Roller ball murder [Unbound]

William Harrison (Author)

Product Details

• Unbound: 189 pages
• Publisher: Morrow; 1St Edition edition (1974)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 068800265X
• ISBN-13: 978-0688002657
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #953,871 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Impressive collection, February 2, 2006

By 

Raegan Butcher (Rain City, USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Rollerball (Mass Market Paperback)

I first read this collection of short stories in the mid 1980's and i have had an opportunity lately to re-read them and i am doubly impressed; the title story alone is worth the purchase price but there are also several others that stand out: THE WARRIOR, THE ARSONS OF DESIRE, THE GOOD SHIP ERASMUS. William Harrison writes with the soul of a poet and a there is a melancholic sense of loss that permeates some of these stories and carries them into strange directions just when you least expect it. Imagine a cross between Ray Bradbury and Roald Dahl, with a bit of Stephen King tossed in for good measure and you have a pretty close approximation for what's in store if you take my advice and buy this book. Anyone interested in short stories should own it.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars It's okay, but the movie is better., October 4, 2011

By 

Book Burner - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Rollerball (Mass Market Paperback)

This compilation of short stories isn't bad, but it isn't good either. I get the feeling that the author read a lot of other sci-fi authors and tried emulating their work, but a lot of the stories felt flat and unimaginative. There are a few gems in this, "Roller Ball Murder" and "Nirvana, Gotterdammerung, and the Shot Put" being the ones that stood out the most for me. Wouldn't buy it again if I had the chance for a do-over, but probably would check it out of the library.

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Early collection from a master storyteller., June 25, 2002

By 

Far Lefkas (Balto.-WDC metro area) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Roller ball murder (Unbound)

Harrison is a master storyteller, & his hallmarks are bizarre premises or characters driven to do bizarre things & a terse & spartan writing style. "Roller Ball Murder" had the bizarre premise & was Harrison's most commercial success. The original story is a first-person narrative of a panic-stricken sports hero, watching his sport become increasingly cruel & barbaric.

"The Warrior" is an interior monologue (told as if the reader were sitting next to the narrator) of a restless soldier of fortune, who, without a war to fight, decides to take on that conspicuous example of cosmopolitan excess, an international film festival ("Christ, some show."). The narrator of "The Good Ship Erasmus" smuggles cigarettes on a quit-smoking cruise; like Kafka's Hunter Gracchus, he is destined to cruise forever.

Harrison's characters are sometimes on the verge of breakdowns: a fireman thinks he's causing fires so he can rescue lost loves; a weather forecaster thinks he causes the weather. This is an early collection of Harrison's stories, published while he was still teaching writing, something, as he wrote in the Preface, he could never again do with "a straight face."