine wants to become God?
The mistake concerning deciphering aliens' thoughts is that, well...they are aliens! As a completely different species, how can we expect their reasoning to be like humans? It's not because mathematics is "Universal" that everyone applies it exactly the same way or uses it for the same purposes. And the bloody human mercenary mentality can be more useful for something else than profit.
What is the message behind war and carnage to attain a higher purpose? "Ends Justify The Means" and again the paradox of doing the wrong thing for the right reasons.
This story opens an entirely new Pandora's Box in the moral dimensions. It reads easily while leaving an astounded reader in a state of crashed thoughts trying to process the implications of the deep moral dilemmas this little straightforward story tells us, like a computer overloaded with too many simultaneous operations crashing in the famous "blue death screen".
Why should this god be any more successful than all the other gods who have failed?
Shattered Like A Glass Goblin
Terror is the only word for this one. We can "taste" the fear in the events following a Lovecraftian pattern.
As events dive into each other, the distinction between reality and hallucination wavers and fuses.
This story is too real, and too painfully true, and more than ever, in actuality, only we just wish it weren't.
A Boy And His Dog
A Dystopian, Post-Apocalyptic tale about real friendship.
When all the frontiers are volatile under the paroxysm of violence and orgy of destruction, which values can we preserve?
No belief is unchallenged, and no comforting answers are offered, as the story runs its length through the range and depth of human destruction.
Good and Bad, Right and Wrong, Hero and Villain, Winning or Losing! All moral values are haze and scattered widely; disseminated.
Reality has proven us to be totally unviable of belief in any higher form of the human condition and shown us only capable of pursuing our gluttony, greed and bestial instincts.
November 5, 2018
The Hugo short story award winning title piece, The Beast That Shouted Love at the Heart of the World, is strange, even for Ellison. And that's saying a lot. I'm sure there's more than one way to interpret it, but essentially it seems to be about the casting out of evil from heaven to the world of men, told as a visceral, dark story involving humans, aliens, and alternate universes. Not my all time favorite Ellison story, but really quite good.
July 7, 2025
Check out my full, spoiler free, video review HERE.
Ellison pushes the boundaries with these dark, edgy yet memorable stories. Once you get over the shock and settle into the story telling then some of these really shine. Ellison is a great writer and knows how to craft a short story, but I understand why a lot of people don’t like his writing at all.
Some of my favorite stories were; Run for the Stars, Asleep with Still Hands, S.R.O., Phoenix, The Beast That Shouted Love at the Heart of the World and A Boy and His Dog.
Ellison pushes the boundaries with these dark, edgy yet memorable stories. Once you get over the shock and settle into the story telling then some of these really shine. Ellison is a great writer and knows how to craft a short story, but I understand why a lot of people don’t like his writing at all.
Some of my favorite stories were; Run for the Stars, Asleep with Still Hands, S.R.O., Phoenix, The Beast That Shouted Love at the Heart of the World and A Boy and His Dog.
January 17, 2023
I’d guess about 80% of this story collection was very good. Three or four stories were exceptional and a couple were either marginal or too weird to even follow in a short format. My first Harlan Ellison and the one word I’d use to describe his writing would be gritty.
October 9, 2014
This collection by Harlan Ellison, the bad boy of science fiction, is a bit uneven at times. Still, Ellison at his best -- even if his spark plug fires only a fourth of the time -- is awesome. In particular, I loved "A Boy and His Dog," which had been made into a movie. Other stories I liked are the title story, "Along the Scenic Route," and "Santa Claus vs. S.P.I.D.E.R."
The Beast That Shouted Love at the Heart of the World held me entranced during a recent vacation in Peru. I expect I'll be reading some more of his work soon.
The Beast That Shouted Love at the Heart of the World held me entranced during a recent vacation in Peru. I expect I'll be reading some more of his work soon.
May 6, 2014
Good speculative fiction. Ellison certainly has a good imagination. There are some weaker stories but most are quite strong. A Boy and His Dog ends the collection, and is very good. "White on White" is one of the weaker ones, but "Run for the Stars" and "Worlds to Kill" are excellent. "Are You Listening" seems like a very clear riff of "Country of the Kind" by Damon Knight. Santa Claus vs. S.P.I.D.E.R. his just completely insane but highly entertaining.
