>>Harlan Ellison's name popped up in a post a couple of days ago, which
>has inspired me to start (hopefully) an Ellison thread, focusing on his
>short stories. I first encountered them about 20 years ago, just after
>graduating college, and I couldn't get enough. I read just about
>everything he had written. Now, reading them again, I find myself--with
>a few exceptions--either bored or annoyed. What was striking now seems
>merely showy, what was profound now seems merely smug or pretentious.
>This is going to sound really condescending, but they strike me largely
>as stories for younger people: broad, bold, black and white, impossibly
>earnest. For the most part--again, with a few exceptions like "The
>Deathbird" and "I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream"--it feels as if I've
>outgrown them. Any thoughts?
Someone once remarked (Ellen Datlow, I think) that Ellison's stories derived
most of their impact from their first delivery, that much of them were less
effective the second time through. I think that's true of many of his
stories, though others like "Pretty Maggie Moneyeyes" are great even the
tenth time.
>
>This is an interesting observation. I think Ellison started the big market
>swing (about twenty years ago) toward horrific SF. Time was when he was the
>only SF writer who did that kind of thing. After he achieved cult status,
>though, everybody jumped on the bandwagon. I don't know the man, but I'd
>personally suspect much of his reported writer's block (and bad temper) has
>to do with the fact he could never adjust to a market wherein everybody was
>trying to be Harlan Ellison. Once the paradigm shifted, his work wasn't
>unusual any more. He became one writer among many, and actually too subtle
>to be heard above the cacophany. The horror trend continued to escalate.
>What you're experiencing now: Stories considered shocking in the sixties
>don't even register on the jaded tastes of the nineties.
Sorry, don't agree at all. Horror has ALWAYS been a major part of SF. WAR
OF THE WORLDS, the lurid pulp magazines of the 1940's, alien invasions, mind
control, war, rape, pillage, etc. There's more explicit sexual content
nowadays, but actually considerably less horror. Alien invasion stories
aren't even a viable plot line, for example. In any case, Ellison certainly
didn't start it, and in fact he's comparatively tame by the standards of some.
>
>It's a selling point. Is the S&M horrific or erotic? Or both? Horror is
>on it's way out and erotica is the new paradigm, so you're likely to get a
>mixture. I don't read any of these authors (already), but if the violence
>was horrific, I'm with you. I was put off many years ago. The erotica
>trend looks better to me, though. I'm much less incensed by consensual (or
>even half-way) S&M, than by general blood-and-guts torture.
On the contrary, horror is doing just fine, now that publishers are no
longer marketing it as a separate genre. Stephen King had eight bestsellers
last year, as a matter of fact. The number of total titles dropped, but the
total of non-media related SF dropped even more noticeably, and fantasy is
up slightly.
---Don D'Ammassa ([log in to unmask])
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