We Have Met the Enemy and He is The Real Caterpillar

• He's ripped off hundreds of books.
• He can rip yours off in five minutes. It's so easy even a caveman can do it.
• He painstakingly proofreads the books he steals.
• He has ethical and moral standards. And a conscience...of sorts.
• Though piracy's toll is in the billions of dollars, he thinks the crime is overrated.
• But he admits it's a crime.

That's a thumbnail profile of a book pirate. I've condensed it from an astounding interview with one conducted by C. Max Magee on his website "The Millions".

After pondering the phenomenon of book piracy, a crime estimated to drain over $3 billion annually from legitimate copyright owners, Magee decided the best way to understand it was to ask a practitioner. "Who are the people downloading these books? How are they doing it and where is it happening? And, perhaps most critical for the publishing industry, why are people deciding to download books and why now? I decided to find out. After a few hours of searching – stalled by a number dead links and password protected sites – I found, on an online forum focused on sharing books via BitTorrent, someone willing to talk."

The perpetrator's handle is "The Real Caterpillar" and, as is so often the case, he is far from a noble Robin Hood. "He lives in the Midwest," writes Magee, "he’s in his mid-30s and is a computer programmer by trade. By some measures, he’s the publishing industry’s ideal customer, an avid reader who buys dozens of books a year and enthusiastically recommends his favorites to friends. But he’s also uploaded hundreds of books to file sharing sites and he’s downloaded thousands."

Here are a few revelations in his own words:

• I generally only upload content that I have scanned, with some exceptions. I have been out of the book scene for a while, concentrating on rare and out of print movies instead of books because it is much easier to rip a movie from VHS or DVD than to scan and proof a book
• I do not pretend that uploading or downloading unpurchased electronic books is morally correct, but I do think it is more of a grey area than some of your readers may
• Just because someone downloads a file, it does not mean they would have bought the product I think this is the key fact that many people in the music industry ignore – a download does not translate to a lost sale
• In truth, I think it is clear that morally, the act of pirating a product is, in fact, the moral equivalent of stealing…however, I feel the impact of e-piracy is overrated, at least in terms of ebooks
• I’ve spent anywhere from 5 to 40 hours proofing the OCR output

And, finally: "In truth, I think it is clear that morally, the act of pirating a product is, in fact, the moral equivalent of stealing… although that nagging question of what the person who has been stolen from is missing still lingers."

Two persons mentioned by Caterpillar as having been stolen from are Mark Helprin and Harlan Ellison. Both have published privacy or anti-piracy statements on their websites. You may read Helprin's here but it says in part: "You agree to comply with all copyright laws worldwide in your use of this site and to prevent any unauthorized copying of the materials." Ellison's is an all-caps fist-shaking no-prisoners Jeremiad which you may read in its entirety here. Here's a taste:

A HOST OF SELF-SERVING INDIVIDUALS SEEM TO THINK THAT THEY CAN ALLOW THE DISSEMINATION OF WRITERS’ WORK ON THE INTERNET WITHOUT AUTHORIZATION, AND WITHOUT PAYMENT, UNDER THE BANNER OF “FAIR USE” OR THE IDIOT SLOGAN “INFORMATION MUST BE FREE.” A WRITER’S WORK IS NOT INFORMATION: IT IS OUR CREATIVE PROPERTY, OUR LIVELIHOOD AND OUR FAMILIES’ ANNUITY. WHY SHOULD ANY ARTIST, OF ANY KIND, CONTINUE CREATING NEW WORK, EKING OUT AN EXISTENCE IN PURSUIT OF A CAREER, FOLLOWING THE MUSE, WHEN LITTLE INTERNET THIEVES, RODENTS WITHOUT ETHIC OR UNDERSTANDING, STEAL AND STEAL AND STEAL, CONVENIENCING THEMSELVES AND “SCREW THE AUTHOR”? WHAT WE’RE LOOKING AT IS THE DEATH OF THE PROFESSIONAL WRITER!

Caterpillar laughs at them. "One thing that will definitely not change anyone’s mind or inspire them to stop," he says, "are polemics from people like Mark Helprin and Harlan Ellison – attitudes like that ensure that all of their works are available online all of the time."

For the full flavor of Magee's interview read Confessions of a Book Pirate in its entirety here.

We are Harlan Ellison's literary agents. Our e-book company is publisher of some thirty of his books. Though we cannot express ourselves as colorfully as he, we support his position completely. His work and property, the work and property of countless other authors, our own labor and investment and that of all legitimate, reputable publishers worldwide are being stolen. Those who file-share copyrighted books are receiving stolen property. We ask those who take and those who receive to consider whether there is any difference between having your literary property robbed and your purse stolen. For one victim's answer, read Are Pirate-site Downloaders Better Than Muggers, Pickpockets and Shoplifters? This Victim Doesn't Think So.

Richard Curtis

Strange Wine, 5 Other Harlan Ellisons Back in Paperback at Last

At long last some thirty of Harlan Ellison's finest books are becoming available in paperback. After releasing them as e-books we worked closely with the author to make sure the print editions reflected his stringent editorial standards.

Recently released are Strange Wine , The Beast That Shouted Love at the Heart of the World, Harlan Ellison's Hornbook, Troublemakers, Partners in Wonder, Stalking the Nightmare and Again, Dangerous Visions. You can see them all on display on Ellison's E-Reads author page.

Many connoisseurs of Harlan Ellison consider Strange Wine to be his finest collection. Though its contents, individually speaking, are not as high profile as some of his other collections, taken as a whole it is an electrifying book. Here's an excerpt from an Amazon reviewer with the handle "Penguin Egg":

It is good news that this book is soon to be republished. It's about time. I've been a fan of Ellison for a quarter of a century and this, by far, is my favourite book of his. If you have never come across Ellison before, you're in for a treat. A master story-teller, he breaks new ground with practically every story, whether it is in the style of the telling - such as "From A to Z, The Chocolate Alphabet"-, or in the subject matter - "Croatoan." Whatever the style or the subject matter, the voice of Ellison is unmistakable, -uncompromising, vivid, funny, and perceptive- so that even if an Ellison story did not have his name above it, you would quickly guess who it was. The stories range from the humorous "Mom" to the serious "In Fear of K." Whatever he writes, he is thoroughly entertaining. What makes this collection of stories different from his others is that this collection has an introduction for every story. With any other writer, this would be an intrusion; but with Ellison, it works, because the man is funny, wise, and entertaining. They are basically a miscellany of anything that Ellison wants to talk about: How he came to write this or that story; where he wrote it; the ideas behind it- and sometimes the connection to the story is tenuous...

And for a delicious appetizer, you won't want to miss Ellison's introduction.

RC

Asked to Donate Work for Nothing, Artists Flip Google the Bird

"I should do a freebie for Google? What's the matter, do they have a tin cup and an eye patch on the street? F**K NO!"

Though none of the artists solicited to donate their work for nothing to Google Chrome actually said that, they might well have paraphrased Harlan Ellison's foaming-at-the-mouth rant against Warner Bros. and all other corporate patrons that think they're doing writers and artists a favor by displaying their work.

Canadian-based illustrator Gary Taxali's written response to Google was slightly more printable than Ellison's, but the writer would certainly agree with the graphic one issued by the artist (left). Here's what Taxali had to say:

DON’T CALL ME
In the last little while, there has been a MAJOR backslide in the industry. Poor rates have been an issue for a while but things are becoming worse. Clients fees are getting even lower and the rights theyre demanding are even higher.

