Harlan Ellison
Hardcover | Pages: 288 pages Rating: 4.17 | 3967 Users | 268 Reviews
Point Containing Books Deathbird Stories
| Title | : | Deathbird Stories |
| Author | : | Harlan Ellison |
| Book Format | : | Hardcover |
| Book Edition | : | SFBC 50th Anniversary Collection #24 |
| Pages | : | Pages: 288 pages |
| Published | : | January 2006 by Science Fiction Book Club (first published February 1975) |
| Categories | : | Science Fiction. Short Stories. Horror. Fiction. Fantasy |
Narrative Concering Books Deathbird Stories
Harlan Ellison's masterwork of myth and terror as he seduces all innocence on a mind-freezing odyssey into the darkest reaches of mortal terror and the most dazzling heights of Olympian hell in his finest collection.Deathbird Stories is a collection of 19 of Harlan Ellison's best stories, including Edgar and Hugo winners, originally published between 1960 and 1974. The collection contains some of Ellison's best stories from earlier collections and is judged by some to be his most consistently high quality collection of short fiction. The theme of the collection can be loosely defined as God, or Gods. Sometimes they're dead or dying, some of them are as brand-new as today's technology. Unlike some of Ellison's collections, the introductory notes to each story can be as short as a phrase and rarely run more than a sentence or two. One story took a Locus Poll Award, the two final ones both garnered Hugo Awards and Locus Poll awards, and the final one also received a Jupiter Award from the Instructors of Science Fiction in Higher Education (discontinued in 1979). When the collection was published in Britain, it won the 1979 British Science Fiction Award for Short Fiction.
His stories will rivet you to the floor and change your heartbeat...as unforgettable a chamber of horror, fantasy and reality as you'll ever experience.
-Gallery
"Brutally and flamboyantly shocking, frequently brilliant, and always irresistibly mesmerizing."
-Richmond Times-Dispatch
Describe Books As Deathbird Stories
| Original Title: | Deathbird Stories |
| ISBN: | 0739462288 (ISBN13: 9780739462287) |
| Edition Language: | English |
| Literary Awards: | Hugo Award for Best Novelette for "The Deathbird" (1974), Nebula Award Nominee for Best Novelette for "The Deathbird" (1974), Locus Award for Best Novelette for "The Deathbird" (1974), World Fantasy Award Nominee for Best Collection (1976), British Science Fiction Association Award for Collection (1979) |
Rating Containing Books Deathbird Stories
Ratings: 4.17 From 3967 Users | 268 ReviewsDiscuss Containing Books Deathbird Stories
A masterpiece of bleak, modern not-quite-horror.The Deathbird is a series of short stories that I damn near required all my friends and lovers to read. They are bleak, bitter, angry ... and fascinating. Like a car wreck you can't help but rubberneck at as you drive past it, Deathbird left me a little weak in the knees and sometimes, a little sick to my stomach from the emotional wreckage of the characters-- and the window they opened into my own psyche.Read it alone, in a well-lit room.Wait andI've read a few of these stories before, but never like this. No, every story in this book is meant to be read this way, not just a story here and there over the years. Read 'em all back to back, start to finish. (He warns you not to do that in the intro, but he's just goading you to do it.) It's a different, powerful experience. I think that SF has two phases: Before Harlan Ellison and After Harlan Ellison. He's a visceral guy. He doesn't do gentle, folks. He screams his straight-from-the-guts
Deathbird Stories famously starts with a caveat: don't read it all in one sitting, Unca Harlan warns, because it's intense, it's upsetting, and it'll fuck you up. Now as a rule, I respect Unca Harlan's opinion -- he's the angriest motherfucker to ever love words, and it positions him firmly Up My Alley. But: "PAH!" upon reading the warning -- "I've got steel for emotional skin when it comes to supposedly creepy stories. Whatever, Ellison."Yeah no. I don't. Don't read them in a single sitting.
This collection of short stories started out with a bang, and ended with a whimper. They shouldnt have front-loaded the best stories.
A masterpiece of bleak, modern not-quite-horror.The Deathbird is a series of short stories that I damn near required all my friends and lovers to read. They are bleak, bitter, angry ... and fascinating. Like a car wreck you can't help but rubberneck at as you drive past it, Deathbird left me a little weak in the knees and sometimes, a little sick to my stomach from the emotional wreckage of the characters-- and the window they opened into my own psyche.Read it alone, in a well-lit room.Wait and
Ignoring Ellison's caveat lector at the beginning on the book about "don't read this in a single sitting". I read the book in a single sitting. As such, I am not an emotionally "ok" person today, I'm slightly dead inside because this collection put me through one too many emotions, utterly confused me at times, and had me captivated by the wonderful prose to the point where my brain could not take it anymore.If I had to rate the stories individually, several would get 5 stars, some would get 2
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