Customer Reviews

Ellison Wonderland

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It's a dastardly shame that so many titles on Harlan Ellison's backlist are so wretchedly hard to find (that is, find and KEEP -- some titles may be wrested from the library, but they have an awful habit of wandering away, so the books are kept as reference materials; curses and swear words, I say! But I digress,...)

I didn't actually run into a collection of Mr. Ellison's work until I was in the middle of the brain-drain that was my 20's. I couldn't catch them as they appeared, but I made it my business to seek them wherever possible. SHATTERDAY and ANGRY CANDY completely overtook me, and I started writing myself, and took every opportunity to find Ellison's work. Elsewhere, I've written a review of his latest, SLIPPAGE. That went so well (even Mr. Ellison seemed pleased with it) I made it my business to look further.

And what I found, at last, was the collection that really, but really, set it all rolling: ELLISON WONDERLAND.

Oh, I know there were novels before that, a collection or two -- MEMOS FROM PURGATORY, I think, and GENTELMAN JUNKIE. But this was where Ellison took off and never looked back.

In the 1974 and 1984 editions, you'll find an introductory essay by the author, titled "The Man On the Mushroom," and, in that essay, he tells anyone who's interested about his push West, the Fiend in Human Form for whom he worked, and all the circumstances that led to and occurred during his move to Hollywood, with his soon-to-be-ex-wife and her terrific son; that he was toiling like mad to take care of the various rents and daily necessities; how things were really begining to look sort of grim-ish, when a package arrived from his publisher, and he opened it, and there was ELLISON WONDERLAND, and a nice royalty check, and at that moment, his luck, his life and his future changed. Everything was bright and shiney and bursting with promise, and by damn it shows in the work.

Those readers familiar only with Mr. Ellison's more recent offerings, splendid though those books are, may have only had the experience of the author addressing Social Issues, possessed of a certain amount of justified ill-temper and venom, and generally making few if any bones about the state of the species and the fate of the planet because of it. And it is true that, say, about 1965, Mr. Ellison did indeed apply himself with greater vigor to the task of Making Us Aware. But these are older stories, before things got quite so hateful and nutty in the world at large. When asked about them, Mr. Ellison speaks as fondly of them as any father of any of his children; but he remembers writing them so long ago, thinks of them now, and cringes the least bit.

And I cannot understand why. If one judges them against his more recent work, there are certainly differences; there has been a maturation of his style, naturally. But those are comparisons of the author with himself. The stories in ELLISON WONDERLAND stand the test of time easily, I think and reading them leaves one in no doubt as to why Ellison was referred to in his early career as, alternately, the "wunderkind" and "enfant terrible" of science fiction.

Because, you see, even then he was writing about people. Science, rocket-ships, space warriors, all that stuff -- all that was and remains just "furniture," props for the real focus of the tale

Which is, still, invariably, us.

ELLISON WONDERLAND is a delight, a lighter book that still has weight; before the weight was a burden; and before the burden settled so heavily on Ellison's and our shoulders.

Read it and know wonder again.

I first read _Ellison Wonderland_ (1962) when I was in high school and was sick abed with the flu. I had never heard of Harlan Ellison before, but the collection made an impression on me. I didn't like all of the stories equally well, and none of them struck me as clear classics. But they freqently displayed a kind of manic inventiveness, and occasionally they packed an emotional punch. Most of the yarns were a bit on the grim side, but there were a few with a touch of whimsy. And then there was that cover-- the author sitting on top of a giant mushroom and surrounded by a silvery android, a beatnik devil, a teenage centaur, a naked woman with an alligator head, and other strange creatures.

A rereading of this collection has convinced me that my original impressions were essentially sound, though not all of the tales are as entertaining to me today as they were back in those golden years. Some stories that still hold up fairly well for me are "In Lonely Lands," a low-key, bittersweet portrait of an alien friendship; "Commuter's Problem," a _Twilight Zone_ type of story with a wry twist at the end; "Gnomebody," a piece of amiable silliness; "Mealtime," a story that reminded me of A. Bertram Chandler's "The Key"; and "All the Sounds of Fear," a bizarre portrait of a method actor who takes things to extremes.

In later years, Ellison learned a thing or three about writing (especially of short stories and movie scripts). But this collection of early tales from the fifties is still worth a look. Their structure is a bit conventional and cliched, but there was nevertheless an original voice that was breaking through.

This is a collection of stories from the 50's and early 60's, most of them fantasy or "hard" science-fiction, Ellison at this time writing very much in the mode of Richard Matheson, et al. The stories are clever, amusing, sometimes very good. It is not, however, his most timeless work.

Harlan Ellison's gift for using not just words but the *right* words is second to none. There's a conversational tone in his work that makes reading it effortless, or close to. Not only are the stories really good, if not great, but they're immensely enjoyable to read as someone who appreciates a master wordsmith when he reads one.

This book is also known as "Earthman Go Home." Just in case you think you should buy both titles.