You want examples? How about SWATCH calling me and asking me to design a watch. They wanted a complete transfer of copyright for a paltry fee. As if thats going to happen. Google calls me and wants my work for their new search engine all over the web, the fee? Nothing. Editorial clients are slashing 1999s fees almost in half and citing the bad economy as an excuse. You know what? My excuse is that the economy is bad so you have to pay me MORE for an illustration. Hows that for an economic stimulus package?

So heres to every client with shitty fees and terms. Do not waste my time or contact me. I am very busy working with clients who respect artists and youre wasting my time with your solicitations. So for you, I give you a special salute that I hope will keep you away because I dont need your work.

According to Andrew Adam Newman writing in the New York Times about the Taxali-inspired uprising, his posting on Drawger "drew more than 200 responses, many from other illustrators who also had rejected Google’s offer." Newman quotes another illustrator, Brian Stauffer, who also turned Google down. “When a company like Google comes out very publicly and expects that the market would just give them free artwork, it sets a very dangerous precedent.”

Sadly, there are plenty of artists who need the exposure and will take Google up on its offer.

And of course, Google may feel it needs an eye patch and tin cup. It only squeaked by the first quarter of 2009 with a $1.42 billion profit.

You can read the whole story in Newman's Use Their Work Free? Some Artists Say No to Google. You can also Catch a snatch of Ellison's fulmination on YouTube and buy it online.

Richard Curtis
This posting relies on original research and reporting performed by the New York Times. Every blogger owes a debt of gratitude to newspapers. Without them our free society would not only be impoverished but imperiled. We must strive to find a way to rescue the industry, even if it means nothing more than buying a paper on the street. Support your local newspaper.

Harlan Ellison Back in Paperback

Fans of Harlan Ellison know that E-Reads has reissued over two dozen of his classic works in e-book format. But now we've released them in paperback as well.

Among the long out-of-print titles you can now hold in your hands are:

Deathbird Stories
City on the Edge of Forever
An Edge in My Voice
Children of the Streets
The Deadly Streets
From the Land of Fear
Harlan Ellison's Movie
No Doors, No Windows

Keep visiting Harlan's author page for updates. When that "paperback" link turns hot, you're good to go.

RC

Harlan Ellison's 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."

This is the "Beast" of the title story of Harlan Ellison's mind-bending collection of stories. The Beast is a hideous thing that has drawn the madness out of a race of alien beings and infected humanity with it.

Though each story in The Beast that Shouted Love At The Heart Of The World burnishes Ellison's reputation in yet another coruscating way way, the gem is "A Boy and His Dog". Ellison continued the story in the graphic novel Vic and Blood . It was the basis of a movie adaptation in 1974, the post-apocalyptic science fiction film of the same name, directed by L. Q. Jones working in collaboration with Ellison.

For a special treat, read Neil Gaiman's introduction.

RC

Harlan Ellison's Strange Wine

Many connoisseurs of Harlan Ellison considered Strange Wine to be his finest collection. Though its contents, individually speaking, are not as high profile as some of his other collections, taken as a whole it is an electrifying book. Here's an excerpt from an Amazon reviewer with the handle "Penguin Egg":

It is good news that this book is soon to be republished. It's about time. I've been a fan of Ellison for a quarter of a century and this, by far, is my favourite book of his. If you have never come across Ellison before, you're in for a treat. A master story-teller, he breaks new ground with practically every story, whether it is in the style of the telling - such as "From A to Z, The Chocolate Alphabet"-, or in the subject matter - "Croatoan." Whatever the style or the subject matter, the voice of Ellison is unmistakable, -uncompromising, vivid, funny, and perceptive- so that even if an Ellison story did not have his name above it, you would quickly guess who it was. The stories range from the humorous "Mom" to the serious "In Fear of K." Whatever he writes, he is thoroughly entertaining. What makes this collection of stories different from his others is that this collection has an introduction for every story. With any other writer, this would be an intrusion; but with Ellison, it works, because the man is funny, wise, and entertaining. They are basically a miscellany of anything that Ellison wants to talk about: How he came to write this or that story; where he wrote it; the ideas behind it- and sometimes the connection to the story is tenuous...

And for a delicious appetizer, you won't want to miss Ellison's introduction.

RC

Welcome Sweet Springtime, We Greet Thee in... Lawsuits? Apple Latest Target

Spring has arrived and lawsuits are pushing their hardy green shoots through the soil everywhere we look. It started last week when we reported that Harlan Ellison is suing Paramount and the Writers Guild of America. Then we learned that Discovery Communications was suing Amazon for patent infringement over the Kindle ("Did Jeff Overlook U.S. Patent Number 7,298,851?"). Today it's a Swiss company called Monec Holding Ltd. and the target is Apple. Did Steve Jobs overlook patent No. 6,335,678? According to an Apple Insider report by Katie Marsal, he may have. She writes:

In a 7-page complaint filed with a Virginia district court Monday, Berne, Switzerland-based Monec Holding Ltd accuses the iPhone maker of patent infringement, unfair trade practices, monopolization, and tortious interference for allegedly treading on its January 2002 patent No. 6,335,678 titled "Electronic device, preferably an electronic book."

Monec claims Apple's distribution of e-book applications violates an early patent filed by the Swiss firm. "Although Monec does not identify the specific eBook reading applications that prompted its lawsuit," writes Marsal, "the complaint was filed just weeks after Apple began distributing Amazon.com's Kindle eBook reader software through the App Store."

Monec's website is unadorned, uninformative, unimaginative and uninteractive but if anyone reading this finds himself in the vicinity of Galgenfeldweg 18 in Berne, Switzerland we'll be most interested to know what their office looks like and how many people work in it.

It's easy to dismiss the actions against Amazon and Apple as nuisance lawsuits but they must be taken seriously. Pundits who brushed off the patent infringement suit brought by a firm called NTP Inc. against BlackBerry vendor Research In Motion Ltd. stopped laughing after the court awarded NTP more than $53 million in damages.

Actually, if anyone has grounds for a lawsuit it's science fiction novelist Ben Bova, author of a novel entitled Cyberbooks. He published it in 1989, long before e-books were a gleam in the eyes of Jeff Bezos or Steve Jobs. Here's the summary: "A futuristic satire on the fate of the publishing industry after the invention of 'cyberbooks', electronic books which eliminate the need for paper, printers, salesmen, distributors and even booksellers." Unfortunately, Bova didn't patent the gadget but wouldn't you imagine that one of the parties in these lawsuits owes him a generous tip for his foresighted concept?

In any event we'll be at ringside watching Amazon and Apple wrestling with their tormentors.

RC

"Happy as a Centipede With Track Shoes," Harlan Ellison Sues Paramount and His Own Union Over City on the Edge of Forever

In an earth-scorching fulmination including a denunciation of "my once-tough, beloved Guild - my UNION", Harlan Ellison announced that he has launched a lawsuit against CBS-Paramount, Inc. and Writers Guild of America. Papers filed in the United States District Court for the Central District of California cite "breach of the duty of fair representation" and "breach of the Collective Bargaining Agreement".

The specific issues are failure to account for and pay licensing and publication revenues resulting from publication by Simon & Schuster/Pocket Books, divisions of Paramount, of a paperback trilogy that Ellison alleges is a "knock-off" of his famous Star Trek episode The City on the Edge of Forever; and the failure of the Guild to support his complaints or take action against Paramount. He seeks unspecific damages from Paramount, but because he remains a loyal member of the Guild he is asking for only one dollar from the union. However, he also seeks "a judicial determination as to whether the WGA is doing what its stated purpose has been since day-one! To fight and negotiate for him and other writers."

