I dislike so much about this book I hardly now where to begin, although the title, the subtitle, and the jacket copy seem like a good place. In his forties, Ellison comes off as an overaged college student with a weighty chip on his shouler who has just discovered that the world is neither fair nor very nice and goddammit he's going to tell it like it fucking is. Old cranks can have undeniable charm and even a sense of gravitas about them. (It might have been very late at night) But this anthology dates from the mid-1970's, so he was at most a forty-year-old crank. I have watched Dreams with Sharp Teeth, the 2008 documentary on him and actually rather enjoyed it. Ellison's reputation as an old crank, which he wears a a badge of honor, precedes him. It's not as though I didn't know what I letting myself in for. This was my first and is likely to be my only encounter with the writing of Harlan Ellison. But after a while, it's not shocking, or even effective, any more. These techniques were authentically shocking when he started writing, and are present in some of his greatest stories. They seem the kind of story that was considered rebellious and pushed the limits of acceptability in 1970s creative writing classes.

Often his characters display a twisted psychological angst. One of the patterns of his writing is to make a commonplace of unexpected gore, showing the rotten underside of our own society.

I think most of these were written after Harlan Ellison became famous and a required inclusion in all new anthologies, and published in the likes of Penthouse magazine. Somehow, I had not read this one back then, and so resolved to read it now. The other day, a lot of decades later, my wife was discarding some old SF books of hers, and I saw this one. In fact, some of the stories were required in my college classes. Back in the 1970s, my girlfriend and I read a lot of Harlan Ellison story collections, and liked them.

Approaching oblivion harlan ellison