Angry Candy

by Harlan Ellison

The Seattle Times said of Angry Candy: "Ellison's stories rattle the bars of complacency that people put around their souls . . . Razor sharp . . . piercingly profound." Once again, Ellison's writing defies all labels. These seventeen stories by a modern master are an "assembled artifact" of anger and faith - as bittersweet as a"jalapeno-laced cinnamon bear." The sixteen stories collected here are spread over the farthest stretches of time and space, but even the bleakest of them is warmed by a passionate faith in the endurance of life and its ultimate possibilities.

Genres: Science Fiction, Short Stories, Fiction, Fantasy, Horror, Speculative Fiction, Collections

324 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1985

About the author

Harlan 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".

Reviews

[Forrest · Rating 5 out of 5]

I had a very interesting conversation with editor Dave Hartwell at the World Fantasy Convention. We both agree that Ellison is a completely venomous human being with low standards of behavior who thinks he is much smarter than he really is. We also agree that when his game is on, he hits home runs. This is the case with Angry Candy, the best collection of his more experimental work. I would definitely rank it among the top twenty short story collections I've ever read, maybe even in the top ten. One thing that is not in question: the story "The Paladin of the Last Hour" is one of the best pieces of short speculative fiction ever written. Ever.

[Kevin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Harlan Ellison was a crotchety, grumpy, and cantankerous old man. He was also the reason I became a reader. Okay, so maybe he wasn't the ONLY reason. Maybe Elizabeth George Speare and Theodor Geisel and Al Feldstein had a little something to do with it as well, but Harlan deserves most of the credit. His imaginative and riveting short stories were the perfect gateway drug for a chubby little fledgling bookworm with a short attention span.

Angry Candy is somewhat of a short-story experiment. It's not a "Best Of" collection and it doesn't pretend to be. This is Ellison coloring outside the lines, challenging himself, and us, to zig when convention demands a zag. For that reason, I would not recommend this as an intro to Harlan Ellison for anyone unfamiliar with his work. But if you're already a fan you are sure to find at least one story here that will exceed your high expectations.

For me, there were at least two standout stories: 'The Region Between' and 'Soft Monkey,' both about underdogs (one a rebellious disembodied soul and the other a homeless bag lady) who succeed against all odds - if only for a little while.

From the various reviews I've read everyone seems to have a different favorite. That's the ever-altering style of Ellison, what I like you might dislike, what I dislike you might love ...or not.

[Nate D · Rating 2 out of 5]

Harlan Ellison is one of those insanely prolific sci-fi writers I've never read a bit of. The back blurb credits him (by the late 90s when this edition appeared) with 70 books written or edited, 1700 stories total. (Making the 17 here perhaps 1/100th. Despite this absurd output, this volume actually seems to be of pretty steadily decent craftsmanship and originality. At the same time, it seems evident that his goal as a writer was more or less to entertain above all, and I have a problem where a lot of the time I just don't find entertainment, on its own, all that entertaining. And so, as with other genre fiction collections by Thomas Ligotti (Noctuary) and John Sladek (The Steam-Driven Boy) getting within reach of finishing is about the same as actually finishing and I'll lay this one aside for now.

That said, the dream-world rape-revenge construction of "Broken Glass" was pretty great. And "On the Slab" is pretty compellingly morbid. Stories with a vision, these, and especially the typographically-extended centerpiece of "The Region Between" which erects a kind of nihilistic theology in the instant of compression and nothingness just before the big bang (it seems to me), after ranging through as many honestly ridiculous space/alien-lifeform tropes as it can. Alright, alright, I was entertained. But still not enough to maintain a commitment to it.

[j · Rating 3 out of 5]

It is not totally shocking to discover that the introductory essay Ellison wrote to preface this collection is stronger than any single piece in the collection. This is not to say that these short stories are duds, only that this particular piece is incredibly moving and sharp and impassioned -- in many ways Ellison at his best. The final selection, among the better works here, is a thematically linked piece that expresses some of the same ideas in narrative prose rather than personal essay. In the center is the novella 'The Region Between', a collaboration with the illustrator Jack Gaughan. The extended work has a lot of Ellison's signature tendancies. It recalls a story like 'The Deathbird' in the way it tells a cosmic saga of primal human concerns with ambitious experimental techniques. It doesn't come together the way the earlier work does, but it has some stellar moments. The two other primary highlights are 'Paladin of the Lost Hour' and 'Stuffing'. The former I have read before, and it held up to a return examination. The latter is a short and peculiar story that packs an oddly powerful punch.

