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    Paingod: And Other Delusions
    Unavailable
    Paingod: And Other Delusions
    Unavailable
    Paingod: And Other Delusions
    Ebook243 pages4 hours

    Paingod: And Other Delusions

    By Harlan Ellison

    4/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this ebook

    Eight timeless tales from the master of speculative fiction, featuring the Nebula and Hugo Award–winning story “‘Repent, Harlequin!’ Said the Ticktockman.”
     
    Robert Heinlein says, “This book is raw corn liquor—you should serve a whiskbroom with each shot so the customer can brush the sawdust off after he gets up from the floor.” Perhaps a mooring cable might also be added as necessary equipment for reading these eight wonderful stories. They not only knock you down . . . they raise you to the stars. Passion is the keynote as you encounter the Harlequin and his nemesis, the dreaded Tictockman, in one of the most reprinted and widely taught stories in the English language; a pyretic who creates fire merely by willing it; the last surgeon in a world of robot physicians; a spaceship filled with hideous mutants rejected by the world that gave them birth. Touching, gentle, and shocking stories from an incomparable master of impossible dreams and troubling truths. 
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherOpen Road Media
    Release dateApr 1, 2014
    ISBN9781497604445
    Unavailable
    Paingod: And Other Delusions

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    Reviews for Paingod

    4/5

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    • 4/5
      Yet another author I have decided to reread. This book is worth readin for Repent Harlequin.... alone. I think that is Ellison's best story and should be required reading for all young adults.
    • 3/5
      Indeholder "New Introduction: Your Basic Crown of Thorns", "Introduction to Original Edition: Spero Meliora", "Paingod", "'Repent Harlequin!' Said the Ticktockman", "The Crackpots", "Sleeping Dogs", "Bright Eyes", "The Discarded", "Wanted in Surgery", "Deeper Than the Darkness"."New Introduction: Your Basic Crown of Thorns" handler om ???"Introduction to Original Edition: Spero Meliora" handler om ???"Paingod" handler om ???"'Repent Harlequin!' Said the Ticktockman" handler om ???"The Crackpots" handler om ???"Sleeping Dogs" handler om ???"Bright Eyes" handler om ???"The Discarded" handler om ???"Wanted in Surgery" handler om ???"Deeper Than the Darkness" handler om ???
    • 4/5
      Wow! Harlan Ellison has an axe to grind and he hones it to a fine edge. I enjoyed every story in this collection.
    • 4/5
      I read a lot of Harlan Ellison when I was young enough to think that the kind of horror he writes so well wasn't around every corner. It isn't "young adult" fiction, it's angry young person who still thinks it might get better someday somehow fiction. Beware, but be aware he is also an extremely good writer.
    • 5/5
      I feel like I should have a lot to comment on this set, I mean Harlan Ellison? But I can't think of anything to say beyond what ws said in the stories.
    • 3/5
      I'm giving this 3/5 stars, simply because some of the stories were quite good, but a few were sub-par. I got the sense that some of those sub-par stories were from some of Ellison's earlier work based on style and some of the content, but I've not verified that. Worth a read if you're an Ellison fan, possibly not if you're lukewarm at best toward him.
    • 4/5
      The Basics

      If you know Ellison, then you know he’s almost exclusively a writer of short fiction. This is a collection of just a small fraction of that fiction. A very small fraction, as there are only eight stories to be found here. Yet there is something interesting about this one. There’s a theme: pain.

      My Thoughts

      I really love Harlan Ellison. And before I nitpick one story in this collection in particular, which will probably happen at the end of this review, can I just say that even his weakest stories are stronger than other people’s best work? He’s that kind of writer. His worst can still be some of the best stuff you’ve ever read, and yet you wind up holding him to such an immense standard that you can’t excuse it either. That’s the power of this guy.

      Trying to review a collection of short stories can be difficult. But I’ll start by saying that “‘Repent, Harlequin!’ Said the Ticktockman” can be found in this one. It’s considered one of his most famous works, and if you are interested in Ellison, you can’t pass it up. I was delighted to finally get a chance to read it here after hearing about it for so long. It’s that perfect blend of absurdity and ultimately sadness that makes the theme of pain resonate with even more power. It also goes to show that dystopia, as a genre, has more life in it than most authors can muster.

      Another gem I have to mention is “Deeper Than the Darkness”. I feel a bit like a kid obsessed with hyperbole when I think of this one, because I really just want to scream from the mountaintops that it was awesome. It’s about a man who’s a firestarter. Like think Stephen King Firestarter. With a lot of the same struggles for the main character. It just goes to show that there is an innate fear of a simultaneous lack of control while being controlled by others that can be a story-telling goldmine in the right hands.

      Here comes the nitpick. “Wanted In Surgery”. Machines have been created to replace doctors. The age-old fear of being obsolete. That’s a very real thing, the idea that you’re replaceable. It becomes even more real as technology advances. But the fears the main character, a surgeon outsourced by a robot, feels come off as pure melodrama. The machines haven’t even committed any crimes, but he finds he instinctively hates them. Ellison tries so hard to impart how soulless and heartless and unfeeling a machine is, that you need a human with a good bedside manner to make a good doctor. But none of it really came across for me.

      He wanted the reader to get angry at even something as mundane as cleaning robots and feel a passionate resistance against any technological assistance of any kind, and it just makes me wonder how horrified he must be at where we’ve arrived. Which is valid, but this was the sort of story that wants to grab you and shake you and make you agree. And if you don’t, you’ll find yourself more amused by the protagonist’s hangups than anything.

      Final Rating

      4/5
    • 4/5
      This is not so much Sci-Fi as it is reprints of some of his earlier magazine fictions. Harlan tries to write about the sorrow and pain caused by ugly situations and people. His life has not been without exposure to grim moments as they produced these fictions…This anthology works pretty well, these tales are not for the faint-hearted.