FORGOTTEN BOOKS #350: ELLISON WONDERLAND By Harlan Ellison

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It’s hard to believe I’ve contributed 350 Friday’s Forgotten Books posts to Patti Abbott. I wanted to do something a little special to celebrate the occasion so I’ve chosen a book that electrified me the first time I read it. Harlan Ellison’s Ellison Woderland thrilled me in 1962. I was 14 years old and by that time I was reading a book a day. But none of the books I read were as different as Ellison Wonderland. The short stories in this collection were completely original and astonishing for their time. Years later, I read the Bluejay edition of Ellison Wonderland. Harlan Ellison prefers this edition of his stories (he “tweaked” some of them). In the Introduction to this later edition, Ellison writes about the impact Ellison Wonderland had on his writing career. It allowed Ellison to move to L.A. and begin writing for television programs like Burke’s Law and The Man From U.N.C.L.E. So Ellison Wonderland impacted Ellison’s life and my life. If you haven’t read Ellison Wonderland, you’re missing a classic!

TABLE OF CONTENTS:
Introduction: The Man on the Mushroom
Commuter’s Problem
Do-it-yourself
The Silver Corridor
All the Sounds of Fear
Gnomebody
The Sky is Burning
Mealtime
The Very Last Day of a Good Woman
Battlefield
Deal from the Bottom
The Wind Beyond the Mountains
Back to the Drawing Boards
Nothing for My Noon Meal
Hadj
Rain, Rain, Go Away
In Lonely Lands

39 thoughts on “FORGOTTEN BOOKS #350: ELLISON WONDERLAND By Harlan Ellison

  1. Wolf Böhrendt

    The early stories are as wild as his later ones – of course he would be as famous if he had written only “A boy and his dog”.

    And then of course the anthologies …

    Reply
    1. george Post author

      Sergio, Ellison states in the Bluejay edition of ELLISON WONDERLAND that this is his preferred form of these stories. I really like the covers, too!

      Reply
  2. Wolf Böhrendt

    Here’s my list of Ellison’s books:

    0ELLISON HARLAN (SEE I ASIMOV)
    %THE FINAL DANGEROUS VISIONS (ED) (NEVER PUBLISHED)
    1THE DEADLY STREETS (NO SF)
    1GENTLEMAN JUNKIE
    1LOVE AIN’T NOTHING BUT SEX MISSPELLED
    1THE MAN WITH NINE LIVES
    1MEMOS FROM PURGATORY
    1SPIDER KISS = ROCKABILLY (NO SF)
    1THE TIME OF THE EYE
    1WEB OF THE CITY = RUMBLE
    3A TOUCH OF INFINITY
    3APPROACHING OBLIVION
    3THE BEAST THAT SHOUTED LOVE AT THE HEART OF THE WORLD
    3DEATHBIRD STORIES
    3ELLISON WONDERLAND = DER SILBERNE KORRIDOR
    3I HAVE NO MOUTH AND I MUST SCREAM = DIE PUPPE MAGGIE MONEYEYES
    3THE ILLUSTRATED HARLAN ELLISON
    3NO DOORS, NO WINDOWS
    3OVER THE EDGE
    3PAINGOD AND OTHER DELUSIONS
    3PARTNERS IN WONDER
    3SHATTERDAY
    3STALKING THE NIGHTMARE (STORIES)
    3FROM THE LAND OF FEAR
    5AGAIN, DANGEROUS VISIONS 1
    5AGAIN, DANGEROUS VISIONS 2
    5DANGEROUS VISIONS 1
    5DANGEROUS VISIONS 2
    5DANGEROUS VISIONS 3
    5ALL THE SOUNDS OF FEAR
    7THE GLASS TEAT (ESSAYS ON TV)
    9ALONE AGAINST TOMORROW
    9ANGRY CANDY (STORIES)
    9MEDEA :HARLAN’S WORLD
    9STRANGE WINE

    The numbers mean:
    1 novel
    3 story collection
    5 book edited by him
    7 non fiction
    9 don’t have or don’t know

    His essays on tv are interesting and important too.

    Reply
    1. Todd Mason

      Wolf, ALONE AGAINST TOMORROW was (essentially) his choice of his best among his early stories. STRANGE WINE and ANGRY CANDY are collections more like ELLISON WONDERLAND: These are the stories I’ve been writing recently. MEDEA was a shared-world anthology, where a number of scientifically-inclined sf writers devised a planet and ecosystem and intelligent species for that planet, and an interesting mix of writers wrote stories set on Medea–these stories were largely being published in sf magazines just as I was beginning to read the new issues I could pick up, and it was an impressive range that way, even more impressive when assembled. You’ll probably need such books as THE OTHER GLASS TEAT, AN EDGE IN MY VOICE and HARLAN ELLISON’S WATCHING if you’re fond of his nonfiction and critical writing.