Ellison himself insists that these stories are all about death. That's true, in a vague and broad way. But its also true of hundreds of the stories Ellison wrote over the years. These aren't uniquely morbid or moribund stories when compared to the rest of Ellison's ouevre. These stories were written during a time when Ellison seemed to be self-reflexively thinking about his disillusionment with society, particularly the way technology and cultural communication (i.e. the internet) was progressing, and writing about the way that both cohered and conflicted with his status as (not) a writer of science fiction. Another one of the more interesting stories here is a sort of feminist cyberpunk riff on the future of porn. It is a much stronger piece than something like 'Keyboard' (to be found in Ellison's collection Slippage) which is about a vampire computer (kinda).

Not a good introduction to Ellison, but a fine addition.

[Marley · Rating 5 out of 5]

Pure white-hot grief. The list of all his friends who died (a terribly long collection of names) the year he wrote this collection is the key to the whole thing. Just an incredible look at 20 kinds of loss and rage and poignancy, all through the kaleidoscope of fable and speculative fiction. Ellison was never a man for intricate spiderwebs of reference, but he knew how to build a world you'd never seen and hit you right in the skull with it. RIP, every single one of you dear friends of Harlan's. The wounds aren't an iota less fresh 25 years out.

Check "Paladin of the Lost Hour", about a man carrying around the one thing that prevents the end of the world, and about an old man and a younger man finding a father and a son in each other just before it's too late. And don't forget "The Function of Dream Sleep," which gnaws in your gut exactly like the recurring nightmare it depicts, before exorcising all of it, all the hate and pain and rage and grief that a big-hearted, bitter-tongued man like Ellison can dish out.

[Mark · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ellison is never one for subtlety. He bludgeons readers with the force of his moral convictions and scathing social commentary, never once letting up for anyone to catch their breath and regain their bearings. Reading him is to let yourself fall into a narrative foxhole with flak and shells firing all around and then realizing, with trepidation, one has an atheist as grim companion. How reassuring, huh? That's why some people hate him or love him; one can't receive his rhetoric lukewarm. Ellison's pet peeve is an indifferent reader; he'll use every trick he can muster to jolt one out of apathy. If you come away a little bloodied from reading, all the better for braving the experience.
In "Angry Candy" Ellison tackles death with the brazen demeanor of a warrior - bloodied sword in hand - running headlong into the Grim Reaper in an attempt to extract justification for many friends recently dead or dying - of which he writes in a heartfelt forward. His stories are neither consoling nor resolving. They are exorcisms of a writer throttling death's indiscriminate demons.

[Jamie · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you like the British television series Black Mirror you'll love this book--speculative fiction that's strange, evocative, disturbing, thought provoking, and truly haunting. There's a reason stories in this collection were nominated for the Hugo, World Fantasy, and Bram Stoker Awards.

Unca Harlan at his best.

[Toby · Rating 5 out of 5]

Harlan Ellison's award-winning 1988 collection Angry Candy holds a mirror to the human condition, and like the portrait of Dorian Grey we see all our corruption and horrors manifest. As our darkest fears copulate with our most intimate and secret fantasies we look into the mirror and call "Mirror, mirror on the wall...", consumed by the beauty of our own atrocity.

Ellison's introduction to Angry Candy, and it's theme of Death, is bitterly candid. He pulls apart the scar-tissue and shows us the rawness underneath as he tells us of those he has lost, and his belief that "it is better to send off a loved one with rage, to show at least for a moment to the empty sky and the sunny day that you CARED".
"The are stories I wrote because my friends are gone, a lot of them, and if you can't be angry about it, how the hell much did you care to begin with?"

The collection warms up with Paladin of the Last Hour, a tale that reads like chewing sugar-coated glass. Moving, touching, and crushing at the same time, in a way only Ellison can pen. Moving on from there we experience (for an Ellison story is not something you read, it's something you experience, like your first love, your hundredth f**k, or your last breath) history as we never suspected it, broken hearts, dangerous fantasies, aliens, spirits, murder, and the loss of loved ones.

