Harlan Ellison's Watching

Harlan Ellison's Watching PDF Author: Harlan Ellison
Publisher: Open Road Media
ISBN: 1497604117
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 615

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Book Description
“An enjoyable, irascible collection” of smart and sometimes-scathing film criticism from a famously candid author (Library Journal). Everyone’s a critic, especially in the digital age—but no one takes on the movies like multiple award-winning author Harlan Ellison. Renowned both for fiction (A Boy and His Dog) and pop-culture commentary (The Glass Teat), Ellison offers in this collection twenty-five years’ worth of essays and film criticism. It’s pure, raw, unapologetic opinion. Star Wars? “Luke Skywalker is a nerd and Darth Vader sucks runny eggs.” Big Trouble in Little China? “A cheerfully blathering live-action cartoon that will give you release from the real pressures of your basically dreary lives.” Despite working within the industry himself, Ellison never learned how to lie. So punches go unpulled, the impersonal becomes personal, and sometimes even the critics get critiqued, as he shares his views on Pauline Kael or Siskel and Ebert. Ultimately, it’s a wild journey through the cinematic landscape, touching on everything from Fellini to the Friday the 13th franchise. As Leonard Maltin writes in his preface, “I don’t know how valuable it is to learn Harlan Ellison’s opinion of this film or that, but I do know that reading an Ellison essay is gong to be provocative, infuriating, hilarious, or often a combination of the above. It is never time wasted. . . . Let me assure you, Harlan Ellison is never dull.”

Harlan Ellison's Watching

Harlan Ellison's Watching PDF Author: Harlan Ellison
Publisher: Open Road Media
ISBN: 1497604117
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 615

Get Book

Book Description
“An enjoyable, irascible collection” of smart and sometimes-scathing film criticism from a famously candid author (Library Journal). Everyone’s a critic, especially in the digital age—but no one takes on the movies like multiple award-winning author Harlan Ellison. Renowned both for fiction (A Boy and His Dog) and pop-culture commentary (The Glass Teat), Ellison offers in this collection twenty-five years’ worth of essays and film criticism. It’s pure, raw, unapologetic opinion. Star Wars? “Luke Skywalker is a nerd and Darth Vader sucks runny eggs.” Big Trouble in Little China? “A cheerfully blathering live-action cartoon that will give you release from the real pressures of your basically dreary lives.” Despite working within the industry himself, Ellison never learned how to lie. So punches go unpulled, the impersonal becomes personal, and sometimes even the critics get critiqued, as he shares his views on Pauline Kael or Siskel and Ebert. Ultimately, it’s a wild journey through the cinematic landscape, touching on everything from Fellini to the Friday the 13th franchise. As Leonard Maltin writes in his preface, “I don’t know how valuable it is to learn Harlan Ellison’s opinion of this film or that, but I do know that reading an Ellison essay is gong to be provocative, infuriating, hilarious, or often a combination of the above. It is never time wasted. . . . Let me assure you, Harlan Ellison is never dull.”

Harlan Ellison's Watching

Harlan Ellison's Watching PDF Author: Harlan Ellison
Publisher: Underwood Books
ISBN: 9780887331473
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 514

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Book Description


Web of the City

Web of the City PDF Author: Harlan Ellison
Publisher: Titan Books (US, CA)
ISBN: 1781164215
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 306

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Book Description
"Get it straight right now: these aren't kids playing games of war. They mean business. They are junior-grade killers and public enemies one through five thousand..." In Rusty Santoro's neighborhood, the kids carry knives, chains, bricks. Broken glass. And when they fight, they fight dirty, leaving the streets littered with the bodies of the injured and the dead. Rusty wants out - but you can't just walk away from a New York street gang. And his decision may leave his family to pay a terrible price. First published more than half a century ago and inspired by the author's real-life experience going undercover inside a street gang, Web of the City was Harlan Ellison's first novel and marked the long-form debut of one of the most electrifying, unforgettable, and controversial voices of 20th century letters. Appearing here for the first time together with three thematically related short stories Ellison wrote for the pulp magazines of the 1950s, Web of the City offers both a snapshot of a lost era and a portrait of violence and grief as timely as today's most brutal headlines.