      Reply
    2. Todd Mason

      Oh, and ALL THE SOUNDS OF FEAR is simply a skimpy UK selection from ALONE AGAINST TOMORROW…more another story collection than an anthology edited by Ellison…

      Reply
      1. Wolf Böhrendt

        Thanks, Todd!
        Wish I had more time to read all those books – actually I haven’t even read all of those then thousand that I bought over the years …

  3. Bill Crider

    Ellison was a favorite of mine back when I was reading the SF digests of the ’50s. He doesn’t consider the stories he wrote then to be very good, but I enjoyed just about all of them.

    Reply
  4. Jerry House

    I’m a big Ellison fan too, George. He’s a major talent and influence on the genre. ELLISON WONDERLAND knocked my socks off when I first read it. He always had a raw talent, but around this time he began displaying a more nuanced, fiercer talent (much like Robert Silverberg did with his career during the same timeframe.) Although his shtick seems (to me, anyway) a little out of step for 2015, Ellison is still as angry, still as powerful, and still sitting on THE LAST DANGEROUS VISIONS.

    Reply
    1. george Post author

      Jerry, Ellison’s anger will never fade. I relish his rants! You’re right about the parallels with Silverberg’s career. Very perceptive!

      Reply
  5. Jeff Meyerson

    No, I haven’t read this one but I see copies are easily available. By coincidence I just got a copy of his WEB OF THE CITY, which I hadn’t read either. The first book of his I read was I HAVE NO MOUTH AND I MUST SCREAM, one of the classic titles.

    Reply
    1. george Post author

      Jeff, once you start reading Harlan Ellison’s work, it’s hard to stop. I remember waiting impatiently for the next volume of Ellison’s work in the early 1970s when Pyramid was publishing a book of his a month. And with great Dillon covers, too!

      Reply
  6. maggie mason

    I’ve never read ellison, not a SF fan, and have only read about 3 SF books in my life. When I was a bookseller, a co-worker asked me to find a book she’d been looking for a long time. I HAVE NO MOUTH, said she’d read it as a teenager, and it was her favorite book. She’d loaned it out and not gotten it back. I recall it took a while to find a pb copy.

    I also remember doing the Glendale Bookfair, and Ellison was there. He had a reputation of sometimes being difficult, but I thought he was nice IIRC

    Reply
    1. george Post author

      Maggie, Ellison wrote some mystery stories, too. He won the Edgar for “The Whimper of Whipped Dogs” in 1974 and another Edgar in 1988 for “Soft Monkey.” Ellison is a very versatile writer!

      Reply
    1. george Post author

      Rick, Bill Crider has me beat hands down! He was doing FFBs for a year before Patti Abbott invited me. You’ve done a good number of FFBs yourself!

      Reply
  7. Art Scott

    Seeing the Wonderland cover (guy on the mushroom doesn’t look much like him) reminded me of my ancient Ellison first encounter. I was at home, in Shaker Heights, idly watching, in living black & white, the local talk show hosted by Cleveland icon Dorothy Fuldheim (America’s first news anchorwoman), and here came this young writer plugging his new book in his old home town. It was Harlan, whom I’d never heard of. I’ve always assumed it was this book he was plugging, so I went to the internet to check – 1962 would have been about right. I found a reminiscence on Maggie Thompson’s blog, she also a Clevelander, who saw that show & remembered it well (maybe because Harlan didn’t do or say anything outrageous on air). It was Memos From Purgatory he was plugging, 1961, not Ellison Wonderland. I would have been in junior high at the time.

    Reply
  8. Jeff Meyerson

    Sorry, that misposted.

    I was just going to congratulate you on 350. That’s a monumental achievement, and you’ve certainly given me a ton of good ideas, both here and on your blog.

    Reply
  9. Matt Paust

    Surprised at how much of his work is available as ebooks. I just now downloaded The Beast That Shouted Love at the Heart of the World. Thanks for bringing Ellison to mind.

    Reply
    1. george Post author

      Matt, Ellison made his work available in ebook formats early in the game. He must have known ebooks would be a rapidly growing technology. Very smart.

      Reply
      1. Todd Mason

        Ellison was initially reluctant to allow ebooks, fearing piracy would be made even more easy, but came around eventually.

        And, indeed, congrats on 350!

  10. Cap'n Bob

    You’re 350 ahead of me!
    I think my first Ellison was Memos From Purgatory, which knocked my socks off!
    Which reminds me, is he still doing podcasts?! I need to check!

    Reply
  11. Ernie Scheel

    Great post. I’ll be getting some of his works in the near future. Why is it that some of his work that was published in some of the earlier Science Fiction magazines has never been re-published?

    Reply
    1. george Post author

      Ernie, Harlan Ellison doesn’t care for his early work when he was learning how to write. Some other writers are the same way. Dean Koontz doesn’t allow his early work to be reprinted, either.

      Reply

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