Ellison reserves the full measure of his ire for Paramount:

“The arrogance, the pompous dismissive imperial manner of those who ‘have more important things to worry about,’ who’ll have their assistant get back to you, who don’t actually read or create, who merely ‘take’ meetings, and shuffle papers – much of which is paper money denied to those who actually did the manual labor of creating those dreams – they refuse even to notice...until you jam a Federal lawsuit in their eye. To hell with all that obfuscation and phony flag-waving: they got my money. Pay me and pay off all the other writers from whom you’ve made hundreds of thousands of millions of dollars...from OUR labors...just so you can float your fat asses in warm Bahamian waters."

And that's just for warmups. As long as you're prepared to confront both barrels of his 12-gauge invective, you can read the complete text of his press release here.

The City on the Edge of Forever is a poignant love story that takes the viewer back to 1930s America. Kirk and Spock race to apprehend a renegade criminal and restore the order of the universe. It is here that Kirk faces his ultimate dilemma: a choice between the universe - or his one true love. It became the classic Star Trek episode, winning the 1966-67 Writers Guild of America Award for best teleplay and the 1967 Hugo Award (the only teleplay ever to do so!). It was also ranked as one of the"100 Greatest Television Episodes of All Time" by TV Guide.

E-Reads has published the original teleplay of The City on the Edge of Forever as Ellison intended it to be aired. The author's introductory essay (expanded by 15,000 words) reveals all of the details of what Ellison describes as a "fatally inept treatment" of his creative work.

Ellison is determined to have his day in court. Read his screenplay, introduction, and the description of his lawsuit and you can vicariously serve on the jury.

RC

Sleepless Nights in the Procrustean Bed

Sleepless Nights in the Procrustean Bed

Marty Clark "spent over two years with Harlan in the enviable position of personal secretary, administrative officer of his professional corporation, and occasional grammarian." Those who have experienced the master's bark and bite might choose a different adjective than "enviable". Clark not only lived to tell the tale, but went on to assemble, from hundreds of rare and previously unprinted works, this breathtaking collection of twenty wide-ranging essays that demonstrate why the monstre sacre of imaginative literature won the prestigious Silver Pen award of P.E.N. International in 1982.

Clark's introduction is filled with insight into the essay form and Ellison's place in the tradition that began with Montaigne.

You can download the e-book of Sleepless Nights, but before long we will have it in print format as well. Just keep an eye on our home page for an announcement.

RC

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INTRODUCTION BY MARTY CLARK

For the serious Ellison reader, there are few tasks more difficult than staying current with his nonfiction output. Harlan's work appears all over the literary map, so that it is impossible to know where he will turn up next. This is also true of his fiction, but one can always count on the publication of a new fiction collection every few years to gather together those stories which one has missed. Until now, this has not been so of his essays. They have occasionally been included in other collections and, as with the four essays which appear in Harlan's short story collection Stalking the Nightmare (Phantasia Press, 1982), have received raves. Also much in demand are The Glass Teat and The Other Glass Teat (Ace, 1983) which collected the columns of television criticism which Harlan wrote over a period of four years in the Los Angeles Free Press. However, Sleepless Nights in the Procrustean Bed marks the first time that a book has been devoted exclusively to the best of his general essays. The twenty reprinted here are from such disparate sources as Video Review, Heavy Metal and the Saint Louis Literary Supplement.

To read Clark's full intro, click here.

Partners in Wonder: Harlan Ellison Buddies Up with Giants

Partners in Wonder is arguably the first collection of collaborative stories ever created. But unlike some Very Important Authors who don't pick on someone their own size when inviting writers to collaborate with them, Harlan Ellison threw his gauntlet at the feet of such giants as Algis Budrys, Samuel R. Delaney, Keith Laumer, Theodore Sturgeon, Robert Zelazny and Robert Silverberg. Before each story is one of Ellison's patented intros explaining how it was written (and who gets the blame). Below is his intro to the collection itself. Note his regret that there are no female partners in wonder.

Download this e-book version, but if print on paper is more your speed, watch this space for news of the paperback edition.

RC

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INTRODUCTION: SONS OF JANUS

These are stories I have written with other writers. Collaborations, they're called. They are the products of two minds working together, sometimes in complete harmony, more often in opposition. The former, because the ideas were so right they needed no conflict to produce a coherent whole; the latter, because writers are perverse creatures who enjoy tormenting one another. And also, conscious opposition on the part of one of the collaborators, to the direction a story is taking naturally, may produce a stress that bends it unexpectedly in a totally unpredictable way. And from that can come a toad prince or a toad, depending on whether or not both writers know how to handle a fable run amuck.

The beloved Lester Del Rey--one of my early mentors in the craft of professional lying--told me once: never write a story with someone, that you can do as well by yourself. Well, I believe that.

Did Ellison take Del Rey's advice? Read his complete introduction, and his book.

Children of the Streets by Harlan Ellison

There aren't many rules in the primer for gang kids, but they all count: When he's down, kick for the head and groin. Avoid cops. Play it cool. Those are the rules that govern Harlan Ellison's collection, Children of the Streets. Ellison understands them as an insider: he ran with a gang, reported on the experience, and survived. Here's what he has to say about that time:

This book was first published when I was twenty-seven years old. As I write this new introduction, I am one month away from my seventieth birthday. What the world was like, when I wrote these stories, is as lost and arcane as the prime time of the Ottoman Empire. No self-respecting vato loco or gangbanger would even consider using a zip gun (if, in fact, he had ever heard of such an implement); give him an Uzi or an AK-47. Or, even better, an Austrian 9mm Steyr MPi 81 with a 25- or 32-shot detachable box. Switchblade? Fuggedaboutit.

If you can resist reading the rest of his introduction to Children of the Streets, you're endowed with heroic will power.

E-Reads is happy to publish the first e-book edition of this book, as well as some thirty other Harlan Ellison classics. Look for print editions to follow not long from now.

RC

From the Land of Fear by Harlan Ellison

Harlan Ellison describes the eleven stories in his collection From the Land of Fear as "side trips." He is too modest. Ellison's side trips are someone else's extended journey. Listen to what the late Roger Zelazny had to say about some of the tales:

Listen to the sigh in My Brother Paulie, just there at the end, the plaint in A Friend to Man, the deep wailings in Battle Without Banners, the strange tongues in Life Hutch, the horrible outcry of "We Mourn For Anyone ... ", the words of pain in Time of the Eye, the tones of anger in Back to the Drawing Boards and the voices deep and hoarse in The Sky Is Burning. And there are hands moving everywhere, slapping, poking, gesturing hands.

Zelazny was so struck by Harlan Ellison and his work that he had to use metaphysical imagery. Read his complete introduction here, and settle down (if you can, if you dare) with Harlan Ellison's riveting journey into the Land of Fear.

RC

Deathbird Stories: Harlan Ellison Stares Down the Gods. The Gods Blink

Deathbird Stories brings together 19 of Harlan Ellison's greatest stories. The theme of the collection can be loosely defined as Ellison taking on the gods, not just the ancient ones but those of modern vintage, as shiny-new as today’s technology. Unlike some of Ellison’s collections, the introductory notes to each story can be as short as a phrase and rarely run more than a sentence or two. That's okay; the tales speak for themselves. Among them are winners of a Hugo, an Edgar, the Locus Poll Award and the British Science Fiction Award.

