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    Approaching Oblivion: Stories
    Unavailable
    Approaching Oblivion: Stories
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    Approaching Oblivion: Stories
    Ebook247 pages4 hours

    Approaching Oblivion: Stories

    By Harlan Ellison

    4/5

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    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this ebook

    “Ellison’s stories punch where it hurts . . .and span from baroque far future speculations to near future warnings” (Science Fiction Ruminations).

    Over the course of his legendary career, Harlan Ellison has defied—and sometimes defined—modern fantasy literature, all while refusing to allow any genre to claim him. A Grand Master of the Science Fiction Writers of America, winner of the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Horror Writers Association, as well as winner of countless awards, including the Hugo, Nebula, Edgar, and Bram Stoker, Ellison is as unpredictable as he is unique, irrepressible as he is infuriating.    Over thirty titles in Ellison’s brilliant catalog are now available in an elegant new package featuring Ellison himself. Genius never felt so combustible. The New York Times called him “relentlessly honest” and then used him as the subject of its famous Sunday Acrostic. People said there was no one like him, then cursed him for preventing easy sleep. But in these stories, Harlan Ellison outdoes himself, rampaging like a mad thing through love (“Cold Friend,” “Kiss of Fire,” “Paulie Charmed the Sleeping Woman”), hate (“Knox,” “Silent in Gehenna”), sex (“Catman,” “Erotophobia”), lost childhood (“One Life, Furnished in Early Poverty”), and into such bizarre subjects as the problems of blue‑skinned, eleven‑armed Yiddish aliens, what it is like to witness the end of the world, and what happens on the day the planet Earth swallows Barbra Streisand. Oh yeah, this one is a doozy!
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherOpen Road Media
    Release dateApr 1, 2014
    ISBN9781497604926
    Unavailable
    Approaching Oblivion: Stories

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    Reviews for Approaching Oblivion

    4/5

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    • 4/5
      After seeing a documentary film about kind of cuckoo firebrand author, Harlan Ellison, called "Dreams with Sharp Teeth," I wanted to read his autobiographical short story of a fraught childhood in northeastern Ohio, since I share that kind of background. The story is called "One Life Furnished in Early Povery" and is contained within "Approaching Oblibivion." "...Oblivion" was not easy to locate. Several copies that New York & Brooklyn Public Libraries had were listed as 'missing' and the other few that had not been stolen were constantly checked out. It is also out of print, so it's not so easy to buy a copy, either. When I did finally get my hands on a copy, I enjoyed the story. It qualifies as science fiction in that the narrator has arrived back at his childhood via time travel. The spring semester 09 was starting, so I did not have time to read many more stories besides "One Life.." but from what I understand, it is atypical of his work, being light on the classic sci-fi elements.
    • 4/5
      Yet another collection from the amazingly prolific Harlan Ellison. While these stories were all new to me, my response to them was consistent with how I have reviewed previous Ellison collections: some of them work beautifully, some of them fall flat, but I have to admire the imagination and ambition behind all of them. Ellison is an author who wants to shake you up, who never treads on safe ground. And who seems to have no shortage of things to be angry about. My favorite stories in the collection were "Kiss of Fire," set in a distant future in which people's attempts relieve the monotony of their extraordinarily long, excruciatingly boring lives have unintended consequences; "Paulie Charmed the Sleeping Woman," a short little story in which an extraordinary jazz musician tries to wake the dead; and "Catman" another far future story in which the society of man has evolved in strange ways (especially and explicitly in the ways we pleasure ourselves). And while I wouldn't add "Knox" to my list of Ellison favorites, it was a very memorable story.
    • 3/5
      Part of my mission to go back and read books I'd left unfinished for no good reason. This was one of the featured selections in the very first month of my Science Fiction Book Club subscription (in 1974). The collection is a bit raggedy and uneven, but sometimes brilliant and bold and moving. Ellison takes risks, and I admire the effort even when it doesn't work and sometimes marvel at the results when it does. This was from a time when "sci-fi" was morphing into "speculative fiction," making its bid as literature, experimental, political, graphic, and profound. It also brought back the whole time period to me, but that's another story...