Product Review

Mercurial, belligerent, passionately in love with language and wild ideas, Harlan Ellison has won more awards for imaginative literature than any other living writer. Though his contemporary fantasies have been compared favorably with the dark visions of Borges, Barthelme, Poe, and Kafka, Ellison resists categorization with a vehemence that alienates critics and reviewers seeking easy pigeonholes for an extraordinary writer. The San Francisco Chronicle writes, "The categories are too small to describe Harlan Ellison. Lyric poet, satirist, explorer of odd psychological corners, moralist, purveyor of pure horror and black comedy; he is all these and more." In this, his thirty-seventh book, setting down as never before the mortal dreads we all share, Harlan Ellison has put together his best work to date: sixteen uncollected stories (half of which are award winners, including the Nebula Award finalist titular story and the Nebula Award-winning "Jeffty Is Five") totaling a marvel-filled one hundred five thousand words and including a brand-new novella, his longest work in over a dozen years.