November 14, 2020
Lo leí por Neon Genesis Evangelion, imagina ahora lo traumada que soy por estas cosas. Pero no me arrepiento, la ficción de Harlan Ellison me estremece y me dejó con unas ganas tremendas de leer más de sus obras, siento que tiene mucho potencial para ser uno de mis escritores favoritos, aunque su escritura no tenga tanta personalidad en este caso (puede que mejore en sus siguientes obras), sí lo considero muy original en cuento a la trama y los temas que trata y cómo lo hace, fue un genio.
September 23, 2015
The Basics
A collection of speculative fiction by the one-and-only Harlan Ellison. Many of the stories here, including the title tale, were award winners. Should make for a strong outing. Does it?
My Thoughts
This was a somewhat strong collection. The title story sets the pace with some very strange, almost impenetrable imagery and Ellison spinning some of his best poetry among prose. “Shattered Like a Glass Goblin” has a good bit of that, too, so if you love the title story (it’s so much easier to say that than to type it over and over, much as it’s a unique title that I love), you’ll love that one, too.
Among my favorites here are “Along the Scenic Route”, which I’ve seen a lot of people mention. It was quirky, funny, exciting, and saying all that, it has the recipe to be a great movie if someone were so inclined. “The Pitll Pawob Division” was short and very amusing, made all the more punchy for its quickness. “S.R.O.” has a wonderful twist that’s parts both funny and chilling. And I have to mention “Run for the Stars” as a wonderfully paced action/science-fiction story that forces you on with white knuckles.
But there’s a downside. I hate that there is, because so many of these stories are so strong. “Santa Claus vs. S.P.I.D.E.R.” is not only made up of cheesy humor that relies on mocking the spy genre as it was at the time and seems very outdated now, it’s final punchline is a rape joke. The story wasn’t very compelling up to that point, and upon reaching said point I was actively pissed.
Possibly the most controversial thing I’ll say in this review is that “A Boy and His Dog” is the most misogynistic, ugly waste of paper I’ve ever read. The girl’s personality changed to suit whatever mood Ellison wanted her to be in, going from being the love of Vic’s life to expendable because she was shrill at the drop of a hat. And should I even get into the way sex is handled in this story? I understand that a culture with a lowered population of women is going to be skewed about sex, but things get even more problematic than that.
So it lost a star. My rule is when a book is a collection, I rate it based on a ratio. Good stories to bad. So obviously, the good far outweighs the bad. It’s worth your time save two stories. And those stories? I’d skip them.
Final Rating
4/5
A collection of speculative fiction by the one-and-only Harlan Ellison. Many of the stories here, including the title tale, were award winners. Should make for a strong outing. Does it?
My Thoughts
This was a somewhat strong collection. The title story sets the pace with some very strange, almost impenetrable imagery and Ellison spinning some of his best poetry among prose. “Shattered Like a Glass Goblin” has a good bit of that, too, so if you love the title story (it’s so much easier to say that than to type it over and over, much as it’s a unique title that I love), you’ll love that one, too.
Among my favorites here are “Along the Scenic Route”, which I’ve seen a lot of people mention. It was quirky, funny, exciting, and saying all that, it has the recipe to be a great movie if someone were so inclined. “The Pitll Pawob Division” was short and very amusing, made all the more punchy for its quickness. “S.R.O.” has a wonderful twist that’s parts both funny and chilling. And I have to mention “Run for the Stars” as a wonderfully paced action/science-fiction story that forces you on with white knuckles.
But there’s a downside. I hate that there is, because so many of these stories are so strong. “Santa Claus vs. S.P.I.D.E.R.” is not only made up of cheesy humor that relies on mocking the spy genre as it was at the time and seems very outdated now, it’s final punchline is a rape joke. The story wasn’t very compelling up to that point, and upon reaching said point I was actively pissed.
Possibly the most controversial thing I’ll say in this review is that “A Boy and His Dog” is the most misogynistic, ugly waste of paper I’ve ever read. The girl’s personality changed to suit whatever mood Ellison wanted her to be in, going from being the love of Vic’s life to expendable because she was shrill at the drop of a hat. And should I even get into the way sex is handled in this story? I understand that a culture with a lowered population of women is going to be skewed about sex, but things get even more problematic than that.
