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Bezig met laden... Approaching Obliviondoor Harlan Ellison
Bezig met laden...
Meld je aan bij LibraryThing om erachter te komen of je dit boek goed zult vinden. Op dit moment geen Discussie gesprekken over dit boek. Part of my mission to go back and read books I'd left unfinished for no good reason. This was one of the featured selections in the very first month of my Science Fiction Book Club subscription (in 1974). The collection is a bit raggedy and uneven, but sometimes brilliant and bold and moving. Ellison takes risks, and I admire the effort even when it doesn't work and sometimes marvel at the results when it does. This was from a time when "sci-fi" was morphing into "speculative fiction," making its bid as literature, experimental, political, graphic, and profound. It also brought back the whole time period to me, but that's another story... I don't know how I missed entering this book when I did the first pass on all those things I'm putting into storage. It has the brief biographical nightmare that is "One Life, Furnished in Early Poverty." It provides such a window into what created that angry young writer, all those aeons ago. This also contains that most touching of dedications: To the memory of WALTER FULTZ, the first editor to buy a book from me: a good man, a fine editor, a friend... Who approached oblivion, passed through it, and is gone, for what reasons I do not know.... Though I saw him seldom, I miss him greatly.... With luck, he's found peace at last. It's a great collection, from Harlan's early days. Harlan is an incredible writer, and I'd put his non-fiction up against anyone who's ever written non-fiction. With that being said, I'm usually hit or miss with the short story collections. Some of his stuff has such an effect on me that I'm almost afraid to read them again, simply because I can remember the feelings they brought forth, or the things they made me feel. Or remember. Harlan is great about making me remember things I've carefully buried away. But some of his stories make me want to skip ahead to the next, hoping that one is one of those stories. Approaching Oblivion is one of those collections. After seeing a documentary film about kind of cuckoo firebrand author, Harlan Ellison, called "Dreams with Sharp Teeth," I wanted to read his autobiographical short story of a fraught childhood in northeastern Ohio, since I share that kind of background. The story is called "One Life Furnished in Early Povery" and is contained within "Approaching Oblibivion." "...Oblivion" was not easy to locate. Several copies that New York & Brooklyn Public Libraries had were listed as 'missing' and the other few that had not been stolen were constantly checked out. It is also out of print, so it's not so easy to buy a copy, either. When I did finally get my hands on a copy, I enjoyed the story. It qualifies as science fiction in that the narrator has arrived back at his childhood via time travel. The spring semester 09 was starting, so I did not have time to read many more stories besides "One Life.." but from what I understand, it is atypical of his work, being light on the classic sci-fi elements. geen besprekingen | voeg een bespreking toe
Onderdeel van de uitgeversreeks(en)Science Fiction Book Club (6400) Bevat
Fiction.
Science Fiction.
Short Stories.
HTML: "Ellison's stories punch where it hurts . . .and span from baroque far future speculations to near future warnings" (Science Fiction Ruminations). Over thirty titles in Ellison's brilliant catalog are now available in an elegant new package featuring Ellison himself. Genius never felt so combustible. The New York Times called him "relentlessly honest" and then used him as the subject of its famous Sunday Acrostic. People said there was no one like him, then cursed him for preventing easy sleep. But in these stories, Harlan Ellison outdoes himself, rampaging like a mad thing through love ("Cold Friend," "Kiss of Fire," "Paulie Charmed the Sleeping Woman"), hate ("Knox," "Silent in Gehenna"), sex ("Catman," "Erotophobia"), lost childhood ("One Life, Furnished in Early Poverty"), and into such bizarre subjects as the problems of blueâ??skinned, elevenâ??armed Yiddish aliens, what it is like to witness the end of the world, and what happens on the day the planet Earth swallows Barbra Streisand. Oh yeah, this one is a Geen bibliotheekbeschrijvingen gevonden. |
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Google Books — Bezig met laden... GenresDewey Decimale Classificatie (DDC)813.5Literature English (North America) American fiction 20th CenturyLC-classificatieWaarderingGemiddelde:
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KNOX - A polemic story about how evil humans can be, this one felt lazy and simplistic. Take negative human behavior, add sci-fi twist, rinse, repeat. And the extra periods that are supposed to make everything more dramatic don't really pull the job off. Yes, racist people suck. The Jung quote at the end illustrates just how poignant Ellison thinks this story is.
COLD FRIEND - A cute little Last Man on Earth story.
KISS OF FIRE - Pure sci-fi gibberish. And why does Ellison think everyone cares where he was when he wrote these stories?
PAULIE CHARMED THE SLEEPING WOMAN - Great little musician-themed story that has enough of a Lovecraft feel to it that it ends far too soon.
I'M LOOKING FOR KADAK - Yiddish aliens.
SILENT IN GEHENNA - Future Fascist America, with shades of Slaughterhouse 5, mild messiah reference, and yet another unnecessary quote at the end.
EROTOPHOBIA - Cute little story about uncontrollable love.
ONE LIFE, FURNISHED IN EARLY POVERTY - Finally, a truly touching story, although I tend to have a soft spot for time travel.
ECOWARENESS - Earth rebels against pollution. Cute, but a little short, and the logic of the overall story feels a tad off when he starts taking out celebrity environmentalists because... why now?
CATMAN - Futuristic thieves, cops, waterfalls, sex... meh.
HINDSIGHT: 480 SECONDS: Poetic apocalypse. Best story out of the bunch, and the perfect one to end the collection.