No Doors, No Windows [Paperback]

Harlan Ellison (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 25, 2009

YOU HAVE NOTHING TO FEAR BUT FEAR ITSELF! The only trouble is, fear comes in so many different shapes and sizes these days. It comes as rejection by a beautiful woman. It comes in the brutalization of your love by an amoral man. It comes with the threat of impending nuclear holocaust; with the slithering shadows in the city streets; with the ripoff artists who lie in wait behind every television commercial. Fear is the erratic behavior of all the nut cases and whackos walking the streets-they look just like you and me and your lover and your mother-and all they need is a wrong word and there they go to the top of an apartment building with a sniperscope'd rifle. Fear is all around you. You have nothing to fear but fear itself, right? Sure. The only trouble is, the minute you get all the rational fears taken care of, all battened down and secure, here comes something new. Like what? Well, like the special fears generated in these 16 incredible stories. Fear described as it's never been described before, by the startling imagination of Harlan Ellison, master fantasist, tour-guide through the land of dreadful visions, unerring observer of human folly and supernatural diabolism. Or, quoting the Louisville Courier-Journal & Times, Ellison's "stories are kaleidoscopic in their range, breathtaking in their beauty, hideous in their deformity, insulting in their arrogance and unarguable in the accuracy of their insight." AND HERE ARE 16 NEW TERRORS TO SCARE THE BEJEEZUS OUT OF YOU!

Product Details

• Paperback: 214 pages
• Publisher: e-reads.com (May 25, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0759243522
• ISBN-13: 978-0759243521
• Product Dimensions: 5.5 x 8.5 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,184,739 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Not his best stories, and possible publishing issues, November 15, 2009

By 

James Skemp "JamesRSkemp.com" (Madison, WI United States) - See all my reviews
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Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: No Doors, No Windows (Paperback)

Edgeworks Abbey and E-Reads have recently (2009) begun reprinting Harlan Ellison's works (32 titles in total).

No Doors, No Windows sounded like a good choice, from the few titles I was missing, so I picked up a copy.

This collects 16 stories, and has the introduction from the original release. Most of these stories were new to me, but they're short (the book is just under 200 pages, with the intro) and for the most part just aren't as good as his other works. Supposedly these are all mystery stories, having some sort of 'twist' at the end. Sometimes it comes off really well; sometimes it seems forced.

So, I'd say it's a collection of fairly low-end Ellison stories, with other collections of his works containing much better stories.

What's really unfortunate, and I don't know if this is a case with this collection or with this publisher/series, but the book itself suffers from some fairly major editorial issues. It seems that in every other story the word 'in' became the word 'hi.' Less commonly punctuation marks have vanished. In a couple cases letters even vanished, where 'had' becomes 'h l' for example. I don't believe I have a another copy of "The Man on the Juice Wagon" (it's not in The Essential Ellison: 50, which it shouldn't be anyways), so I can't determine if the two words spoken by Routener are intentional or not. (They are "Rggll" and "Fszl" in my copy. Huh?)

Overall, this requires me to give this collection 3 of 5 stars. Go grab a copy of Deathbird Stories or The Essential Ellison instead, assuming you don't already have them. Although if picking up those done by Edgeworks Abbey and E-Reads, give them a once-over first to verify the text issues aren't in the others.

Deathbird Stories

1 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A masterpiece, April 2, 2000

By 

3baddogs - See all my reviews

This review is from: No Doors No Windows (Paperback)

This book contains 16 wonderful stories of triumph over alienation and despair. Stories that challenge us to find wonder in the common place and to seek out hope in a world that sometimes seems coldly indifferent to our struggles. Harlan Ellison is a wonderful writer and it is a shame to see such a great book go out of print.