So it lost a star. My rule is when a book is a collection, I rate it based on a ratio. Good stories to bad. So obviously, the good far outweighs the bad. It’s worth your time save two stories. And those stories? I’d skip them.
Final Rating
4/5
November 30, 2018
Harlan. Ellison. Is. A. Genius.
DONE.
(or maybe not)
May have full review later.
I am giving this one a a 4 out of 5 stars.
DONE.
(or maybe not)
May have full review later.
I am giving this one a a 4 out of 5 stars.
June 9, 2022
Really, 2.5 stars: about 50% satisfaction from this collection.
I usually enjoy Ellison's writing and there are times when his cynical, dyspeptic, and sometimes-dystopic stories are just the right thing. This anthology, however, contains some of his lesser pieces, and boy-o-boy are they dated. "A Boy and His Dog" was the only story I'd read before and it stands as the strongest piece here; the title story read very much like a Zelazny piece, reminding me of Creatures of Light and Darkness in its experimental presentation and playing with archetypes. A couple of the stories are pleasant little mind-snacks: "S.R.O." is actually funny, "Are You Listening?" grimly covers similar existential ground as a recent anime series* that I enjoy, and "Worlds to Kill" would make a decent Netflix space-war movie; the rest of the stories are either utterly forgettable or just bad (i.e., "Run For the Stars"). For good Ellison from this period, stick to Paingod and Other Delusions or I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream.
* -- Despite its ridiculous title, Rascal Does Not Dream of Bunny Girl Senpai (2018; 13 episodes) is a very mature and touching story about adolescent alienation, existentialism, and vanishing. I would not be surprised if the author were to cite Ellison as an influence.
I usually enjoy Ellison's writing and there are times when his cynical, dyspeptic, and sometimes-dystopic stories are just the right thing. This anthology, however, contains some of his lesser pieces, and boy-o-boy are they dated. "A Boy and His Dog" was the only story I'd read before and it stands as the strongest piece here; the title story read very much like a Zelazny piece, reminding me of Creatures of Light and Darkness in its experimental presentation and playing with archetypes. A couple of the stories are pleasant little mind-snacks: "S.R.O." is actually funny, "Are You Listening?" grimly covers similar existential ground as a recent anime series* that I enjoy, and "Worlds to Kill" would make a decent Netflix space-war movie; the rest of the stories are either utterly forgettable or just bad (i.e., "Run For the Stars"). For good Ellison from this period, stick to Paingod and Other Delusions or I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream.
* -- Despite its ridiculous title, Rascal Does Not Dream of Bunny Girl Senpai (2018; 13 episodes) is a very mature and touching story about adolescent alienation, existentialism, and vanishing. I would not be surprised if the author were to cite Ellison as an influence.
January 16, 2018
This collection is extremely good, Ellison is an epic writer, no doubt. True Science Fiction creative imagination and presentation. Unexpected, thought-provoking stories. Highly recommended.
You can't beat Ellison. No aliens appearing to save the day. Sometimes the day isn't saved. One of my favorite Ellison works. Should be read more
You can't beat Ellison. No aliens appearing to save the day. Sometimes the day isn't saved. One of my favorite Ellison works. Should be read more
February 14, 2023
Harlan Ellison has written many great short story collections, but this is not one of them. Some of Harlan's worst impulses (the laughably out-of-touch anti-drug "Shattered Like A Glass Goblin") and aged like milk takes ("Don't send your kids to McMartin preschool"). Maybe give this one a pass?
Read
July 18, 2025Good collection with a few really good stories. More impressive was that, despite containing 15 stories, there weren’t really any duds. The title story as well as “Phoenix” were probably my favorite pieces of fiction in here, and the introduction “The Waves in Rio” was also an awesome essay on New Wave SF, not to be skipped. Hot take: “A Boy and His Dog” might be overhyped, it’s good and has a great ending, but I don’t think it’s top-tier Ellison. Fight me.
June 10, 2025
Hard read. Good read. Needs time to breathe. I had been looking for a copy of this for decades. Did it live up to (my personal) hype? Yes. Oh yes it did. ALL the stories in it were interesting, which is more than I can say for 99.9% of all short story collections.