A Lit Fuse

A Lit Fuse PDF Author: Nat Segaloff
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781610373234
Category : Authors, American
Languages : en
Pages : 448

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Book Description
A Lit Fuse is an unguarded, uncensored, unquiet tour of the life of Harlan Ellison. In late 2011 Harlan Ellison the multi-award-winning writer of speculative fiction and famously litigious personality did two uncharacteristic things. First, he asked biographer Nat Segaloff if he d be interested in writing his life story. Second, he gave Segaloff full control. The result is the long-anticipated A Lit Fuse: The Provocative Life of Harlan Ellison. The expansive biography, which is the first such project in which Ellison has permitted large portions of his varied works to appear, is published by NESFA Press. Segaloff conducted exhaustive interviews with Ellison over the course of five years and also spoke with many of his friends and enemies in an effort to get inside the man and pin down the best-known Harlan stories. Their wide-ranging discussions cover his bullied boyhood, his storied marriages, his fabled lawsuits, and his compulsive writing process with more depth and detail than has ever before appeared in print. But it also delves deeply into the man s deeply held principles, his fears, and the demons that have driven him all of his 83 (so far) years. Friends, colleagues, and admirers such as Neil Gaiman, Patton Oswalt, Peter David, Robert Sawyer, Michael Scott, Edward Asner, Leonard Nimoy, Ed Bryant, Alan Brennert, Robert Silverberg, and many other notables add their voices. Along the way the reader is treated to an analysis of the Connie Willis controversy, the infamous dead gopher story, allegedly pushing a fan down an elevator shaft, and the final word on The Last Dangerous Visions. What emerges is a rich portrait of a man who has spent his life doing battle with his times and himself, always challenging his readers to reach for a higher plane and goading himself to get them there. It s funny, wise, shocking, and well, it's Harlan. A Lit Fuse contains a 32-page color photo section.

Ellison Wonderland

Ellison Wonderland PDF Author: Harlan Ellison
Publisher: Open Road Media
ISBN: 1497604710
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 214

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Book Description
Tales of terror and wonder from a winner of the Nebula, Hugo, Edgar, Bram Stoker, and many other awards. Originally published in 1962 and updated in later decades with a new introduction, Ellison Wonderland contains sixteen masterful stories from the author’s early career. This collection shows a vibrant young writer with a wide‐ranging imagination, ferocious creative energy, devastating wit, and an eye for the wonderful and terrifying and tragic. 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, more than fifty years later.

Shatterday

Shatterday PDF Author: Harlan Ellison
Publisher: Open Road Media
ISBN: 1497604389
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 398

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Book Description
“One of the great . . . American short-story writers” exposes the darkness of the human heart in these speculative tales of terror and tragedy (George R. R. Martin). A five-year-old boy never ages, living as an immortal in a past that no longer exists while the world encroaches upon his innocence, in the Hugo and Nebula Award–winning “Jeffty Is Five.” An alien attack leaves Earth on the brink of Armageddon, as humans find themselves unable to resist the sexual allure of their invaders in “How’s the Night Life on Cissalda?” In the Nebula Award–nominated “Shatterday” (subsequently adapted into the pilot episode of the second Twilight Zone series), a man fights for his life against a relentless enemy who knows his darkest secrets—his own doppelganger. In these and other thought-provoking stories, legendary author Harlan Ellison dissects the primal fears and inherent frailties common to all people and gives voice to the thoughts and feelings human beings bury deep within their souls. Unflinching and unapologetic, Ellison depicts men and women in all their ugliness and beauty, and humanity in all its fury and glory. Stories include “Introduction: Mortal Dreads,” “Jeffty Is Five,” “How’s the Night Life on Cissalda?,” “Flop Sweat,” “Would You Do it For a Penny?” (written in collaboration with Haskell Barkin), “The Man Who Was Heavily Into Revenge,” “Shoppe Keeper,” “All the Lies That Are My Life,” “Django,” “Count the Clock That Tells the Time,” “In the Fourth Year of the War,” “Alive and Well on a Friendless Voyage,” “All the Birds Come Home to Roost,” “Opium,” “The Other Eye of Polyphemus,” “The Executioner of the Malformed Children,” and “Shatterday.”

