Beamed from Within: On Harlan Ellison’s “Greatest Hits”

Reality is not always probable, or likely. —Jorge Luis Borges CALLING THE GROUCHY and godly Harlan Ellison (1934–2018) a “science fiction writer,” pegging him as a single-genre scribe, is an inaccurate and constraining description. Granted, he wrote a lot of sci-fi, much of which remains redoubtable, replete with indelible, iniquitous, uproarious images conjured by his acerbic abstractions of language and oddball ideas, enigmas left lingering by the last sentence, taunting with its refusal of simple explanation; this is what he will always be known for. But he was just as deft at fantasy, horror, semirealistic (though still deranged) fiction, essays, and cultural criticism, all insightful, erudite, vulgar, angry, hopeful, exact, and exacting. He even dabbled in television, a medium he often disliked, sometimes fervidly, but which proved profoundly successful for him—his revered Star Trek episode, however much it got changed, does everything an episode of television can do. Ellison, as irascible as an icon can be, is one of the 20th century’s indispensable writers, as larger-than-life as any of his fantastical conjurings, always imbuing his work with the ardor of a lunatic. He is an English-language heir to Jorge Luis Borges, a man who wields words like weapons to assault reality, to provoke us through discomfort. Tenacious in both terror and tomfoolery, fierce, and funny, Ellison wrote with ardor and a howling soul. Herald Classics’ Greatest Hits (2024) assembles Ellison’s most popular, award-bedecked stories, science fiction or sci-fi adjacent all, mostly from his middle and early-late career, when he was at the apogee of his powers. Selections include “The Deathbird,” “The Whimper of Whipped Dogs,” “Shatterday,” “The Beast That Shouted Love at the Heart of the World” (God, he was good with titles), and other winners of Nebulas, Hugos, and Locuses. Given the fact that many of his best books are out of print and the behemoth The Essential Ellison (1987) costs a fortune, this book, while hyperfocused on his sci-fi output, is both an excellent introduction to the man for neophytes and a convenient volume for acolytes. It is a comfort in those times when you really just […]

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