WEDNESDAY’S SHORT STORIES #189: FROM THE LAND OF FEAR By Harlan Ellison

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I found this Belmont Tower paperback from 1973 with a lame cover. But Roger Zelazny’s “Foreword” praising Harlan Ellison and Ellison’s own “Introduction” describing why he’s fearless make From the Land of Fear a fun read. Also fun are the stories included in this collection along with Ellison’s comments about how each story got written and what he intended by writing it.

Some of these stories come from the 1950s when Ellison was learning how to write and get published. Along with the reminiscences of this early work, Ellison also writes about the state of Science Fiction publishing that he had to navigate. Compelling reading!

My favorite part of From the Land of Fear is “Soldier,” a memorable anti-war story included both in short-story form and as a screenplay Ellison wrote for TV’s The Outer Limits. “Soldier” is the first of two episodes of The Outer Limits television series written by Harlan Ellison and is loosely adapted from his 1957 short story “Soldier from Tomorrow.” Ellison later brought suit against the producers and distributor of The Terminator (1984) for plagiarism of this episode. “Soldier” was first broadcast on The Outer Limits in September 19, 1964 and I watched it avidly as a fifteen-year-old kid. It turned me into an instant Harlan Ellison fan. GRADE: B

TABLE OF CONTENTS:

Foreword: In Praise of His Spirits Noble and Otherwise — Roger Zelazny — 7
Introduction: Where the Stray Dreams Go — Harlan Ellison — 11
The / One / Word / People — 15
Moth on the Moon — 16
Snake in the Mind — 19
The Sky Is Burning — 24
My Brother Paulie — 33
The Time of the Eye — 42
Life Hutch — 51
Battle without Banners — 62
Back to the Drawing Boards — 75
A Friend to Man — 88
“We Mourn for Anyone…” — 95
The Voice in the Garden — 111
Soldier — 114
Soldier — 136
Soldier Act One — 139
Soldier Act Two — 149
Soldier Act Three — 159

23 thoughts on “WEDNESDAY’S SHORT STORIES #189: FROM THE LAND OF FEAR By Harlan Ellison”

  1. Jerry+House

    I’m a great admirer of Ellison. I find his writing to be 80% pure genius, 80% pure crap, 80% flash-bang pyrotechnics, and 80% thoughtful examination. The fact that these proportions are so contradictory may be the essence of Ellison.

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    1. george Post author

      Jerry, there was no writer like Harlan Ellison. I saw him at the World Science Fiction Convention at Toronto and he was brilliant.

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      1. Byron

        I went through a HUGE Harlan Ellison phase in junior high in part because I was already getting a little bored by hard science fiction and the fantasy I’d encountered was painfully dorky. Eliison’s work grabbed me by the throat and shoved the awfulness of the world right in my face and I couldn’t get enough of it. Because I was the good kid my parents let me stay up late to watch Ellison’s numerous appearances on the “Tomorrow” show which I tape recorded and listened to endlessly.

        Right around the same time Channel 50 in Detroit began airing”Outer Limits” reruns (remember that term?) on Saturday afternoons so I of course caught ‘Soldier’ and ‘Demon With a Glass Hand’ which I loved. Also at about the same time the CBC began broadcasting “The Starlost,” which was originally a hugely ambitious mini series created by Ellison that was meant to be co-produced by NBC and the BBC with breakthrough special effects by Douglas Trumbull but ended up as a cheap Canadian production shot on video tape. Needless to say Ellison walked off the series before production even began but there’s a readable novelization of the pilot episode with a fascinating intro by Ellison that’s worth a glance.

        By the time I was in high school I was able to drive to several of Ellison’s lectures at nearby colleges. They were great fun at the time but even as a teenager I began in to reevaluate the quality of the man’s writing and started to feel he was something of a living anachronism. As speculative fiction hit the mainstream Ellison was unceremoniously relegated to the cultural gutter and it was sad to watch him fade into obscurity although he has been having a bit of a BookTok moment with the kids so who knows?

        I’ve never seen this book and I definitely would have bought it in 1973 had I found it on the drugstore paperback racks but you’re right, that cover is really awful.

      2. george Post author

        Byron, thanks for those Ellison memories! Harlan Ellison was the enfant terrible of the Science Fiction world for decades. I recall Ellison ripping up a fan’s copy of DOOMSMAN, a book Ellison destroyed whenever he saw a copy. Sadly, as the years passed, Ellison and the regard for his work slowly faded.

  3. Todd Mason

    Edward Bryant, alas, also late, a long-term friend of Ellison’s and an impressive writer on his own ticket, wrote the novelization for the STARLOST pilot. The TV series, such as it was, also drove Ben Bova away as scientific advisor even faster (Bova being the editor of ANALOG at the time and a collaborator with Ellison also on the short fiction “Brillo”, about a robot cop, and the source of future litigation against producers of robot cop tv series), and ran for its short term as a syndicated series in the US…the Hartford, CT, ABC station pre-empted HAPPY DAYS in its first season, delaying play till Saturdays at 7:30, to make way for THE STARLOST…as you can imagine, that didn’t last as long as the season did.

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  4. Todd Mason

    This a volume I’ve not ever picked up, though I have most of Ellison’s works, between my father and my buying them in one form or another over the years. Even Manor Books, which I believe was a regrouping of Belmont Tower but I could be wrong, and at least as mobbed up, did better with packaging for the most part.

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      2. Todd Mason

        It did…

        Here’s Ellison on the CBC series 90 MINUTES LIVE, with Laraine Newman, around the time CLOSE ENCOUNTERS the film was released. (Newman was not happy to know this clip was available when I first found it…I thought upon first viewing she was simply taken aback, but she was annoyed to see herself chemically impaired on screen.)

  6. Todd Mason

    And, of course, in 1973, Ellison wouldn’t love the “Best Selling SF Writer in the Wold” tag at all, even if it had been more accurate. I’d hazard a guess Michael Crichton was, about then, though he’d hate the label as well. Frank Herbert was probably ahead of Heinlein by then, and Asimov. Discounting the collective sales of Wells and Verne dwarfing all at that point.

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