Ugly Heaven [Paperback]

Carlton Mellick III (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 9, 2012

The afterlife is not what you think...

Heaven is no longer a paradise. It was once a blissful utopia full of wonders far beyond human comprehension. But that was a long, long time ago. The afterlife is now in ruins. It has become an ugly, lonely wasteland populated by strange monstrous beasts, masturbating angels, and sad man-like beings wallowing in the remains of the once-great Kingdom of God.

As two men die and awake in Heaven, they find themselves inside of new bodies with strange alien skin. They no longer remember their previous lives. All they really know is that the afterlife is a horrible, ugly place. Desperately seeking answers, allies, and refuge, these two newcomers explore this surreal world. But what they will soon find is that Heaven has become a place not that much different from Hell.

Editorial Reviews

From the Inside Flap

Praise for Ugly Heaven

"...an extremely odd tale that is a seriously screwed up mind trip through a dead Heaven which has become a destroyed land of terrible beauty and elegant ugliness." 
- FANGORIA

"Wildly imaginative."
- PUBLISHER'S WEEKLY


Praise for Carlton Mellick III

"Easily the craziest, weirdest, strangest, funniest, most obscene writer in America."
- GOTHIC MAGAZINE

"Carlton Mellick III has the craziest book titles... and the kinkiest fans!"
- CHRISTOPHER MOORE, author of The Stupidest Angel

"If you haven't read Mellick you're not nearly perverse enough for the twenty first century."
- JACK KETCHUM, author of The Woman and The Girl Next Door

"Carlton Mellick III is one of bizarro fiction's most talented practitioners, a virtuoso of the surreal, science fictional tale."
- CORY DOCTOROW, author of Little Brother

"Bizarre, twisted, and emotionally raw--Carlton Mellick's fiction is the literary equivalent of putting your brain in a blender."
- BRIAN KEENE, author of The Rising and Dead Sea

"Carlton Mellick III exemplifies the intelligence and wit that lurks between its lurid covers. In a genre where crude titles are an art in themselves, Mellick is a true artist."
- THE GUARDIAN

"Just as Pop had Andy Warhol and Dada Tristan Tzara, the Bizarro movement has its very own P. T. Barnum-type practitioner. He's the mutton-chopped author of such books as Electric Jesus Corpse and The Menstruating Mall, the illustrator, editor, and instructor of all things Bizarro, and his name is Carlton Mellick III."
- DETAILS MAGAZINE

Product Details

• Paperback: 106 pages
• Publisher: Eraserhead Press (May 9, 2012)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1621050297
• ISBN-13: 978-1621050292
• Product Dimensions: 5.5 x 0.2 x 8.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 5.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #850,727 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Like a real world Kilgore Trout, cult author CARLTON MELLICK III has been pumping out some of the weirdest, trashiest, most imaginative books that you'll never want to admit you secretly love.

His books are released on a quarterly basis (every January, April, July, and October).

Best known as one of the leading authors of the bizarro fiction movement in literature, he is also one of the most prolific authors of his generation with over 40 books in print since 2001. He won the Wonderland Book Award for his novel "Warrior Wolf Women of the Wasteland" and has had short stories make it into The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror and The Best Bizarro Fiction of the Decade.

Although many of his earliest works are on the surreal and experimental side, his current style is to take the most ridiculous concepts imaginable and approach them with complete sincerity, as if they are not intended to be ridiculous at all. Always full of tongue-in-cheek humor, social satire, and told in a simplistic straightforward prose style similar to that of children's literature or early pulp fiction, Carlton Mellick III's work is one of a kind, to say the least.

He lives in Portland, OR, the bizarro mecca.

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 stars I would love to read a sequel, a prequel, and even a follow up afterwards. May 13, 2013

By amadeo777

Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase

This book explores aspects of Heaven that most people would never dream into existence. What if souls aren't everlasting? What if there are many layers to Heaven and all of them are hideous? What if we look nothing like ourselves if and when we get there? What if God abandons us in Heaven? What if we have no memory of our past selves in Heaven? There are so many more questions asked by this book that I could type all day about it. It is definitely a world created by the mind of CM3. I sincerely hope he will write a sequel to this and even a prequel would be awesome. I highly recommend this book.

4.0 out of 5 stars Good story, but no real ending July 30, 2012

By Yoyogod

Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase

I'm really not sure what to say about Carlton Mellick III's Ugly Heaven.I certainly enjoyed the book. It was all weird and creepy and was probably the most disturbing version of heaven I've ever heard of.

This is a warped version of heaven, though. God is missing and presumed dead. Everybody looks weird. Shadows chase people around and latch onto them.You can still die in this heaven, and that death is presumably final. There are monsters and dangers everywhere.