Although Ellison specifies that his tour-de-force through all of these subjects is united by the theme of Death, I would personally go one step further and say it's tied together also by a them much more personal: What it is to be human, and deal with death.

If you're happy to look into the abyss and hold it's gaze, Angry Candy may well become your new favourite. However if you prefer to live in the sugar-coating, building walls between yourself and anything negative, then this book isn't for you: it's too honest, too blunt, and above all too human. You couldn't handle it.

~Shiv

[Cristina Rose · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a pretty unique book, I kind of regret not highlighting certain passages because there were so poignant, some on death or growth or just the psyche. I favorited 14/17 of the short stories, some required (for me at least) re-reading but he writes really, captivating. Somehow its like many of them are conversations or the mind of the character and its made it really fascinating. Yes the stories are centered around death but I didn't really feel that atypical sense of sense, he uses it as a medium but does it in so many different ways and perspectives - I did appreciate this because death can seen like such a taboo topic. These stories felt like tarot cards, with hidden symbolism, theatrics and languages. of course they are all so distinct and none felt the same but I really enjoyed this book.

[annika · Rating 2 out of 5]

i don’t know! i just don’t know! there’s something about sci-fi that i think doesn’t work for me in the form of short stories. sometimes they were just too short for me to have time to adjust to what was going on. plus the handling of any minority character always felt iffy.

my favorite story was the region between because it was a bit lengthier and was very creative in not only the concept, but the presentation and execution too. i’d probably bet that i’m going to forget a lot of the other ones in the future.

[Andrew Post · Rating 4 out of 5]

Harlan Ellison is rapidly becoming my favorite sci-fi writer. No, scratch that: my favorite writer, period. And though it has a great deal to do with his stunning vocabulary and lyrical phraseology, not to mention his classy insertion of random pop culture references into his works (he may have been the first writer to start doing that), nor even the signature Ellison rage boiling beneath the surface of the prose, the author's trademark. No, it's the clear and heartrending emotion with which he writes. This collection was prompted by his despair and anger at numerous close friends' deaths, and each and every story in it is about death: hating it, fighting back against it, cheating it, subverting it, undoing it, sometimes even accepting it. But every story captures the imagination and rivets one's attention upon it, no matter what it's about. The function of dream sleep. The paladin of the lost hour. Vampires in Paris. The man who always casts the deciding vote. Trapped in the lens of the succubus.

I intend to read more Ellison short story collections after this. Perhaps all of them. That's the highest praise I can give this one.

[Lee Foust · Rating 3 out of 5]

Harlan Ellison was one of the first writers to inspire me when I was very young. I have no recollection of how I discovered his writing. In the early 1970s I was an adolescent horror film aficionado who frequented fan conventions, mostly to get movie posters. Often Horror gets lumped along with Sci Fi (a genre to which I was not averse) and Ellison is frequently present at such conventions, so perhaps that’s how he came into my youthful radar. This later collection, much like his earlier collections, features an angry, ranty introduction that’s better than most of the stories. And, yeah, that’s what the youthful me liked most, I guess, about reading Ellison, the ranty angry young man in whose ideas and rage I saw myself reflected. No, not much has changed on that score.

Angry Candy probably marks the tail end of Harlan’s heyday, although Ellison’s chosen form, the short story--and the demands of a market and economic situation for the continual churning out of such stories in order to come even close to surviving in the capitalist nightmare as a writer--has always marked him as an author whose productions are perforce rather up and down. At his best, Harlan is a master of both the short form and the imaginative leap. At his worst he’s a tad didactic, a bit too obvious, condescending maybe, and the tale will feature some invented fantastic leap that comes off as silly rather than the perfect imaginative/surreal way to say something best said through a skewed, artistic manipulation of words rather than in the direct, realistic mode. I guess his worst stories are merely a bit silly form the cynical perspective. Many people say that about sci fi in general, though. I have a friend who asks, “Can’t they find a way to tell me that same story without the silly costumes?” There’s the danger of the genre I guess, and maybe also its strength.