This masterwork of myth and terror is a mind-freezing odyssey into the darkest reaches of mortal terror. Here's Ellison's foreword:

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Foreword: Oblations at Alien Altars

Gods can do anything. They fear nothing: they are gods. But there is one rule, one Seal of Solomon that can confound a god, and to which all gods pay service, to the letter:

When belief in a god dies, the god dies.

When the last acolyte renounces his faith and turns to another deity, the god ceases to be.

They know the terrible simplicity of that truth, the mightiest and the mingiest of gods. They have seen their fellow gods go down to obscurity and banishment for lack of believers. They saw Achelous wither when the cornucopia was ripped from his head by Heracles; they saw the twelve Aesir and their Asgardian heaven-home turned to mist when the Vikings took up the cross; they saw Ahriman dwindle and die when the ancient Persian empire was overrun; they saw Alaghom Naom, the "Mother of Mind," lost to men when the Conquistadores brutalized the Mayan religion; they saw Ama-Terasu, the Japanese sun goddess, go up in a nova of light brighter than the sun from which she took her name, on a special day in Hiroshima; and Amen-Ra, and Ana�tis, and Anath, and Anshar (and Kishar), and Anu, and Anubis, and Apollo ... all of them shimmered and became insubstantial as their temples were reduced to rubble.

Volume after volume of sacred books of gods.

And that's only into the "A's."

As the time passes for men and women, so does it pass for gods, for they are made viable and substantial only through the massed beliefs of masses of men and women. And when puny mortals no longer worship at their altars, the gods die.

To be replaced by newer, more relevant gods.

Perhaps one day soon the time will pass for Jehovah and Buddha and Zoroaster and Brahma. Then the Earth will know other gods.

Already we begin to worship these other, newer gods. Already the Church fights to hold its own. The young grow away from the old religions, the world seems to swing between the old and the new; more and more each day interest in the occult, in the magical, in the phantasmagorical surges to the fore-leaving priests and rabbis and ministers concerned where their next god will come from.

This group of stories deals with the new gods, with the new devils, with the modern incarnations of the little people and the wood sprites and the demons. The grimoires and Necronomicons of the gods of the freeway, of the ghetto blacks, of the coaxial cable; the paingod and the rock god and the god of neon; the god of legal tender, the god of business-as-usual and the gods that live in city streets and slot machines. The God of Smog and the God of Freudian Guilt. The Machine God.

They are a strange, unpredictable lot, these new, vital, muscular gods. How we will come to worship them, what boons they may bestow, their moods and their limitations-these are the subjects of these stories.

A New Testament of deities for the computerized age of confrontation and relevance. A grimoire and a guide. A pantheon of the holiest of holies for modern man.

Know them now ... they rule the nights through which we move.

Kitty Genovese met one of them, as did the students of Kent State University. Black men have known them far longer than white men, but have been ill served by them.

So know them now, in these stories. Offerings can be made at their altars in new-car showrooms and gambling casinos and in crash-pads and penthouses.

Worship in the temple of your soul, but know the names of those who control your destiny. For, as the God of Time so aptly put it, "It's later than you think."

Harlan Ellison

E-Reads is happy to offer Deathbird Stories in e-book format for the first time. Watch this page for news of a paperback edition, and of course keep your eye peeled on Ellison's author page at E-Reads for new additions to our collection of 32 masterpieces by a master author.

Harlan Ellison An Edge in My Voice

At the beginning of the 1980's Harlan Ellison agreed to do a regular column for the Los Angeles Weekly on the condition that they publish whatever he wrote, without revising it or suggesting rewrites. Little did they know what they were agreeing to. Had they read his introduction to the collected columns, An Edge in My Voice, beforehand rather than years later when he prepared it for publication, they might have demurred, and the world would be sixty-one literary gems poorer.

RC

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From Harlan Ellison's Introduction to An Edge in My Voice

Ominous Remarks for Late in the Evening

Both Hemingway and Scott Fitzgerald discovered a peculiar syndrome that affected critics of their work. They learned in the roughest way imaginable that if they were praised as great, fresh talents early on in their careers, that as they approached the middle years of writing they were "reevaluated." The second guessers and the parvenus who could not, themselves, create the great and fresh stories, made their shaky reputations by means of pronunciamentos that advised those few literati who gave a damn, that les enfants terribles were now too long in the tooth to produce anything worth reading; that they were past it; and in the name of common decency should embarrass themselves no further by packing it in and retiring to the cultivation of Zen flower gardens. So they both croaked, and did the heavy deeds of assassination for their critics. But had they somehow managed to overcome cancer and alcoholism, had they managed to squeak through for another decade, they'd have found themselves lionized. Each would have made it through the shitrain to become le monstre sacré. Grand old men of letters. National treasures. Every last snippet they'd tapped out on yellow second-sheets sold at Sotheby's for a pasha's weight in rubies.

They never made it. Not rugged, spike-tough old Ernest, not lighter-than-air Scott. Time and gravity and the nibbling of minnows did them in. And so they don't know that they are still famous--though seldom read--in the way that talk show guests are famous: you know their names and often their faces, but you can't quite remember what the hell it is they did to make them "famous."

The lesson we who work behind the words learn from this is that if your life is as interesting as your work, or even approaches that level of passion, there will be those who are not-quite-good-enough waiting in the tall grass, waiting to compound your fractures when your brittle bones splinter.

Never get too fat, never get too secure. The rat-things are waiting. Just hang in there long enough, like Borges or Howard Fast or Graham Greene or Jean Rhys, and the sheer volume of accumulated years will daunt all but the most vicious (who quickly self destruct when they try to savage the icons)

To read the complete introduction, click here.

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E-Reads is happy to offer An Edge in My Voice in e-book format for the first time. Watch this page for news of a paperback edition, and of course keep your eye peeled on Ellison's author page at E-Reads for new additions to our collection of 32 masterpieces by a master author.

No Doors, No Windows by Harlan Ellison

Harlan Ellison's No Doors, No Windows immerses you in fear and doesn't let you up till you're one gasp away from drowning.

Fear comes in so many different shapes and sizes. It comes as rejection by a beautiful woman. It comes in the brutalization of your love by an amoral man. It comes with the threat of impending nuclear holocaust; with the slithering shadows in the city streets; with the ripoff artists who lie in wait behind every television commercial. Fear is the erratic behavior of all the nut cases and whackos walking the streets - they look just like you and me and your lover and your mother - and all they need is a wrong word and there they go to the top of an apartment building with a sniperscope'd rifle.

Fear is all around you. You have nothing to fear but fear itself, right? Sure. The only trouble is, the minute you get all the rational fears taken care of, all battened down and secure, here comes something new. Like what? Well, like the special fears generated in these 16 incredible stories. Fear described as it's never been described before, by the startling imagination of Harlan Ellison, master fantasist, tour-guide through the land of dreadful visions, unerring observer of human folly and supernatural diabolism. Or, quoting the Louisville Courier-Journal & Times, Ellison's "stories are kaleidoscopic in their range, breathtaking in their beauty, hideous in their deformity, insulting in their arrogance and unarguable in the accuracy of their insight."

Here's an excerpt from Ellison's introduction:

What are we to make of the mind of humanity? What are we to think of the purgatory in which dreams are born, from whence come the derangements that men call magic because they have no other names for smoke or fog or hysteria? What are we to dwell upon when we consider the forms and shadows that become stories? Must we dismiss them as fever dreams, as expressions of creativity, as purgatives? Or may we deal with them even as the naked ape dealt with them: as the only moments of truth a human calls throughout a life of endless lies.