The story about a couple of guys called Tree and Salmon who arrive in heaven together. They meet lots of strange people and have adventures, but there's no real resolution to the story. It's still good, but the ending just feels like the end to a chapter not the end of a story.

5.0 out of 5 stars Uh..Ummm. What Did I Just Read? July 23, 2012

By Steven R. Shroyer

Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase

Heaven is a place that is considered too taboo to mess with in a fiction work. Me being a Methodist, and a regular church goer I hold heaven in a place of high regard just as Muslims would regard Mecca and White Trash regard Wal-Mart. That being said, I really enjoyed "Ugly Heaven" and the thing is... I am not sure why?

The book is very simple, Heaven had morphed from paradise to a warped nightmare. Two men wake up in heaven only to find that it has been populated with odd looking beings that may or may not be human, and a landscape that seems as if it could come from a Salvador Dali painting. As these men navigate this landscape, they try to find out how they got there and most of all, where is GOD and why would he change heaven to such an "Ugly" place.

This book feels like the literary equivalent of Lynch's "Eraserhead" a series of disjointed moments that have some cohesive narrative but overall is filled with such hallucinatory images that it is meant to unnerve. I for one was unnerved severely.

The one thing that is unique to this book is Mellick's use of language in terms of describing the world and how it looks and feels. It is all very oddball and doesn't quite make sense but therein lies the charm of this novella.

If you're looking for a book that spells everything out in black and white, if you want a book that has a simple 3 act structure, if you just want a happy read, this is not your book. This is a disturbing ride and it is well worth the price of shipping.

Think you know heaven? Prepare yourself, you may not like what you find out.

5.0 out of 5 stars Paradise no more July 22, 2012

By Dave Anderson

Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase

2 men wake up in a foreign land. One calls the other Tree and the other Salmon. They do not remember there former lives. There bodies are different they do know that however. There is no sex organs. Then they discover this new place is filled with shadows. Shadows are the dark side of men's souls. All evil exists in our shadows. After death, shadows would go to hell and the rest of the human body, the good part, went to heaven. But the shadows broke out of hell and now hang out in heaven and try to latch onto others, making them more evil. More shadows equal more evil. Tree and Salmon can't believe this is there new home. So they escape and land in another area of heaven and meet a woman named Swan who has been dead for a long time and she joins up with them and what follows is them exploring different parts of heaven, heaven that has become a wasteland of lonely strange vibes. What really made this book interesting was that Tree, Salmon and Swan have over a 100 senses instead of the normal 5. So Mellick uses that to really describe each scene in full detail and does it well. Cool book

4.0 out of 5 stars Heaven is a lie! July 22, 2012

By R. Roeske

Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase

Heaven is not at all like you've been told it is. It's not a paradise. It's broken down,somehow. God might be in a far off city, or he/she/it might not be. No one knows for sure.

There are no clear answers, only more questions. No one really knows what's going on or they're lying about it.

You don't become an angel after death, not even a masturbating one! You end up in a strangely colored and shaped, genital-less alien-like body, where you can still excrete and have sex, but not like you did in life.

Memories of your former life are mostly gone, and retrieved either by drugs or by slowly returning on their own. You won't recall your name,and someone will give you a new one, mostly by using a descriptor.

Shadows follow you around, and sometimes attach to you. This is not good,but no one will really explain why. It'll get you sent underground, and to be digested by Heaven's stomach.

This is a deliciously frustrating book, that will cause you to question everything you've been told about the afterlife.

0 of 1 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Carlton Mellick Needs A Course In Theology July 13, 2012

By Allen Taylor

Format:Paperback

In his Author's Note at the beginning of "Ugly Heaven" Carlton Mellick explains what fascinates him about the afterlife. He's got his theology all wrong. People don't go to heaven for being good or to hell for being bad. OK, maybe they do in some Pagan brand of Christianity, but in Biblical Christianity, it's all about Christ's blood.

Surprisingly, Christ is absent in "Ugly Heaven." And God is presumably dead.

If you're stuck on Christian theology and are afraid of ideas that might challenge your soul, don't read "Ugly Heaven." If, on the other hand, you have an open mind, "Ugly Heaven" is one hell of a read. Literally.

In Mellick's heaven, people are not good. There is an underground where bad afterlife people go. They can have sex, even though they have no sex organs. And they have more than six senses. In fact, beings in heaven are so multi-dimensional that it kind of makes you wonder why that isn't an aspect of the popular Christian theological view of heaven.

"Ugly Heaven" is quite a bit different than other stories of Mellick's that I've read. It's not outright blasphemous nor is it overtly perverse. It reads quickly and the characters are very interesting. Mellick even had me chuckling a few times.

While I wouldn't say that anything in "Ugly Heaven" should be taken as a realistic view of heaven, I'd also say that you should read it as a work of fiction. It's fun reading. Nothing more, nothing less.