As for the collection itself, there are a handful of really wonderful stories. “Eidolons” was easily my favorite and quite a stand out, setting itself in a place where pulp sci fi and pretentious 1930s French surrealism meet and mingle pleasingly. “Laugh Track” was also amazing—more humor than horror, but also a touch macabre. (There’s a recording of Harlan reading this tale and it, like all of his recordings, is well worth seeking out as he’s an engaging and likable reader of his own material. There’s an old vinyl LP of “Repent, Harlequin, Said the Ticktock Man” and “Shatterday,” two of Ellison’s best stories, and no spoken word collection is complete without it.)

On the downside, Angry Candy is a long collection and a few of the stories—although none really bad—could have been omitted to raise the quality. (Remember how much better 40 min. LPs were than 60 min. CDs?—that’s why. Those three extra so-so tunes that would have been on the B-sides of the singles gummed up the gliding between one great tune and the next.) The illustrated and rather long “The Region Between,” for example, was best left to a small book of its own. But Ellison’s writing style here, like a wise old veteran by the 1980s, is always slick, concise, and often disarmingly beautiful in sentiment and phrasing. I like him better than any other sci fi writer—and that includes Bradbury, Bloch, Matheson, and Leiber, all favorites of my youth. (You’ve read them all on television, too, on The twilight Zone, Star Trek, and on , you just probably didn’t know it at the time.)

[M · Rating 4 out of 5]

Harlan Ellison crafts a hodgepodge of tales surrounding the realm of death in the collection dubbed Angry Candy. At the outset, Ellison acknowledges the impact dying has had on his life, as he eulogizes several of his fellow science fiction authors in the introduction. The book begins with "Paladin of the Lost Hour," as the elderly guardian of a mystical pocket watch finds a worthy successor to protect the final hour of mankind. A female werewolf who enjoys dining out meets her match in Paris during the darkly humorous "Footsteps," while the four-page "Escapegoat" uses time travel to help send the Titanic onward towards its predestined doom. Bad memories are bought and sold at a premium in "When Auld's Acquaintance Is Forgot," which feels like the beginning of a much larger tale that is quickly cut off for a short story collection. "Broken Glass" deals with the violation of self, as a perverted telepath intruding on a woman's private fantasies finds himself on the receiving end of her worst nightmares. The mythological Prometheus is reinvented as a sideshow find in the dark tale "On the Slab;" a woeful man who seems to lose every woman he's ever loved drops his melancholic tale at the seat of a late-night hot dog joint in "Prince Myshkin, and Hold the Relish." Soul-stealing is the name of the game in the wildly inventive "the Region Between," which utilizes etchings, spiral writing, and sidewise prose to explore the recalcitrant soul of one William Bailey. The eponymous "Laugh Track" captures the essence of the protagonist's deceased aunt, forever looped into the world of television guffaws. A collector of figurines discovers that the talented artist actually captures real soldiers at the moment of death in "Eidolons," a homeless woman who witnesses an execution fights back against her pursuers in "Soft Monkey," and a man with the ability to elect anyone he votes for discovers that power is meaningless without purpose during "Stuffing." The question of legacy is at stake when a forgotten xenobiologist encounters a mysterious drifter in "With Virgil Oddum at the East Pole." The sole surviving Lord from a tyrannical regime attempts to escape death by traversing to the past in the darkly humorous "Quicktime." A man gains the ability to hunt down and kill Death's agents during "The Avenger of Death," while reincarnation and the search for the perfect life fuels "Chained to the Fast Lane in the Red Queen's Race." The stories conclude with "The Function of Dream Sleep," where a man plagued by the recent deaths of his many friends discovers the true purpose of dreaming - which feels slightly autobiographical when taken with the author's introduction. Ellison manages to slip quickly between the various worlds, allowing readers to dive effortlessly from venue to venue during the engaging tales. Though a few do suffer from lack of length, excessive arenas of description, or hastened resolution, the overwhelming majority are twisted fun from the other side of the looking glass. Each piece of Angry Candy has its own unique flavor; sample them all before choosing your favorite from the assortment.

