20 odpowiedzi

1. PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE COMMENTING: As I mentioned on the Community Page, I am talking a break from YT for a week, so I will not be responding to comments for some time unless there are exceptional circumstances. Thanks for your views.

2. I'm 47 and I started reading his material about 10 years ago. I read Fine Wine, took a break for many years, and just returned to his work. Since I get my material from the Library for the Blind, it's beyond wonderful that they have some material read by the man himself. His frenetic style brings the words leaping from the book into the mind heart and soul to grow and wind around one's psyche. He is quite dangerous, intelligent, and unlike anyone I've ever read.

3. I just wrapped this up last evening. I had the most fun Looking for Kadak.

4. I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream was made into a point-and-click adventure horror game in 1995. This is where I first heard of Ellison. I’m just getting into his stuff now. I can’t wait to read this.

5. I read I have no mouth because of the amazing digital circus and I'll be honest. The fact that the video game and TADC are making people look back at it is not a bad thing at all- I think people need to read it now more than ever. Humans keep creating and encouraging the creation of AI and shortcuts.

   Frankenstein and I have no mouth will proove to be true. We will regret it if we go too far with technology. We need to open our eyes.

   Thank you for this amazing video btw! I definitely want to read more of his work now!

6. I first read an comic adaptation of Harlan Ellison's Run For the Stars in Epic Illustrated in 1981 when I was 13. My first collection I bought was Angry Candy in 1988. He wrote good stories like Prince Myshkin and Hold the relish, masterpieces like The Beast That Shouted Love At The Heart of The World and stories I liked to have beat him with a wet noodle like Hadjj and Corpse.

7. I was lucky enough to see Ellison read "Repent, Harlequin!" Said the Ticktockman in a bookstore in the mid 1980s. Fantastic.

8. He’s a bit of a character in interviews man lol

9. "A Lit Fuse" is the long-awaited (by me at least) biography of HE by Nat Segaloff. How much of it is true is anyone's guess but it's very entertaining.

10. Nice of you to mention the term Mass market. This form of a book has all but disappeared. I recently went into a Barnes & Noble in the Boston area and there were no Mass markets. It was either a hardcover or trade paperbacks. A larger Barnes & Noble they have two sections from history one that has trade paper only in a separate section that has mass markets.

11. I suppose I should give Ellison another go. About 10 years ago I read "I have no mouth…" and that was me and Harlan finished. It wasn't that I didn't think it was good, I just found in incredibly upsetting and I couldn't get it out of my head. The only other book that affected me like that was "Blood Meridian".

12. Cool. I was gladdened indeed to happen upon this collection on the shelf at my local (very tiny) library. The ONLY Ellison volume it possesses. I tend to favor the weirder side, things like 'Basilisk', 'At the Mouse Circus'.

13. I hope they will put together a vol.2. I wish some publisher would do a new edition of The Essential Ellison.

14. J Michael Stracznski. Babylon 5 Godfather. Self-Appointed Guardian of Woke morality. President Clarke would be pleased.

15. Trigger warnings? Words have power and this power must be respected and not feared. Sanitizing fiction for modern "sensibilities" is a pathetic and ignorant practice. If readers can't imagine this, or the historical context of words spoken by fictional characters never considered, the readers are the problem, not the writer's words. Fiction should never be guaranteed not to offend. The reality of our world, of our history, may not be pretty, but it must be faced with open eyes and not whitewashed to soothe our fragility.

16. On the "Cautionary Notes" you mention… I am not at all sure that this was something Mike inserted (though neither am I certain he didn't), as I have seen such notes in similar, at times identical, phrasing in books far removed from Ellison, including new editions of classic works. It may be this is simply an American thing — I have noticed that a shockingly large number of readers from the last two to three generations have trouble making that distinction… though this is not universal by any means; in fact, most who do any significant reading tend to "get it". But publishers are… often another thing, and quite often timid about such matters; especially given the cultural trends we've been undergoing in the US since the new century began (the neo-puritanism and, as Moorcock phrased it, "retreat from liberty" in particular concerning sexual and/or religious/political — seldom separable in this country these days, it seems realms… something outdoing even the extreme forms of such I grew up with in the southwestern US in the late '50s through the late '60s), with more than a dash of McCarthyism redivivus. I do not think any publisher would be naive enough to think this one would make into school libraries, given the sorts of standard works which have been removed… but I suppose it's possible.

    The one I can certainly agree onis the transliteration of the "computer talk-fields"… something Ellison made quite a prominent note of with The Essential Ellison as being very important that they were included in their correct form.

    As for the selections… I have my quibbles there, too, though they are hardly more than a case of "de gustibus"; I would have liked, for instance, to have seen one of his most subtly terrifying and disturbing stories included: "The Boulevard of Broken Dreams", included in the collection Strange Wine or the touching "In Lonely Lands" first collected in Ellison Wonderland if memory serves. or the brilliantly pyrotechnic "The Realm Between"… among a host of others. However, to pick all those I feel should be included in a selection of his "best" stories would also include several non-genre pieces, such as "Students of the Assassin", "Battle Without Banners", ""Neither Your Jenny Nor Mine", "The Rough Boys", "Blind Bird, Blind Bird, Go Away From Me", etc. And that isn't even touching on several of the tales written for Mind Fields …..

17. I'm relatively new to Ellison, having been introduced to his work a couple of years ago, but I knew the moment I read "I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream" and "A Boy and His Dog" that he was one of the most brilliant writers who ever lived. Thanks for your informed review of this collection, I especially liked what you said about the trigger warnings and could not agree with you more.

18. This was great to see. I read Harlan's work in my teens, and no one else knew anything about him.
    Ellison is the third leg of my writing basis, Lovecraft, and Poe being the others.

19. I know Ellison was Jewish, but his audience is primarily white, always has been. That's what makes him and his work a target. The goal is to eventually replace all these writers with "better, more enlightened" nonwhite writers. The people who insist on and write these warnings/introductions see Ellison as no different than Kipling or Lovecraft. As ridiculous as that is.

20. The first Ellison story I read was "A Boy and His Dog." It was in a collection called "They Came from Outer Space," which is a collection of stories that had been made into movies. It's an amazing anthology. I may have found Ellison and Bradbury there at the same time.