Who will be the first to acknowledge that it was only a membrane, only a vapor, that separated a Robert Burns and his love from a Leopold Sacher-Masoch and his hate?

Is it too terrible to consider that a Dickens, who could drip treacle and God bless us one and all, through the mouth of a potboiler character called Tiny Tim, could also create the escaped convict Magwitch; the despoiler of children, Fagin; the murderous Sikes? Is it that great a step to consider that a woman surrounded by love and warmth and care of humanity as was Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, wife of Percy Bysshe Shelley, the greatest romantic poet western civilization has ever produced, could herself produce a work of such naked horror as Frankenstein? Can the mind equate the differences and similarities that allow both an Annabell Lee and a Masque of the Red Death to emerge from the same churning pit of thought-darkness?

Consider the dreamers: all of the dreamers: the glorious and the corrupt:

Aesop, Attilla; Benito Mussolini and Benvenuto Cellini; Chekhov and Chang Tao-ling; Democritus, Disraeli; Epicurus, Edison; Fauré and Fitzgerald; Goethe, Garibaldi; Huysmann and Hemingway, ibn-al-Farid and Ives; Jeanne d'Arc and Jesus of Nazareth; and on and on. All the dreamers. Those whose visions took form in blood and those which took form in music. Dreams fashioned of words, and nightmares molded of death and pain. Is it inconceivable to consider that Richard Speck--who slaughtered eight nurses in Chicago in 1966, who was sentenced to 1,200 years in prison--was a devout Church-going Christian, a boy who lived in the land of God, while Jean Genet--avowed thief, murderer, pederast, vagrant who spent the first thirty years of his life as an enemy of society, and in the jails of France where he was sentenced to life imprisonment--has written prose and poetry of such blazing splendor that Sartre has called him "saint"? Does the mind shy away from the truth that a Bosch could create hell-images so burning, so excruciating that no other artist has ever even attempted to copy his staggeringly brilliant style, while at the same time he produced works of such ecumenical purity as "L'Epiphanie"? All the dreamers. All the mad ones and the noble ones, all the seekers after alchemy and immortality, all those who dashed through endless midnights of gore-splattered horror and all those who strolled through sunshine springtimes of humanity. They are one and the same. They are all born of the same desire. [For the complete text of this introduction, click here]

E-Reads is happy to offer No Doors, No Windows in e-book format for the first time. Watch this page for news of a new print edition, and of course keep your eye peeled on Ellison's author page at E-Reads for new additions to our collection of 32 masterpieces by a master author.

The Deadly Streets by Harlan Ellison

Harlan Ellison published his violent and disturbing story collection The Deadly Streets at the age of 24, spewing it like lava out of his experience as a street gang member researching his first novel, Web of the City.

It may still be too hot to touch, and some of the story titles glow with menace:

• Rat Hater
• "I'll Bet You a Death"
• We Take Care of Our Dead
• The Man With the Golden Tongue
• Johnny Slice's Stoolie
• Joy Ride
• Buy Me That Blade
• The Hippie-Slayer
• Kid Killer
• With a Knife in Her Hand
• Sob Story (written with Henry Slesar)
• Look Me in the Eye, Boy!
• The Dead Shot
• Ship-Shape Pay-Off (written with Robert Silverberg)
• Made in Heaven
• Students of the Assassin

His introduction to the first edition not only sheds light on the dark mind of Harlan Ellison, but may shed some on the dark and deadly places in your own mind as well:

A few weeks ago, my housekeeper, Eusona, laid a beauty on me. She reads the newspapers: I haven't the stomach for it these days. So she has become my gazette.

The story, which she found on the back page somewhere, was a quickie. Woman parking her car in Manhattan was driven to a frenzy by a dude in a VW who pulled into the space snout-first behind her, as she was backing up. As he parked, she reached into the glove compartment of her dashboard, pulled out a revolver, jumped out of the car, stalked over to the VW, aimed the weapon through the window and shot to death the man driving, and his two female passengers.

These two stories took place in New York, but just so you don't feel all teddibly superior to those barbarian Megalopolitans, here's a lovely one from a large Midwestern city (which one, I cannot remember right now, but it was on the evening network news). A couple of thugs broke into the apartment of an old Czech woman. At knife-point they demanded she give them all her money. She laughed at them, telling them all she had was about three American dollars worth of Czechoslovak koruna, a currency so unstable and unacceptable that the exchange control law of 1 January 1954 prohibits its import and export. She offered them the koruna and continued laughing. Wrong move.

They spotted her gold fillings, bust out her teeth, and got away with about $1100 worth of marketable gold.

As horrifying as we may find Charlie Bronson's actions in Death Wish, his vigilante tactics of stalking and killing muggers in New York strike a sympathetic vibration in each of us, though we hate it in ourselves, though most of us would deny we feel the same urge from time to time.

You feel it, I feel it.

Ten years ago, I was worked over pretty fair by a couple of over-six-feet heavyweights. One of them held me while the other one pounded my face into guava jelly. When the local bacon finally arrived, the guys had split. One was a deckhand on pleasure yachts, with a string of priors for mayhem that made Hurricane Carter look like Christopher Robin's nanny. He skipped the country, so I was told. But the other one was a certified flake, an overly macho clown who had been married to a busty film starlet, had bombed out as a stockbroker, and who owed money all over Hollywood. We hauled him into the City Attorney's office, got him cold when the Man suggested we each take a lie detector test. I rolled up my sleeve right there and said, "Let's get it on!" The flake began to hem and haw, and his attorney fumfuh'd it was an invasion of something or other. Nonetheless, I took the polygraph test and it backed my story one hundred per cent. Attorney's office put out a warrant for his arrest. But the cops didn't bother looking for him.

We went to court, almost two years ago, and got a financial judgment against him for five grand, since it was obvious I wasn't going to be able to slap the sonofabitch in jail. Even though I had witnesses to unprovoked assault, battery, criminal assault, and a host of etceteras, the cops were simply too busy busting kids with grass in their possession to keep a pair of homicidal thugs off the streets.

He can keep the five grand. Just let me have fifteen minutes alone with the muther.

I'd take along a tire iron.

Not for the beginning; I want that pleasure barehanded. But after that interlude, I'd need the tire iron. I'd start with his legs. Lay him out on the floor and lean his left leg up against the wall and then just jump on the angle, right below the kneecap. Like snapping a rotted piece of cord-wood for the fireplace. Then I'd use the tire iron to break it back in the opposite direction, so bone-chips would get in the kneecap socket, so he'd walk with a limp for the rest of his barbaric life. Then I'd do his hands. Forearms with the tire iron, wrists with the tire iron, fingers one by one...

Make you uneasy? Make you sick? Makes me sick, to know I've got that in me somewhere. If I told you I'm a pacifist, would you believe me? Not for a second, and I wouldn't blame you; even though it's true. Let me make you even more uneasy; I'm no different than you.

Have you ever been beaten ... or raped ... or robbed ... or even been dismissed cavalierly by some petty authority?

