If you're not familiar with it, "I Have no Mouth and I Must Scream" features perhaps the bleakest of all speculative fiction scenarios. “I Have No Mouth” and “Ticktockman” have been reprinted an uncountable number of times, have been translated into many tongues and are often required reading in high school and colleges. In “Cissalda”, Ellison turns it into a nasty joke and somehow it’s not a total downer.įrom my experiences, I consider the best known works of his to be "I Have no Mouth and I Must Scream" (Originally published in 1967), " 'Repent Harlequin!', said the Ticktockman", the episodes of The Outer Limits “Soldier” and “Demon with a Glass Hand” and the original screenplay to the famous Star Trek episode “City on the Edge of Forever” (keep in mind it was heavily re-written by Gene Roddenberry from Ellison’s original draft.). The destruction of humanity is the most depressing topic I can think of. For instance, his story "How's the Night Life on Cissalda?" (pronounced Kiss-el-da) is about how the human race is destroyed by horny, telepathic, extra-dimensional aliens. and a lot of it was rip-roaring hilarious. His command of language was highly literate, oftentimes ironic, sometimes horrifying, sometimes erotic. He had no recurring characters, but would often revisit several themes: mockery/deconstruction of fantasy and b-grade science fiction tropes, a distrust of computers/emerging technologies, nuclear war horrors/nuclear holocaust, genocide, World War III (“A Boy and His Dog” mentions World War IV, even!), the final destruction of humanity, a dislike of racism/xenophobia, erotica, fear, grief, deities, childhood nostalgia, and other topics. He considered each story to create its own world, it would only have it go on for as long as he deemed necessary and then he would move on to something completely different for his next story. In a few pages, Ellison created entire universes. Some are less a story and more of a narrative poem ("The Creation of Water" and "The Dreams a Nightmare Dreams"). Some of his stories were written in a matter of days or hours. Plenty of his stories had little to no revision beyond their first draft. Some of his stories are 14 pages long, some of them are 20, some of them are barely a page ("Escapegoat", “Ecowareness” and "The Lingering Scent of Woodsmoke"). He, in turn, was a master of the short story format. In fact, the only narrative cycle that he wrote that I can think of was "A Boy and His Dog". He disliked “lore dumps”, high fantasy and trilogies. He disliked what he considered an over-emphasis on continuity, serialization and world-building. He was highly critical of pop sci-fi, Star Wars, Star Trek and Lord of the Rings. I have the first printing of "Mefisto in Onyx" which is less a novel and more a novella it checks in at 91 pages.Įllison was famously grumpy, outspoken, energetic and opinionated. In his nearly 70 year career, he wrote less than 10 novels none of them are particularly long. Though Ellison wrote many books, he wasn't exactly what you would call a "novelist". He would sometimes refer to his fiction stories as "surreal fantasies". It mocked and deconstructed pulp fiction stories and the idea of the protagonist who relies on the wonders of science or his own machismo to solve his problems.Įllison detested being labeled as a "Science Fiction writer/author" (he thought this was condescending and pigeon holed him and would prefer if people called him a "writer", a "storyteller" or, occasionally a "fantasist". It relied less on world-building or being scientifically accurate. For those who don't know, New Wave literature was a product of 60's counterculture. I find the man and his writing endlessly fascinating.Įllison was noted for his contributions to the field of Speculative Fiction, particularly in the New Wave Movement of the 1960's and 1970's. I've been a fan of his for 15 years now and I'm still discovering new gems of his. He left behind an unbelievable amount of text: 1,700 short stories, 70+ books, dozens of essays (film and television criticism), a few comic book stories, 10 or so published screenplays/teleplays and at least 2 edited anthologies to his name. He died last year and all these months later, I'm still finding myself reflecting on his body of work in my downtime.
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