Deathbird Stories

Deathbird Stories PDF Author: Harlan Ellison
Publisher: Open Road Media
ISBN: 149760477X
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 360

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Book Description
Masterpieces of myth and terror about modern gods from technology to drugs to materialism—“fantasy at its most bizarre and unsettling” (The New York Times). As Earth approaches Armageddon, a man embarks on a quest to confront God in the Hugo Award–winning novelette, “The Deathbird.” In New York City, a brutal act of violence summons a malevolent spirit and a growing congregation of desensitized worshippers in “The Whimper of Whipped Dogs,” an Edgar Award winner influenced by the real-life murder of Queens resident Kitty Genovese in 1964. In “Paingod,” the deity tasked with inflicting pain and suffering on every living being in the universe questions the purpose of its cruel existence. Deathbird Stories collects these and sixteen more provocative tales exploring the futility of faith in a faithless world. A legendary author of speculative fiction whose best-known works include A Boy and His Dog and I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream—and whose major awards and nominations number in the dozens, Harlan Ellison strips away convention and hypocrisy and lays bare the human condition in modern society as ancient gods fade and new deities rise to appease the masses—gods of technology, drugs, gambling, materialism—that are as insubstantial as the beliefs of those who venerate them. In addition to his Nebula, Hugo, World Fantasy, Bram Stoker, Edgar, and other awards, Ellison was called “one of the great living American short story writers” by the Washington Post—and this collection makes it clear why he has earned such an extraordinary assortment of accolades. Stories include: “Introduction: Oblations at Alien Altars” “The Whimper of Whipped Dogs” “Along the Scenic Route” “On the Downhill Side” “O Ye of Little Faith” “Neon” “Basilisk” “Pretty Maggie Moneyeyes” “Corpse” “Shattered Like a Glass Goblin” “Delusion for a Dragon Slayer” “The Face of Helene Bournouw” “Bleeding Stones” “At the Mouse Circus” “The Place with No Name” “Paingod” “Ernest and the Machine God” “Rock God” “Adrift Just Off the Islets of Langerhans: Latitude 38° 54' N, Longitude 77° 00' 13" W” “The Deathbird”

Strange Wine

Strange Wine PDF Author: Harlan Ellison
Publisher: Open Road Media
ISBN: 1497604230
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 253

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Book Description
From “one of the great . . . American short story writers,” comes a collection of dark fantastical fiction (The Washington Post). In the Locus Award–winning “Croatoan,” a man descends into the sewers of New York City to confront the detritus of his irresponsibility. An “Emissary from Hamelin” presents humanity with an ultimatum, or everyone on Earth will have a dear price to pay the piper. And in the title story—famously written by the author in the storefront window of a Santa Monica bookshop—Willis Kaw is convinced that he is an alien trapped inside an Earthman’s body, only to discover his suffering serves a purpose. Strange Wine includes these three stories and a dozen more unique visions from the writer the Washington Post hails as a “lyric poet, satirist, explorer of odd psychological corners, and purveyor of pure horror and black comedy.” Includes: “Croatoan,” “Working With the Little People,” “Killing Bernstein,” “Mom,” “In Fear of K,” “Hitler Painted Roses,” “The Wine Has Been Left Open Too Long and the Memory Has Gone Flat,” “From A to Z, in the Chocolate Alphabet,” “Lonely Women Are the Vessels of Time,” “Emissary from Hamelin,” “The New York Review of Bird Seeing,” “The Boulevard of Broken Dreams,” “Strange Wine,” “The Diagnosis of Dr. D’arqueAngel”

Harlan Ellison's Endlessly Watching

Harlan Ellison's Endlessly Watching PDF Author: Harlan Ellison
Publisher: Edgeworks Abbey
ISBN: 9780989525770
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 198