Think back. You know I'm telling the truth. We are all the same inside these skins. We all want to exact revenge. The invasion of our personal space, the brutalization, the debasement, the shame at not having been able to duke it out like Bruce Lee or one of the million short, smart movie/television stars who play the rabbit till they can take it no longer and then lash out and deck the hairy bully. Gary Cooper in Capra's Mr. Deeds Goes to Town: at the end of the trial where the forces of greed and evil try to convince the court his millions should be taken away from him because he's "pixilated" and the judge asks Deeds if there's anything else, and Cooper as Deeds says, "Yes, one more thing," and he hauls off and knocks crooked attorney Douglass Dumbrille stone cold in the courtroom. Alan Ladd in The Glass Key: having been worked over by pithecanthropoid William Bendix and his buddy, Rusty, played by Eddie Marr, fights back, sets fire to the room where's he's been kept prisoner, throws himself out a window and escapes, enabling him later to pound the shit out of Bendix. Jan-Michael Vincent in Buster and Billie: his sweetheart having been raped and bludgeoned to death, finds his ex-school chums, the gang who killed her, and goes berserk, killing two of them by smashing in their heads with a pool cue and a billiard ball. And, of course, Charlie Bronson in Death Wish.

But those are only movies, you say.

Are they? Think back. You know I'm telling the truth. If your wife or sister or girl friend was ever assaulted, if your husband or brother or son was ever stomped or beaten, didn't you wish you had that fifteen minutes alone with the nameless, faceless motherfuckers who did the deed? Didn't you fantasize it in your mind, some ghastly weapon in your hand that would prevent their getting at you as you crippled them? If you say you never held such a thought ... you are either a liar or nobler than any other member of the human race.

Because the unspoken terror that lives with all of us in big cities these days is a constant. It runs in our bloodstream, it tingles in our skin, it aches in our bones. It's better for us here in Los Angeles than for you in Detroit or Pittsburgh or Washington, D.C., or New York. But not much.

And so, in that unseamed existence beyond regional or ethnic or religious differentiations, we are all the same. All come to that place where the fear we've been taught is so omnipresent that it can be ignored until its intensity reaches panic level. Background noise, ever present static, the ticking of the clock in the darkened bedroom, the hum of generators underfoot, the clattering of the crickets. Always with us. Always there. Unnoticed, unheard, unknown ... always there.

Until the moment comes when we become aware of it because it assumes corporeal reality. Like this:

On a trip to New York, I found myself at nine o'clock at night--having worked all day on the galleys of one of my books soon to go to press--descending in a semi-empty elevator at 919 Third Avenue. Bone-tired, leaning up against the wall of the elevator car, attaché case hanging from one hand, almost phased-out. Semi-empty. There was the one other passenger. A very large, very nasty-looking young man in a long and dirty topcoat.

In elevators, unless one is garrulous, one stares at the numbers lighting one after another, or pretends to be deep in thought; one never looks at the other passengers, unless one is a cut-up. I am garrulous, I am a cut-up; but not on this occasion. I was too exhausted. I merely leaned against that wall and waited for the long descent to end.

Everything that happened next, happened in a matter of seconds.

Without looking at him, but nonetheless seeing him clearly out of the corner of my eye, I perceived my companion's hand reaching down into his topcoat pocket for something weighty. Don't ask me how I knew, don't even suggest I could have been dead wrong: I'll admit I may have been way off-base, but in my gut I knew I was right: he was reaching for a knife. Some nice, long, heavy gravity knife or shake, like the ones I used to see uptown around 101st and First Avenue. His hand was deep in the pocket when, without moving or looking at him, speaking to the floor where my eyes were directed, I said, in a deep and gravelly voice, "If that hand comes out of that pocket with anything on the end of it but fingers, I'm going to kick your brains all over this elevator, motherfucker."

He paused. Hand deep in pocket.

And then, very slowly, very smoothly, he brought his hand out with the fingers spread, palm forward showing he held nothing. He moved finally and carefully, deeper into his corner, and he watched me.

When we got to the first floor, he was out of the car quickly, was signing the guard's register at the front door before I was even out of the elevator myself, and as I crossed the lobby of 919 Third Avenue, he was out the door and gone.

Yes, I may have been wrong. He may have been just a young guy working late in one of the upper offices. Maybe. But the noise level of fear had mounted too high to be ignored. It had assumed corporeal reality. And he was quickly gone.

I know if I hadn't spoken up, just psychopathic enough in my tone and phrasing, that he would have braced me with a knife. I learned the next day, from my then-publisher, Norman Goldfind, that there had been a dozen or so knifings, robberies, muggings, and even a rape in that building over the past two years. And a man had his throat slashed in a toilet in that building just a few months ago. I knew. As you know.

So don't judge your humble author too quickly. Don't cluck your tongue and denigrate me for the insensate violence that exists just below the civilized veneer. I am a survival type, an animal that knows. One gets that way in cities like New York.

I learned it a long time ago, when I was gathering material for WEB OF THE CITY (republished recently in an Ace Books edition) and for this book. So the Mystery Writers of America gave me an award for a "mystery" story that is no more a mystery than any other example of mimetic fiction. "The Whimper of Whipped Dogs" is a fantasy that explains reality in a way reality cannot explain itself.

In the same way, the stories in this book hold up that mirror to the real world, turning it slightly, so you can see what goes on around you from a new angle.

Eleven of the stories were written for this book back in the Fifties, when such things as kid gangs existed in the streets of New York. They still exist, but they're very very different now. In the Fifties, the juvies waged war against each other, and "civilians" were pretty much exempt from the slaughter, unless a random pedestrian happened to walk into the path of a zip gun slug. Today, the gangs rob and kill and spend their time helping to raise the national crime statistics by 17% every month.

Those eleven stories now become history.

There are five others I've added to what comprised the first edition of this book. Several of them are up-to-date exercises in street terror. They are history in the making.

But all of them, even though mere fictions, professional lies told to amuse or titillate you, bear within their plotted little boundaries the seeds of what has become the tone of the cities: fear. That unwavering threnody we hear in the night, the hum of people with aerosol cans of mace in their purses, Dobermans on leashes, Fox Locks on their doors, terror in their hearts.

Sixteen stories of violent kids, murderous adults, psychos with no sane reason to kill, streetwise thugs who make their livings preying on the weak and the unwary.

And if you should ask me, "Why tell these terrible stories? Why scare us with such fables?" Why, then I answer: because it is better to know, to see the face of fear, so you can ready yourself. Because living in ignorance is no longer blissful. It's suicidal.

The deadly streets are the jungles of barbarism Jane Jacobs speaks of, and if you wish to survive in those streets, you must arm yourselves with awareness. Perhaps these stories are only cautionary tales. When they first appeared they were curiosities. It's just barely possible they are now tools for staying alive.

Harlan Ellison Los Angeles

E-Reads is happy to offer The Deadly Streets in e-book format for the first time. Watch this page for news of a new print edition, and of course keep your eye peeled on Ellison's author page at E-Reads for new additions to our collection of 32 masterpieces by a master author.

The Day Planet Earth Swallowed Barbra Streisand - and Other Vintage Harlan Ellison Stories: Approaching Oblivion

The New York Times called him "relentlessly honest" and then used him as the subject of its famous Sunday Acrostic. People Magazine said there was no one like him, then cursed him for preventing easy sleep. But in Approaching Oblivion Harlan Ellison outdoes himself, rampaging like a mad thing through love ("Cold Friend", "Kiss of Fire", "Paulie Charmed the Sleeping Woman"), hate ("Knox", "Silent in Gehenna"), sex ("Catman", "Erotophobia"), lost childhood ("One Life, Furnished in Early Poverty") and into the bizarre (the aforementioned Streisand story)

The vintage collection is now available in e-book and will shortly appear in trade paperback. Missing Ellison titles? Round out your collection with these, and look for more before long. E-Reads has acquired more than 30 volumes of Harlan Ellison's work, making us by far his largest publisher.