[Thomas Zimmerman · Rating 4 out of 5]

The stories from this collection have always stayed with me, but one of them, called Broken Glass, has downright haunted me since I read it. I've clocked a lot of miles on the Greyhound bus between NY and DC over the last seven years, and I can't tell you how many times during those trips my mind has turned to this story, which takes place on a bus. A woman traveling alone is fantasizing to pass the time, then finds herself being attacked telepathically by someone else on the bus, a sort of metal rapist.
This story captures the sacredness of our private thoughts, and the horror of such a fundamental invasion with rare power. The ending is intense, and I'm still thinking about the consequences.
Recently I was in a conversation about the tv show Heroes, talking about which character's powers we would want. I was stunned that several people wanted the ability to read minds. Actually I got kind of outraged, telling them all that if they got that power, to stay the hell out of my head! Broken Glass was the story I brought up to say why I thought mind reading was the worst kind of trespass imaginable.
I think Harlan Ellison is great. I know a bunch of stories about what an arrogant jerk he is, and I've made fun of him as much as the next smartass Comics Journal type, but ultimately he's not famous as a cool guy. He's a writer, and I've always been amazed by his work. Also, in the James Tiptree biography I read recently, he came off pretty damn cool. It was actually a nice change to be hearing about Ellison in a positive light.

[Todd Martin · Rating 3 out of 5]

I came across Harlan Ellison (way) back in high school when I was reading a lot of science fiction, but I haven’t read him for many years. When going back to an author you read and enjoyed in your youth there’s always the question as to whether their work will hold up. With Ellison I can say … yes, it held up well.

It’s clear that Ellison is passionate about the craft of writing and not just interested in churning out pulp. Although I do think he lets his artsy side get the better of him in stories such as ‘The Region Between’ and ‘Eidolons’, which are kind of mythological in scope, but without any clear plot, characters or direction.

Ellison who is currently 84 and was known throughout his life as being a notoriously prickly personality, is still alive, and as of a few years ago was still writing, publishing and suing people.

[Roger · Rating 4 out of 5]

Harlan Ellison is a favorite author of mine, but honestly it has been many years since I picked up a book by him. So I was very happy to find and read Angry Candy. I cannot say this book had the same impact on me that other anthologies, like Strange Wine, Deathbird Stories, or Shatterday did. I am in a different place in my life now than I was when I read those earlier collections, and presumably Ellison is too. (Not to mention the fact that it has been several decades have elapsed.) Angry Candy does contain some powerful stories. One in particular, The Region Between, seemed to have some obvious parallels to Alfred Bester's The Stars My Destination. (I think Mr. Ellison would agree Bester did it first and better.) Good stuff.

[Craig · Rating 5 out of 5]

Angry Candy is a collection of some of Ellison's best fiction. All of the stories save one are from the 1980's, the exception being The Region Between, which appeared in a Keith Laumer anthology in 1969 and appears here in a revised format. They're all worthy of study and re-reading. Selecting favorites is difficult, but I'll go with Paladin of the Lost Hour and Prince Myshkin, and Hold the Relish. I regretted the lack of individual story notes or the long, rambling introductions for which he was famous, but the essay which begins the volume is quite moving.

[Moira]

More bitter than sweet, reading this book for the first time in twenty-some years and realizing how much Harlan Ellison shaped my teenaged self, and just how much I have changed since. This feeling, like this book, is unrateable.

[DebO · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was the first time I have anything by Harlan Ellison so I was not sure what to expect. He is a favorite author of a friend who read it at the same time.

Ellison’s range was impressive and his use of words exhausting at times. His words painted pictures and brought out emotion. The way he wrote The Region Between was a bit of a challenge, sideways, in columns in a circle. My favorite story was With Virgil Oddum at the East Pole. The struggle to communicate an idea thinking the other did not understand when in fact they did. The Laugh Track was another favorite. Almost wonder if there are souls running around trapped like this.

[Bart Hill · Rating 4 out of 5]

A solid collection of short stories, most of them having to be related, in some way, to death.
To me, there were several "what was that story about"? But, since the majority of these stories are quite short, I just ventured on to the next one.

[Derek Emerson · Rating 3 out of 5]

As we are about to enter into the season of Advent, how appropriate that I read a book themed around -- death? But for Harlan Ellison, death is not always the end of the story. In fact, in many cases death is the start of the adventure. I had not heard of Ellison before a friend of mine not only recommended him, but put this book in my hands. Prolific would be the defining word for this author who has over 1,000 stories, novels, screenplays, etc. to his claim. He has penned episodes for The Twilight Zone and Star Trek, and won numerous fantasy and science fiction awards.