January 20, 2026
What the flux this made no sense to me! 😭
Read
September 24, 2025Misogyny! I wouldn't waste your time on this one.
December 7, 2024
Harlan Ellison is a titan of science fiction. He is both an imaginative and talented storyteller; he is also a weirdo and a horndog. These two facets of his writing sometimes produce innovative, thought provoking stories. Sometimes they do not.
I’ll start with what I liked. The title story is deserving of its Hugo award. It is thought provoking and mind bending. It mainly revolves around the broad reaching impacts and sources of senseless violence, and it felt prescient when read in 2024. Stories like "Asleep: with Still Hands" create such an immersive atmosphere that I felt transported. His imagery is so commanding that psychic combat seems downright plausible, if not achievable were one to try hard enough. The titular Sleeper is oozing with a gothic regality. The story, assisted by a tastefully executed twist, asks whether war is in man’s nature without delving too deep into tropes or making the topic feel stale. "Try a Dull Knife" was a painful glimpse into the life of a celebrity surrounded by people who feed off of their social energy. You don’t have to be a celebrity, however, to feel pangs of empathy for the main character. I very much enjoyed "A Place with No Name" but I don’t have a lot to say about it without spoiling the ending.
What I don’t like: Ellison is just so god damn horny. His sexual frustration permeates his writing in such a blatant fashion that it is often deeply uncomfortable. Sometimes it works. Sometimes. One of his most famous works, "A Boy and his Dog", would not be the devastatingly grim post apocalypse if Vic were not a rapist and a raging misogynist. It pains me to admit that this story is actually pretty good, because it feels at times like Ellison wrote it just to have an excuse to whack off. At his worst Ellison will just insert pointless sex scenes, frequently gratuitous and seldom consensual. In Santa Claus VS S.P.I.D.E.R., which would have otherwise been a campy tale about Kris Kringle fighting corruption at the highest level of politics, Ellison forces the reader to consider the prospect of the jolly red man getting dirty (with dubious consent). And it would be somewhat excusable if it served some greater commentary, but the whole lesson of this story is that corruption is bad and maybe we shouldn’t be corrupt. Not exactly a thinker. It is hard to emphasize how frequently Ellison’s short stories contain unnecessary, long, and uncomfortable sex scenes which serve no greater purpose than the writer’s own sexual gratification.
Another reviewer said that Ellison doesn’t have outdated morals, that those are just the morals of the society he’s criticizing. Is that true? Probably not, in my humble opinion. Ellison’s self service is too over the top, too much of a non-sequitur to be construed as commentary (except for once in a blue moon when the creepiness contributes to the plot). It would also cheapen the commentary that he does intend, which is valuable to the present without moralizing or explaining itself. Ellison is one of the most talented short story science fiction writers ever born. This is true. And he’s also a weird, horny dude. This is also true. I don’t think we need to endorse every bit of his psyche to appreciate his contributions to the genre, or to enjoy the great many stories of this collection which are uncomfortable in a thought provoking way. If I could I would give this a 3.5, would recommend to fans of the genre. Would also recommend to others who just want to read the 4 or 5 stories in this collection which really, really work.
I’ll start with what I liked. The title story is deserving of its Hugo award. It is thought provoking and mind bending. It mainly revolves around the broad reaching impacts and sources of senseless violence, and it felt prescient when read in 2024. Stories like "Asleep: with Still Hands" create such an immersive atmosphere that I felt transported. His imagery is so commanding that psychic combat seems downright plausible, if not achievable were one to try hard enough. The titular Sleeper is oozing with a gothic regality. The story, assisted by a tastefully executed twist, asks whether war is in man’s nature without delving too deep into tropes or making the topic feel stale. "Try a Dull Knife" was a painful glimpse into the life of a celebrity surrounded by people who feed off of their social energy. You don’t have to be a celebrity, however, to feel pangs of empathy for the main character. I very much enjoyed "A Place with No Name" but I don’t have a lot to say about it without spoiling the ending.