RC

Your True Love or the Future of the Universe: Choose! Harlan Ellison's Original Screenplay of "The City on the Edge of Forever" at Last in E-Book

The original teleplay that became the classic Star Trek episode, with an expanded introductory essay by Harlan Ellison, 'The City on the Edge of Forever' has been surrounded by controversy since the airing of an "eviscerated" version - which was subsequently voted the most beloved episode in the series' history.

In its original form, 'The City on the Edge of Forever' won the 1966-67 Writers Guild of America Award for best teleplay. As aired, it won the 1967 Hugo Award (the only teleplay ever to do so!). 'The City on the Edge of Forever' is, at its most basic, a poignant love story. Ellison takes the reader on a breathtaking trip through space and time, from the future, all the way back to 1930s America. In this harrowing journey, Kirk and Spock race to apprehend a renegade criminal and restore the order of the universe. It is here that Kirk faces his ultimate dilemma: a choice between the universe - or his one true love. This edition makes available this astonishing teleplay as Ellison intended it to be aired. The author's introductory essay (expanded by 15,000 words from the limited edition) reveals all of the details of what Ellison describes as a "fatally inept treatment" of his creative work.

Was Harlan Ellison unjustly edited, unjustly accused, and unjustly treated?

RC

The Most Subversive Science Fiction Collection of All Time: Harlan Ellison's Dangerous Visions Back in Print at Last

In the mid-1960s enfant terrible Harlan Ellison invited - no, dared - cutting-edge science fiction writers to contribute to an anthology he was assembling. In 1967 Dangerous Visions was published; it was like introducing horse-and-buggy riders to a vehicle powered by a ramjet. Aside from its electrifying contents, written by a host of authors well on their way to immortality, the format of the book shattered rules, precedents and icons. For one thing, each contribution was introduced by Ellison and the authors furnished afterwords to their own stories.

The book and individual stories rolled up awards in a way that has not been remotely duplicated since: Philip K. Dick's story was nominated for a Hugo, but was beaten out by one by Fritz Leiber. The same Leiber story, Gonna Roll Them Bones, also won the Nebula that year. Philip José Farmer shared Leiber's Hugo in Best Novella category. Samuel R. Delany copped a Nebula for Best Short Story. Ellison himself was given a special citation at WorldCon. All in all, in this memorable collection of 33 original stories, seven are winners and 13 are nominees for Hugos and Nebulas.

Some other names in this stellar and (to this very day) controversial collection are: Lester Del Rey, Robert Silverberg, Frederik Pohl, Philip Jose Farmer, Miriam Allen deFord, Robert Bloch, Brian W. Aldiss, Larry Niven, Poul Anderson, Carol Emshwiller, Damon Knight, Theodore Sturgeon, R. A. Lafferty, J. G. Ballard, John Brunner, Norman Spinrad, Roger Zelazny and Samuel R. Delany.

Last Dangerous Visions, for the first time ever in e-book format (and soon to be in paperback), is the latest installment in E-Reads' initiative to bring back more than thirty major works by Harlan Ellison. Watch this page for more announcements.

RC

Harlan Ellison's Shatterday: Not Just a Book - an Event

Shatterday, the revolutionary classic from one of science fiction's most highly regarded authors assembles 16 coruscating stories combining science fiction, horror, and fantasy with ironic humor, sardonic social criticism, and intense self-revelation. From "Jeffty is Five," the tragedy of an innocent child wrenched out of an idyllic past, to humanity's encounter with dangerously seductive aliens in "How's the Night Life on Cissalda?" and "Shatterday," the dark allegory of an identity-stealing doppelgänger replacing his inferior twin, this incendiary collection alone authenticates its legendary author's claim to Grand Mastery.

On the basis of Shatterday The New York Times Book Review proclaimed, "The spellbinding quality of a great nonstop talker, with a cultural warehouse for a mind," and the Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction described Ellison as "the quintessential science fiction short story writer of his time." And Science Fiction Review says, "You have to read Shatterday, feel it, experience it. It is an event."

The trade paperback edition is published by Tachyon.

Shatterday is in the vanguard of a fleet of more than thirty Harlan titles that E-Reads' plants to reissue in the coming year.

Spider Kiss

In his early novel Spider Kiss Harlan Ellison welds an eloquent tribute to Rock and Roll with a frightening portrait of the bitch goddess Success that drives a rock star into the jaws of hell.

Amazon reviewer "punkviper" says,

I can't believe the bevy of 2-star reviews regarding this work! by people who claim to be H.E. fans, no less!! should i mention this is routinely cited as one of the best rock & roll stories EVER?! people, this novel was published in 1961, it's one of Harlan's early works & like many such pieces it has a very gritty & urban quality about it. the story may seem trite in this day & age, but remember that 1961 was far before the whole "debauched rock star" persona was etched into the collective American unconscious. and even though the story might be familiar, don't forget that the protagonist of the tale ISN'T the rock star! and his story makes the book that much better (btw, it wasn't Elvis that the rockstar character was based on, it was Jerry Lee Lewis.) i believe there are a cabal of "Harlan purists" who chafe at the idea of a young H.E. cranking out such hardboiled non-fantasy-oriented material, and as such seem to roll their eyes at anything this isn't I Have No Mouth And I Must Scream, or Beast That Shouted Love At The Heart Of The World. possibly because Spider Kiss is one novel that you don't have to be a rabid H.E. fan to enjoy. pick this one up and judge for yourself. not to mention, it's always worthwhile picking up an Ellison book before it goes out of print, as they all-too-often do.

Thanks, punkviper, for reminding Harlan's fans that his books all too often go out of print. E-Reads is remedying that by reissuing no fewer than 32 of them in both print and downloadable formats. Watch this space for news of new releases.

- Richard Curtis

Paingod and Other Delusions by Harlan Ellison

Of Paingod and Other Delusions, science fiction immortal Robert Heinlein declared, "This book is raw corn liquor. You should serve a whiskbroom with each shot so the customer can brush the sawdust off after he gets up from the floor."

Perhaps a mooring cable might also be added as necessary equipment for reading these eight great stories. They not only knock you down, they raise you to the stars. Passion is the keynote as you encounter the Harlequin and his nemesis, the dreaded Tictockman, in one of the most reprinted and widely taught stories in the English language; a pyretic who creates fire merely by willing it; the last surgeon in a world of robot physicians; a spaceship filled with hideous mutants rejected by the world that gave them birth. Touching and gentle and shocking stories from an incomparable master of impossible dreams and troubling truths.

Paingod will be eventually reunited with over thirty Harlan Ellison masterpieces in E-Reads' reissue program. Watch this space for news of new releases in print and downloadable formats.

- Richard Curtis

Gentleman Junkie by Harlan Ellison

Around the time he launched the lifelong search for his own identify (and thank God he hasn't found it yet), Harlan Ellison went underground as a member of a street gang. In Gentleman Junkie and Other Stories of the Hung-Up Generation he captures this violent subculture in white-hot prose and terrifying truth.

Lawrence M. Bernabo's five-star Amazon review says it all:

"Gentleman Junkie and Other Stories of the Hung-Up Generation" is the short story collection that got Harlan Ellison to Hollywood, which, in retrospect, may not have been a good move, but it was certainly an important move. The key factor is all of this was a book review in Esquire by the legendary Dorothy Parker whose description of "Daniel White for the Greater God," far and away the best story in this collection, deserves repeating: "It is without exception the best presentation I have ever seen of present racial conditions in the South and of those who try to alleviate them." When I was teaching "To Kill a Mockingbird" I had my students read Ellison's story, to give them some idea of what things were like in the South before they were born. It is, simply put, a short story that makes the purchase of this entire volume well worth the money.