This collection is, according to Ellison in his introduction, "the twenty-second or -third or -fifth book of stories I've done." With no disrespect to his fiction, the introduction is the best part of this collection. It opens with death of his friend, Emily (whose death also appears in a couple of the stories) and Ellison's "insensitive" but honest eulogy. Listed next to the text on two pages are 44 deaths which touched him in a two-year period. In some cases they were close friends and in other cases acquaintances, but the overwhelming amount of death clearly shook the hardened writer. He is angry about the deaths and the pain the losses create and this book is his attempt to come to grips with what he has experienced.


Which brings us to the last story, "The Function of Dream Sleep," in which the main character momentarily sees a mouth with teeth open near his stomach. When he goes to get help he eventually ends up with a group of people who take on the pain of others, but the character's pain is so great he actually kills several of them. Where does his pain come from? The loss of friends (including an Emily) which he has not been able to deal with in a positive way. He eventually seeks out a guru type figure who informs him the pain is from the dead whom he will not let go. He is told to "Let the mouth open...let the wind of the soul pass through, and take emptiness as a release." We end the book with "when he cried for them, he was, at last, able to say goodbye." The process is complete and Ellison seems to have worked through his anger and let his friends go.


The stories in between the introduction and final story hit a range of topics, times, and creatures, but they all deal with death. The problem with prolific writers is usually that the quality ranges as well, and Ellison is no exception. Some of these are forgettable ("Escapegoat") and Ellison is prone to the last sentence surprise ending, like the ending of some bad jokes. But when he hits a story well it is well worth the effort. "Laugh Track" is a creatively written story in which a man follows his deceased Aunt through the years as her laugh shows up on laugh tracks over the decades. The twist is that the laugh track keeps her alive and he is able to connect with her, setting her off in a new direction. The story not only has a interesting premise, but shows a sense of humor as well -- a welcome diversion in this heavy book.


The best story is the opening "Paladin of the Lost Hour," in which human temptation is all that holds us back from chaos as one person holds the key to a lost hour in time. Should the hour be used for personal reasons the time will disappear and the world will disappear. Ellison manages to make the holder of time both human and other worldly as he finds a new person to protect time.


One of the more disturbing, yet most powerful, stories is "Broken Glass" in which a woman combats a rapist who enters her mind. Trapped on a bus she knows one of the men on the bus has entered her mind and raped her, but she does not know which person it is and he continues to taunt her. In the end she realizes she must use her mind to combat him. "On the Slab" is another standout in which a creature on display shows it is not yet dead, but there are those who want him that way. The "owner" goes from seeing this as a money-making venture to true compassion for the creature, and the relationship is touching.

Of the seventeen short stories here a good editor could have dropped eight of them to make this a stronger book, but I get the impression that at this stage in his career Ellison calls his own shots. There are a couple of Ellison "essential" collections on his 35th and 50th writing anniversaries, which may be a better place start. But Ellison is definitely a writer who should drop into most people's reading lists at some point.

He has also led a lively existence full of controversy, wives, and general mayham which you can read more about at Wikipedia if interested.

[Daniel2 · Rating 5 out of 5]

I am awed, inspired and a little disappointed. Whoever reads this will be most attracted by the last description–but wait, there's more.

Harlan Ellison is one of the finest story tellers that has ever lived. No arguments. I'll not entertain them. His metaphors and colorations are so unique and strange that his ability to transport a reader into a scene is nothing less than immersive. The stories I read here were tight, at times intellectual, at times challenging, at times humorous with a pinch of gross. Stories like 'The Paladin of the Lost Hour' were so believable one might go a looking for the current holder of that arcane pocket watch. The story 'Broken Glass' was a master class in the art of story, character, and setting. Readers who found no pleasure in this collection of important works are either put off by Ellison's reputation as an asshole, or lack the intelligence to read with a "critical eye". It's not often I'll knock someone's opinion as founded on idiocy, but if you like fiction and didn't like this collection, there's something wrong and it's not the book.

Having gushed a bit, there are problems. Ellison's characters are always intelligent and have a rather authorial way of noticing things. Now, this is just his style, which is fine, but far too many narratives give way to authorial intrusion and Ellison at times wishes us to note how great a writer he is. Which we all understand, but perhaps his characters should remain in the dark on the matter. This complaint is petty, but I must counter a gush with a slam lest I be accused of the old "sack-riding" epithet. I don't ride scrotums, certainly not to gain favor with any group of people who think they're literary critics, but I do like Ellison's work. I'm not a critic. I'm a dude.

