Harlan Ellison’s Stories

Hearing about the collection of Harlan Ellison’s short stories being published this spring—Greatest Hits—I thought over his stories that have stuck with me.

Harlan wrote a blend of science fiction/fantasy/horror. In many of his stories, he seemed to have stretched a serif in the first letter and plugged it into a wall socket, so that electricity buzzed through the words.

Let’s hop through a short selection of Ellison’s stories…

“I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream” with a nightmare of only five people left in the world, and they’re at the mercy of a powerful computer that changes the format of the landscape and the people themselves. A dark and unsettling story, but with a character sacrificing himself for another person to show there’s still a bit of light…

“‘Repent, Harlequin!’ Said the Ticktockman’” that shrinks George Orwell’s 1984 into a flash-bang of a story about everyone’s schedule being regulated, with touches of humor, including a plane-load of jelly beans dropped on the populace…

“The Man Who Rowed Christopher Columbus Ashore” of a guy bouncing around time periods and situations and choices. Showing that all of us have the capacity to act with goodness or nastiness. This story introduced me to Shirley Jackson’s short story “One Ordinary Day, With Peanuts” and the staggering quote by Robert Smithson (a landscape artist): “Establish enigmas not explanations”…

“A Boy and His Dog” with the two main characters (the dog is telepathic!) trying to survive in an apocalyptic landscape, where nobody’s a saint. That very much includes the boy. This story was among the first in the genre of Character Journeys Through Wasteland. Which possibly/probably/likely inspired other entries: Mad Max, The Book of Eli, The Road, The Last of Us, etc. Recently, while watching Fallout, I was delighted to see the poster for a fictional movie: A Man and His Dog…

“Eidolons” in which the narrator meets Mr. Brown, who has a large collection of miniature metal soldiers with disturbingly realistic faces. It’s not a spoiler to say that Mr. Brown dies (it’s mentioned in the second paragraph). As he dies, Mr. Brown tells the narrator of a hidden scroll containing wisdom, and asks the narrator to share the wisdom with others. The scroll’s entries are where the story shines, as the language dazzles. I’ll share a couple entries later this week.

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This list forms a mere small sampling of Ellison’s output of stories. If the descriptions tickle your curiosity fancy, I hope you seek out his contributions to the fantastical.

I probably won’t buy the new book, Greatest Hits, since I own a copy of The Essential Ellison: A 50 Year Retrospective and several of his smaller story collections. These provide me with the Ellison drug when I need a fix.