For the record, or more specifically for those of you trying to find Ellison stories you have not read in other collections, here are the short stories you will find within these pages: "Final Shtick," "Gentleman Junkie," "May We Also Speak?", "Daniel White for the Greater Good," Lady Bug, Lady Bug," "Free With This Box!" (a personal favorite), "There's One on Every Campus," "At the Mountains of Blindness," "This is Jackie Spining," "No Game for Children," "The Late, Great Arnie Draper," "High Dice," "Enter the Fanatic, Stage Center," "Someone is Hungrier," "Memory of a Muted Trumpet," "Turnpike," "Sally in Our Alley," "The Silence of Infidelity," "Have Coolth," "RFD #2," "No Fourth Commandment," and "The Night of Delicate Terrors."

Since we are talking Harlan Ellison there is really no reason to engage in any further advocacy. I am either preaching to the converted or spitting into the wind. There is no middle ground with Ellison. Consequently the point here is to be informative. "Gentleman Junkie" is a collection of dark stories dealing more with the real world than you usually find in Ellison's more famous works of speculative fiction. These are stories about racial prejudice, drug addiction, juvenile delinquency, anti-Semitism, alienation, violence and other fun topics. Consequently, these are tales best consumed one at a time, because to sit down and read this book cover to cover would be a bit much for most souls.

Gentleman Junkie is one of thirty-two Harlan Ellison masterpieces being revived by E-Reads.

- Richard Curtis

I Have no Mouth and I Must Scream by Harlan Ellison

No one wants to draw up a short list of favorite Harlan Ellison stories, because we hate to exclude dozens that deserve immortality. But two desert island classics are the collection's title story, which one reviewer characterized as "tear your face off" in its raw raging power, and "Pretty Maggie Moneyeyes". First published in 1967 and re-issued in 1983, I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream contains seven stunning stories plus the original introduction by Theodore Sturgeon.

Reserve your desert island now and bring this collection with you. If you have room in your duffle bag, you can pack it with other Ellison classics from the over 30 titles that E-Reads will be reissuing in print and downloadable formats. Harlan has refreshed a number of his titles to replace earlier editions.

Watch this space for news of new releases in print and downloadable formats.

- Richard Curtis

Ellison Wonderland

Ellison Wonderland was among Harlan Ellison’s first collections but the ferocious creative energy, devastating wit and grand arc of his imagination reflect the mature master emerging from the lava.

Among the gems are “All The Sounds of Fear”, “The Sky is Burning”, “The Very Last Day of a Good Woman” and “In Lonely Lands”. Though they stand tall on their own merits they also point the way to the sublime stories that followed soon after and continue to come even now.

Reviewing Ellison Wonderland, K. C. Locke said,

Pay close attention now. I cannot sufficiently impress upon you my statement, here and now, that Mr. Ellison's work, even at that early stage of his career and experience, is as tough, tight and ready to romp as any example provided for that time-frame; a period, Dear Friends, which includes terrific stories by such household names, tried and true, as Alfred Bester, Theodore Sturgeon, Cordwainer Smith, and Fritz Leiber. It is mature, insightful and aware.

Locke's review is worth reading in its entirety, and so is Ellison Wonderland, which joins more than thirty Harlan Ellison classics being reissued by E-Reads. Harlan has refreshed a number of his titles to replace earlier editions.

Watch this space for news of new releases in print and downloadable formats.

- Richard Curtis

Web of the City by Harlan Ellison

Harlan Ellison was awarded an honorary degree from UCLA for the excellence of his imaginative writings. Some smartass might even call him "Dr." Ellison. But only once. Because even though Ellison has come a long way since he started writing in the Fifties, he's still the street fighter who assumed a phony name and joined The Barons, the toughest gang of juvenile delinquents in Brooklyn's Red Hook area, just so he could write a novel about life in the slums. The real-life story of those ten weeks in hell was published as Memos from Purgatory. But the actual novel that came out of that period has been out-of-print for quite some time. Now, with its original title restored, e-reads is pleased to re-issue Web of the City, the book by a streetwise "Dr." who risked his tail and talent to write about the dark underbelly of city life.

"Harlan Ellison is the dark prince of American letters, cutting through our corrupted midnight fog with a switchblade prose. He simply must be read."
-–Pete Hamill

Amazon reviewer "Eman Nep" says,

Parts of this book make the movie On the Waterfront with Marlan Brando seem tame. Basically it is the story of Rusty Santoro, President of a gang called the Cougars. But he feels that he can do better in life, so he drops out of his gang--they aren't too happy about it. And just as soon as he's about to break loose, he gets snared back in again. This is what Harlan Ellison means by The Web of the City. Harlan Ellison does everything well in this novel: from the distorted language of the lower class, to the atmosphere of the bad parts of town, and the types of people that live there. Although written in the 1958, this book reads as if it were written not too long ago. This book was first published as Rumble, but Web of the City is the title that Harlan gave it. I highly recommend this book, this author, and anything he writes.

Web of the City is one of more than thirty great works by this master writer that E-Reads is reissuing in print and downloadable formats. Harlan has refreshed a number of his titles to replace earlier editions.

Watch this space for news of new releases in print and downloadable formats.

- Richard Curtis

Memos from Purgatory by Harlan Ellison

Hemingway said, "A man should never write what he doesn't know." In the mid-fifties, Harlan Ellison - kicked out of college and hungry to write - went to New York to start his writing career. It was a time of street gangs, rumbles, kids with switchblades and zip guns made from car radio antennas. Ellison was barely out of his teens himself, but he took a phony name, moved into Brooklyn's dangerous Red Hook section and managed to con his way into a "bopping club." What he experienced (and the time he spent in jail as a result) was the basis for Memos from Purgatory, the violent story that Alfred Hitchcock filmed as the first of his hour-long TV dramas ... This autobiography is a book whose message you won't be able to ignore or forget.

With Memos, E-Reads launches the first of over thirty Harlan Ellison masterpieces in E-Reads' reissue program. Harlan has refreshed a number of his titles to replace earlier editions.

Watch this space for news of new releases in print and downloadable formats.

Harlan Ellison Signs with E-Reads

E-Reads, a leading independent online publisher, has acquired 32 out of print works by Harlan Ellison, winner of eight and a half Hugo Awards and three Nebula Awards plus the Science Fiction Writers of America Grand Master Award. Ellison is also the subject of the recently-released documentary Dreams with Sharp Teeth. Among the classic titles involved in the deal are Shatterday, Strange Wine, Ellison Wonderland, I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream and Deathbird Stories.

E-Reads will release all titles both in e-book format and trade paperback via print on demand through Amazon.com and other book retailers. The first eight titles will be released in the next month and the rest will follow within the year.

E-Reads carries over 800 previously published books in all popular genres. Among other distinguished fantasy and science fiction authors on the E-Reads list are Greg Bear, Dan Simmons, Dave Duncan, R. A. MacAvoy, Pamela Sargent, Fritz Leiber, John Norman, Robin Bailey, George Zebrowski, James Gunn, William C. Dietz, Susan Shwartz and Alan Dean Foster.

Watch this page for postings about available Harlan Ellison titles.