Now that that is settled, I have one more minor complaint. Actually it's a big one and it is closely related to the previous complaint: Far too often Ellison likes to tell us what his politics are. This to me is not OK. It robs the story and ALWAYS stops it cold. We all get it, Ellison's a big liberal and he hates republicans. This is fine, but when it crops up it feels so forced and blatant that it turns me off to the story. Not because the hero is always a liberal (which is always the case) but because I feel like Ellison is creeping in on the story I'm trying to enjoy. Granted, he is subtle and quick about it, but I HATE it when religious authors do it and I would like to think Harlan is above that preacher-as-author nonsense.

It's a five. Don't argue, just read it. You'll be entertained and a better thinker for it.

That was a good review...nailed it.

[Craig Childs · Rating 4 out of 5]

I've always found Harlan Ellison to be an inconsistent writer. Even his friends and admirers, like Robert Silverberg and Stephen King, have said as much in their awards ceremony speeches and introductions to his books.

This, however, is his strongest and most consistent collection, at least that I've come across. The collection itself won both a Locus Award and a World Fantasy Award for Best Collection of 1988/89. Of the 17 stories presented here, there is an Edgar winner ("Soft Monkey"), a Hugo winner ("Paladin of the Lost Hour"), and five Locus winners ("The Region Between", "With Virgil Oddum at the East Pole", "Paladin", "The Function of Dream Sleep", and "Eidolons").

That doesn't even include one of my favorites--"Chained to the Fast Lane in the Red Queen's Race".

And back to that inconsistency issue: To be fair, sometimes it's not entirely Harlan's fault. A lot of his best ideas and tropes captured the popular imagination in the 1960's and 1970's and have since been absorbed, digested, and regurgitated by other writers in various forms. For example, one of the short stories in Angry Candy is "Escapegoat", a two-page short-short which posits that significant events in our history are really the work of time travelers from the future who are manipulating the timeline to affect their present reality. I don't know if Harlan was the first to postulate this, but the idea has certainly pervaded the culture in the years since Angry Candy was published. From cheesy movies like Timecop to brilliant novels like Orson Scott Card's Pastwatch, you can make the case that Harlan's fledgling idea fragment has now influenced a generation of science fiction fans.

Same thing goes for "Broken Glass", a wonderful depiction of telepaths fighting a war inside the tunnels and bunkers of the brain. Groundbreaking stuff back in the 1980's, perhaps, but it's been done to death since.

Perhaps this is the best reason to track down an out-of-print copy of Angry Candy. Ellison continually comes up with new, bizarre, and interesting worlds to visit. If some of those ideas seem a bit stale 26 years later... well, that's sometimes the price of genius.

Imitation is the best flattery, right?

[CV Rick · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a very good anthology with the central them; death. Ellison wrote it as a reaction to all of his friends who died in a short time before he assembled this collection. Some of the stories are spellbinding, while others are merely entertaining, but to a word, not a single story is disappointing.

Paladin of the Lost Hour is my favorite Ellison story. It's gentle and powerful and resident with imagery, history and spooky realism. The characters, both of them, are as rich as any in literature - the old man being sweet and strong at the same time while the tortured young man wracked with guilt so thick it consumes him works toward and unlikely redemption. It's as perfect a story as is possible to write.

Laugh Track eviscerates Hollywood and its string of sub-par laugh-track laden sitcoms. It's a story that stuck with me after I finished the book.

The Function of Dream Sleep is a haunting, wrenching story of taking loss poorly and refusing to cope with the absence of loved ones. It feels like Ellison is conveying true unhappiness.

The last story I'll single out is The Avenger of Death - a truly unique look at the grim reaper and the tale of one man's vengeance.

Pick it up and read an artisan in the short story form.