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Book Description
This follow-up to Ellison's 1989 Stoker Award-winning book of film (and by extension, cultural) criticism picks up precisely where its predecessor left off: with the 35th installment-dated July 1989-of his column in THE MAGAZINE OF FANTASY & SCIENCE FICTION, and continues through his 50th entry, written for this volume in September 2014. But wait, there's more: buy now, and at no extra cost, you'll get three pieces of twenty-first century film criticism bringing the collection bang -up-to-date, as well as a long-lost assessment of PSYCHO that predates even the 1965 entries in HARLAN ELLISON'S WATCHING; if that's not value for money, we don't know what is. Did I mention the stunning Overton Loyd cover? The Harlan Ellison's Watching columns included are: From 1989: Installment 35: In Which the Phantasmagorical Pales Before the Joys of the Mimetic Installment 36: In Which, Darkly and Deliciously, We Travel From Metropolis to Metropolis, Two Different Cities, Both Ominous Installment 37: In Which Not Only is No Answer Given, But No One Seems to Know the Question to Ask Installment 38: In Which, Though Manipulated, We Acknowledge That Which All Men Seek From 1990: Installment 39: In Which We Hum a Merry Tune While Waiting for New Horrors, New Horrors Installment 40: In Which We Scrutinize the Sedulousness to Their Hippocratic Oath of Troglodytic, Blue, Alien Proctologists Installment 41: In Which an Extremely Nervous Fool with His Credentials Taped to His Forehead Tacks Trepidatiously Between Scylla and Charybdis Knowing that Angels and Wise Men Would Fear Even to Dog-Paddle This Route Installment 42: In Which It Waddles Like a Duck, Sheds Water Like a Duck, and Goes Steady With Ducks, But Turns Out to be a Tortoise Installment 43: In Which We Lament, "There Goes the Neighborhood!" Installment 44: In Which the Good Ship Coat-Tail-Ride Sinks, Abandoning Hundreds in Treacherous Waters From 1991: Installment 45: In Which Tempus Fidgets, Fugits, and Inevitably Omnia Revelats Installment 46: In Which We Bend So Far Over Backwards To Be Unbiased That You Can See The Nose Hairs Quiver With Righteousness Installment 47: In Which Artful Vamping Saves the Publisher $94.98 From 1994: Installment 48: In Which the Wee Child's Icons are Demeaned From 1995: Installment 49: In Which the Old Man of the Sea Bites the Head off Yet Another Chicken From 2014: Installment 50: In Which the Playroom of the Prodigal Gives One Last Gasp Pre-dating Ellison's column in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, ENDLESSLY WATCHING collects a review of PSYCHO from a 1960 fanzine, 1974's "Total Impact: THE TERMINAL MAN," and Ellison's 1966 treatise on terror: "3 Faces of Fear," making its debut in a non-fiction Ellison collection. Bridging the nearly two decades between Watching columns are: 2007's "I Saw GHOST RIDER Today at the Galleria," and 2013's review of 12 YEARS A SLAVE and "Death to All Hollywood Award Shows!" As an added bonus, we've exhumed two unpublished reviews...or, rather, one unpublished review of BRAM STOKER'S DRACULA and an unpublished refusal to review HONEY, I BLEW UP THE BABY.

Harlan Ellison's Movie

Harlan Ellison's Movie PDF Author: Harlan Ellison
Publisher: Open Road Media
ISBN: 1497604141
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 193

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Book Description
Herein lies in written form Harlan Ellison’s Movie, the full‐length feature film Ellison created when a producer at 20th Century‐Fox said, “If we gave you the money, and no interference, what sort of movie would you write?” Well, that producer is no longer at the studio; he left the entire venue of moviemaking after Harlan Ellison’s Movie was seen by the Suits. There is no use even trying to describe what the film is about, except to confirm the long‐standing rumor that it contains a scene in which a 70‐foot‐tall boll weevil chews and swallows an entire farmhouse and silo on‐camera. (It is Scene 33C.)