Greatest Hits

By (author) Ellison Harlan; Edited by Straczynski, J.; Introduction by Khaw Cassandra
Short description/annotation:
A collection of award-winning short stories by Harlan Ellison, an eight-time Hugo Award winner, five-time Bram Stoker Award winner, and four-time Nebula Award winner.
Description:
A collection of award-winning short stories, including the viral “I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream” by Harlan Ellison, an eight-time Hugo Award winner, five-time Bram Stoker Award winner, and four-time Nebula Award winner. As one of the great writers of speculative fiction of the twentieth century, Harlan Ellison shaped the science fiction, fantasy, and horror genres. This inventive and provocative collection of his best-known and most-acclaimed stories is a perfect treasury for old Ellison fans as well as readers discovering this zany, polyphonic writer for the first time. Featuring these stories and many more: ·“‘Repent, Harlequin,’ Said the Ticktockman” — Hugo Award winner ·“I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream” — Bram Stoker Award winner ·“Mefisto in Onyx” — Bram Stoker Award winner ·“Jeffty Is Five” — British Fantasy Award winner ·“Shatterday” — Twilight Zone episode ·“The Whimper of Whipped Dogs” — Edgar Allan Poe Award winner ·“Paladin of the Lost Hour” — Hugo Award winner, Twilight Zone episode A must-read for sci-fi book lovers and fans of Ray Bradbury, Ursula K. Le Guin, and Isaac Asimov, this career-spanning compilation of classic short stories is also perfect for readers who enjoyed Dangerous Visions, A Boy and His Dog, or other Harlan Ellison books.
Review quote:
PRAISE FOR HARLAN ELLISON

[O]n the evidence that Straczynski has assembled here, [Ellison’s] fiction can still scream. 
—Locus

Greatest Hits offers a reason for readers to rejoice, for it is a handy compilation of excellent and eclectic and eccentric stories… Tenacious in both terror and tomfoolery, fierce, and funny… You won’t find a better collection of single-scribe sci-fi on the planet—or beyond it.
—Los Angeles Review of Books

In his stories of fantasy and horror, he strikes closest to all those things that horrify and amuse us (sometimes both at the same time) in our present lives...Ellison has always been a sociological writer...[who was] pro-choice when itcomes to abortion...[and] an affirmed liberal and freethinker. Most of all, we sense outrage and anger—as with the best Ellison stories, we sense personal involvement, and have a feeling that Ellison is not so much telling the tale as he is jabbing it viciously out of its hiding place. It is the feeling that we are walking over a lot of jagged glass in thin shoes, or running across a minefield in the company of a lunatic.
—Stephen King
 
Categories are too small—even the catch-all category of science fiction—to describe Harlan Ellison. Lyric poet, satirist, explorer of odd psychological corners, moralist, one-line comedian, purveyor of pure horror and of black comedy; he is all these and more.
—The Washington Post
 
A furiously prolific and cantankerous writer (who) looked at storytelling as a "holy chore," which he pursued zealously for more than 60 years. His output includes more than 1,700 short stories and articles, at least 100 books and dozens of screenplays and television scripts ranked with eminent science fiction writers like Ray Bradbury and Isaac Asimov.
—The New York Times
 
Harlan Ellison was, after all, one of the most interesting humans on Earth. He was one of the greatest and most influential science fiction writers alive. He marched with Martin Luther King, Jr. in Selma, lectured to college kids, visited with death row inmates, and once mailed a dead gopher to a publisher. Ellison brought a literary sensibility to sci-fl at a time when the entire es