[Joe Ohlenbusch · Rating 4 out of 5]

Harlan Ellison has turned into one of my favorite writers after this book. The stories in Angry Candy all have to do with death in some form but they are full of hope, and some were also quite funny. The introduction he wrote is amazing, usually I tend to skip over or just brush through them but I'd almost want to re-read that the most out of anything in this book. His writing is amazing and so thoughtful, I almost feel smarter after reading. My favorite story in here is "Laugh Track" but they are all great. He gave me a different take on the vampire legend and actually gave an amazingly thoughtful explanation in "Footsteps". "Scapegoat" was a really cool couple page story that made me think about how not dying can be more detrimental to people. "Paladin of the lost hour" was an excellent story to start off with and one of the best characterizations.
I wish he had written more novels rather than short stories because his characters are so full of life in the couple pages he gives them, it's almost a shame that they only live for 10 or 20 pages.

[Danna · Rating 3 out of 5]

I've finally finished! I enjoyed reading about Harlan Ellison in various sources on the internets more than I enjoyed this collection of short stories. He's a very prolific author and quite a feisty character. This is the first book of his that I've read, and I'm not sure why it didn't hold my attention. The introduction and first short story of this collection did, but after that everything else seemed flat and uninteresting. Being the science fiction nerd that I am, I thought I would appreciate an author touted as one of The Greatest Of All in this genre, but I'd rather stick with the truly Big Three: Asimov, Heinlein, and Clarke. Of course, short stories and novels are not Ellison's only claim to fame. Whatever creative consulting he did for Babylon-5 is much appreciated, and I find it funny that both he and J. Michael Straczynski were not at all on good terms with Gene Roddenberry.

[Des · Rating 5 out of 5]

Well, if you're a truly literate person, the name Harlan Ellison should be enough for you to read a book. Most (but by no means all) of Ellison's stories are of the fantastic, though at this point in Ellison's career, his work has gained the dubious imprimatur of genuine "literature"--this book's publication by the mainstream Houghton Mifflin is the evidence of that.

These are candy--it's impossible to read just one. But they're exquisite morsels, not mass-produced junk. Ellison stories are to be savored, not rushed through.

Favorites: "Chained to the Fast Lane in the Red Queen's Race", "The Region Between", "Eidolons" (even though I don't totally understand it), and "Paladin of the Lost Hour" (which was a Twilight Zone episode).

Disappointments: "Quicktime" (ending is rushed and comes out of nowhere) and "With Virgil Oddum at the East Pole" (more enjoyable in the context of the "Medea" anthology it originally appeared in).

The rest are merely excellent.

[Kossiwa · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm reading this collection for my Masters of Fine Arts program and these stories that seem so normal looking at first are pretty strange, but I'm enjoying reading most of them. Sock Monkey was really suspenseful. I loved the first story 'Paladin of the Lost Hour', 'Broken Glass' was creepy, but in a good way. Imagine being on a Greyhound bus, indulging in your favorite fantasies (in your mind of course) when you learn that somehow some creep has been able to get inside of your head. I do have to admit that 'With Virgin Oddum at the East Pole' was too weird to get through. I wasn't sure what was going on. I liked Laugh Track. I like the way most of these stories seem so normal, but aren't once you get into the stories. Definitely good reading, even with the few I couldn't get through.

[Sgtpossum · Rating 5 out of 5]

Brilliant writing, pure and simple. Typical of Harlan Ellison, it ranged from campy sci-fi to piercing existential fiction.

In particular, "The Region Between" projected total melancholy, good humor, clearly intentional cheese, and absolute agony in a sweeping space opera about the lust of all living things for godliness. "On The Slab" was a Lovecraftian horror Howard Phillips would envy. "Eidolons" was, while almost painfully esoteric, a stylistic trip. "Broken Glass" provided a satisfying and gut-wrenching battle between a rapist telepath and a woman on his bus.

To put it succinctly, the list of stories that deserve a mention for brilliance can be found on page five, under the title "Contents." I highly, highly recommend this book to fans of Ellison, fans of weird fiction, and readers who like to be challenged.

[Renae · Rating 4 out of 5]

My first of reading Harlan Ellison and I must say that I was not disappointed at all! With each story I became an even bigger fan! I met Harlan in person at a convention in Wisconsin and I thought he was one of the most charming and endearing persons I've ever met. I do, however, have to admit that for as charming as he was he was very straight forward and blunt and I loved it! He was on a panel and then did signings in the hallway and that is where I picked up my copy of Angry Candy and a few other great books. I look forward to reading more of Harlan's work and would recommend his writings to anyone and everyone I know!