Greatest Hits (Herald Classics)

by Harlan Ellison

[annieb123]

Originally posted on my blog Nonstop Reader.

Greatest Hits is a retrospective collection of 19 shorts by Harlan Ellison. Released 26th March 2024 by Union Square & co, it's 496 pages and is available in paperback, audio, and ebook formats. 

There are respectable scholars whose special field of research is speculative fiction. Harlan Ellison was a titan of SF, and not just SF, but a master of the short form. He was, simply, a fantastically gifted writer whose sometimes incandescent prose changed people. Scratch any middle-age+ SF fan and there will be a story about sitting thunderstruck by something Ellison wrote. 

He won more awards than anyone really has managed to enumerate. There were Hugos, Locus (Loci?), Nebulas, Lifetime Achievement awards, grandmaster awards... he won for short fiction, essays, novelettes, screenplays, scripts, novels, anthologies, and the list is almost neverending. Everyone who knew him in any capacity knew he could be irascible, difficult, reclusive, and volatile. He changed the world and he changed the people around him.

This collection is a wonderful primer of some of the better known and a few lesser known short works. “Repent, Harlequin,” Said the Ticktockman is there as is I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream. Most of the selections are from his early/middle years of production, though How Interesting: A Tiny Man (which won the Nebula 2010 in the short story category) is included as well.

Fabulous collection of stupendous fiction. Much of it is *challenging* and all of it is wonderfully well crafted. 

The foreword and introductions are touching, expect to sniffle. 

Five stars. This is an important collection. Well worth acquisition for public or secondary school libraries, home reference, and for science fiction fans. 

Disclosure: I received an ARC at no cost from the author/publisher for review purposes.