Ellison wonderland Book

Ellison Wonderland - sixteen Harlan Ellison short stories preceded by an impassioned Introduction wherein Harlan shares his struggles prior to his arrival in Hollywood in 1962. Our author wants to emphasize one fact: his Wonderland is one of imagination - he doesn't need any drugs to propel him or inspire him to write - his overactive imagination provides all the juice he needs.

Harlan, we believe you! Such a vivid, extraordinary imagination, as these short stories will show. And to share a sampling of Harlan's imagination in action, here's my review of two of my favorite stories from this collection:

BACK TO THE DRAWING BOARDS
"Finally, Leon Packett stumbled upon the secret of the perfect, self-contained tri-vid camera, operating off a minute force-bead generator; and in his warped way, he struck instantly to the truth of the problem - that the only camera that could penetrate to those inner niches of the universe that the eye of man demanded to glimpse, was a man himself.

How completely simple it was. The only gatherer of facts as seen by the eyes of a man . . . were the eyes of a man. But since no man would volunteer to have his head sliced open, his brains scooped out, and a tri-vid camera inserted, Leon Packett invented Walkaway."

The above quote is taken from the first page of Back To the Drawing Boards, a tale of a highly unique, highly intelligent robot named Walkaway.

Harlan has written one of the most provocative, insightful, imaginative stories about a robot you'll ever read. And let's not forget the robot's creator, an eccentric gent who is anti-authoritarian in the extreme.

we're well to keep in mind Isaac Asimov's "Three Laws of Robotics" formulated in 1942:

First Law - A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.

Second Law - A robot must obey the orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.

Third Law - A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.

So, the question we must ask: Does Leon Packett, creator of Walkaway, violate Isaac Asimov's three laws? Let me offer a hint: Harlan constructs his tale with such mastery, the answer to this pressing, critical question is debatable.

Another philosophic conundrum to roll around in your mind: how human-like is Walkaway? For as Harlan writes:

"He (Leon Packett) has freed the robot's soul completely. Not only legally, but in actuality. Walkaway felt great sadness. There has been only one other who knew his inner feelings. That had been Leon Packett. There had been empathy between them. The man a bit mad, the robot a bit man."

Lastly, readers are treated to yet again another WOW!!! - Back To The Drawing Boards features Harlan's knockout punch, an unforgettable wallop: the tale's short, concluding sentence. How powerful is Harlan's smacker? For each reader to discover.



ALL THE SOUNDS OF FEAR
Each of the sixteen short stories collected here starts off with a preface, that is, a paragraph where Harlan shares some of the background for writing the story we're about to read - for example: an idea he was kicking around in his head or situation he observed or something that actually happened to him, either out in the world or in his own dreams or nightmares. Here's a snip from Harlan's intro for this 1962 tale:

"What kind of a culture are we breeding around us? A society in which everyone tries to be average, right on the norm, the common denominator, the median, the great leveler. College kids demonstrating a callow conservatism that urges them not to stick their heads above the crowd, not to be noticed....I fear for the safety of my country and its people from this creeping paralysis of ego."

As any reader knows who is familiar with Harlan's writing, he isn't one to mess around with a lukewarm beginning to his story. No, no, a thousand times no!! Harlan wants to thrust a reader into the middle of the world he's creating right from the first lines, as per this tale's opening:

""Give me some light!"
Cry: tormented, half-moan, half-chant, cast out against a whispering darkness; a man wound in white, arms upflung to roistering shadows, sooty sockets where eyes had been, pleading, demanding, anger and hopelessness, anguish from the soul into the world. He stumbled, a step, two, faltering, weak, the man returned to the child, trying to find some exit from the washing sea of darkness in which he trembled."

All the Sounds of Fear, a tale of intensity, of anguish, a tale that will give you, the reader, the distinct feeling storyteller Harlan Ellison grabs your heart, holds it in his grip and then starts to squeeze.

We follow the theatrical career of Richard Becker beginning at age twenty-two when Richard takes on the part of paranoid beggar. Prior to the play hitting Broadway, Richard Becker lived for six straight weeks as a bum on the skids down on the streets of the Bowery. In other words, the young man, via the actor's method developed by Stanislavski, surrendered his own identity to become, heart and soul, the part he was to play. The theater critics raved - Richard Becker wasn't just a method actor; Richard Becker was the method. Astonishing achievement.

As so it went for Richard Becker, from Broadway play to Broadway play, forever the supremely accomplished man up on stage, becoming the lead character for an appreciative audience.

You'll have to read this humdinger for yourself to see, step by step, the ways in which Harlan links Richard Becker's acting with his introductory remarks about an entire American society filled with men and women conforming to a socially designated role. Allow me to conclude with one telling direct quote in the form of a doctor's report from a well-known New York mental hospital:

"To a man like Richard Becker, the world was very important. He was very much a man of his times; he had no real personality of his own, with the exception of that one overwhelming faculty and need to reflect the world around him. He was an actor in the purest sense of the word. The world gave him his personality, his attitudes, his façade and his reason for existence. Take those away from him, clap him up in a padded cell - as we were forced to do - and he begins to lose touch with reality."

Again, these are just two of sixteen stories. Harlan Ellison - one of the most powerful storytellers in America.


Harlan Ellison, 1934-2018