What I don’t like: Ellison is just so god damn horny. His sexual frustration permeates his writing in such a blatant fashion that it is often deeply uncomfortable. Sometimes it works. Sometimes. One of his most famous works, "A Boy and his Dog", would not be the devastatingly grim post apocalypse if Vic were not a rapist and a raging misogynist. It pains me to admit that this story is actually pretty good, because it feels at times like Ellison wrote it just to have an excuse to whack off. At his worst Ellison will just insert pointless sex scenes, frequently gratuitous and seldom consensual. In Santa Claus VS S.P.I.D.E.R., which would have otherwise been a campy tale about Kris Kringle fighting corruption at the highest level of politics, Ellison forces the reader to consider the prospect of the jolly red man getting dirty (with dubious consent). And it would be somewhat excusable if it served some greater commentary, but the whole lesson of this story is that corruption is bad and maybe we shouldn’t be corrupt. Not exactly a thinker. It is hard to emphasize how frequently Ellison’s short stories contain unnecessary, long, and uncomfortable sex scenes which serve no greater purpose than the writer’s own sexual gratification.
Another reviewer said that Ellison doesn’t have outdated morals, that those are just the morals of the society he’s criticizing. Is that true? Probably not, in my humble opinion. Ellison’s self service is too over the top, too much of a non-sequitur to be construed as commentary (except for once in a blue moon when the creepiness contributes to the plot). It would also cheapen the commentary that he does intend, which is valuable to the present without moralizing or explaining itself. Ellison is one of the most talented short story science fiction writers ever born. This is true. And he’s also a weird, horny dude. This is also true. I don’t think we need to endorse every bit of his psyche to appreciate his contributions to the genre, or to enjoy the great many stories of this collection which are uncomfortable in a thought provoking way. If I could I would give this a 3.5, would recommend to fans of the genre. Would also recommend to others who just want to read the 4 or 5 stories in this collection which really, really work.
March 8, 2016
I read Ellison's collection over the course of a work week, going back and forth between it and a novel. I've always had a love-hate relationship with Harlan Ellison; while some of his work is arguably brilliant, his personality and arrogance is that of a good-for-nothing-you-know-what. It's hard to appreciate someone's work when they themselves are too boastful to see their own flaws.
But enough of that. This review is about the short yet very tasty collection The Beast That Shouted Love at the Heart of the World. For most, a lot of the content found here will feel too dated to bother with, but there are some worth reading no matter what time period you're from. Namely, I really enjoyed Along the Scenic Route (which is in a way Ellison's take on Mad Max), Phoenix (short, entertaining, and with a curious twist), and Santa Claus vs. S.P.I.D.E.R., which is probably my favorite Ellison short, with exception to I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream.
And yet, I feel the collection still falls short in ways. Some have argued that because it is so old Ellison cannot be faulted for this, yet I'd say that the works of Isaac Asimov are just as powerful now as they were back then. In fact, I recently reread his Foundation novels and found myself just as enthralled as ever. That simply doesn't happen with Ellison. It's not an age thing; it's because, once again, he's simply too self-centered to realize his mistakes. He tries for some very high-concept pieces here and, in my opinion, fails spectacularly.
Sorry, friends, I'm ranting once more. In summary, pick up the collection for Along the Scenic Route, Phoenix, and Santa Claus; don't bother with the rest.
But enough of that. This review is about the short yet very tasty collection The Beast That Shouted Love at the Heart of the World. For most, a lot of the content found here will feel too dated to bother with, but there are some worth reading no matter what time period you're from. Namely, I really enjoyed Along the Scenic Route (which is in a way Ellison's take on Mad Max), Phoenix (short, entertaining, and with a curious twist), and Santa Claus vs. S.P.I.D.E.R., which is probably my favorite Ellison short, with exception to I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream.
And yet, I feel the collection still falls short in ways. Some have argued that because it is so old Ellison cannot be faulted for this, yet I'd say that the works of Isaac Asimov are just as powerful now as they were back then. In fact, I recently reread his Foundation novels and found myself just as enthralled as ever. That simply doesn't happen with Ellison. It's not an age thing; it's because, once again, he's simply too self-centered to realize his mistakes. He tries for some very high-concept pieces here and, in my opinion, fails spectacularly.
Sorry, friends, I'm ranting once more. In summary, pick up the collection for Along the Scenic Route, Phoenix, and Santa Claus; don't bother with the rest.
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