Harlan Jay Ellison (1934-2018) was a prolific American writer of short stories, novellas, teleplays, essays, and criticism.
His literary and television work has received many awards. He wrote for the original series of both The Outer Limits and Star Trek as well as The Alfred Hitchcock Hour; edited the multiple-award-winning short story anthology series Dangerous Visions; and served as creative consultant/writer to the science fiction TV series The New Twilight Zone and Babylon 5.
Several of his short fiction pieces have been made into movies, such as the classic "The Boy and His Dog".
I consider myself a Harlan Ellison fan—maybe not “fan” as in fanatical but rather as in avid reader or admirer . At last count, I possess approximately twenty of his novels and short story collections. I credit his Approaching Oblivion (1974) with hooking my prepubescent self on the genre of science fiction. For this I am forever grateful and eternally in his debt.
Having said that, Harlan wasn’t really a pillar of politeness and decency. He was, arguably, a first-order A-Hole. His frequently long and self-elevating introductions are often laced with vitriol for anyone who ever dared to cast aspersions on his style, his talent, or his general character. He was skilled at giving his detractors a big fat middle finger—both literally as well as figuratively.
Ellison, by his own admission, chafed under the moniker of “science fiction writer.” I suspect that this book, Love Ain’t Nothing But Sex Misspelled, was his way of defying those who wanted to categorize him as limited and perceptually second rate. There isn’t a SciFi story in this whole collection.
This, in my opinion, is Ellison writing as if he had something to prove. Consequently, this isn’t the Ellison I grew up on—the Ellison that won me over with style and imagination. A few of these stories are quite good but some are also cringeworthy, especially those where his characters are chivalrous (read: chauvinistic) or unrefined (read: bigoted and maybe even racist).
This is my first book from this author and I'll start by saying I'll definitely read his books again. He has been around for many years but has a refreshing voice if you like sharp wit and a cynical but accurate view of love. I'm a skimmer most of the time in the books I read but every once in awhile I find an author that strings their words together in a way that makes me pause in my reading frenzy and slow down to read every word. Ellison did that for me. These were 16 short stories about different types of love from lovers to spouses to our friends and country. I laughed at many of the stories and almost cried at a few too.
A terrific collection that presents the spirit of changing social mores and perceptions of the 1960's. Many of the stories originally appeared in the lower-echelon mens' magazines of the time, and several non-fiction pieces are included in this edition, along with a fascinating introduction. The Resurgence of Miss Ankle-Strap Wedgie is arguably Ellison most successful long work. I believe this to be Ellison's best non-genre collection.
Historically interesting in the Ellison library, but crap, it sucks compared to what would come later from this author. There are other and better writers to go down this road. A disappointment.
There’s so little engagement with my reviews on this platform or Instagram that I’m not sure I’ll ever write a full one again, but of the 6 Ellison books I’ve reread in 2023, this is easily his strongest collection so far.
The intro captured my attention, it read like an essay thinking about the state of hetero relationships of the 60s. I thought the content would follow in this manner but the short stories didn’t retain that spirit and read mostly like an exploitation of female bodies rather than an exploration of diverse relationships. Regardless of the theme, the narrative of the first story I read wasn’t interesting. If I hear that the other stories have more potential I might revisit. Otherwise I won’t go any further.
This is a collection of some of Ellison’s early non-speculative fiction stories. As with most anthologies I liked some stories more than others. I found myself becoming impatient as I read some of them. On the other hand, among the stories that I liked there were two that really stood out. One dealing with abortion and one dealing with Nazis. It’s eerie how relevant they still are today.
There are a number of versions of this collection as Ellison removed and added stories throughout the years. This is a review of the 1997 Edgeworks version.
The Resurgence of Miss Ankle Strap Wedgie - 1967 (3.5/5)
A story about how Hollywood grinds people up. Has some bright spots where his prose just shines and has a great ending, but it felt too long and too wordy, especially for the first half.
The Universe of Robert Blake - 1962 (3/5)
A young boy learns that not all people are treated the same.
G.B.K. - Many-Flavored Bird - 1962 (3/5)
A semi-autobiographical story about a writer which begins with the writer receiving a telegram from an unusual character from his past. I liked the part when he mentions how meeting other science fiction fans saved him after his father passed away and he and his mother moved to Cleveland.
Neither Your Jenny Nor Mine - 1963 (3.5/4)
A guy and his girlfriend help the girlfriend’s roommate get to Mexico so she can get an abortion. Ellison uses a lot of old slang but he doesn't seem so wordy in this one. Lots of melodrama but also full of raw emotion.
Riding the Dark Train Out - 1959 (4/5)
A bum riding the rails has ill intentions towards a young couple who enter his box car. A short, dark story that didn’t end the way I was expecting.
Moonlight - 1984 (3/5)
A story about the shady owner of a construction company presented as a teleplay. Felt like an episode of Alfred Hitchcock Presents. Ellison adapted it from his story Ormond Always Pays HIs Bills.
What I Did on My Vacation This Summer, By Little Bobby Hirschhorn, Age 27 - 1964 (3/5)
A young writer wannabe hitchhiking to San Francisco, meets a lady of the evening, gets a dose of reality, and grows up a little.
Mona at Her Windows - 1962 (3/5)
An unhappy woman watches from the window of her apartment, imagining herself as the different women that pass by.
Blind Bird, Blind Bird, Go Away From Me! - 1963 (4/5)
A soldier in WWII dealing with fear while out on a mission.
Passport - 1956 (3/5)
A young man’s attempts to escape an abusive father who also happens to be a great musician.
I Curse the Lesson and Bless the Knowledge - 1975 (2/5)
Story about a writer writing a story about seducing a college student. Or maybe it isn’t.
Battle Without Banners - 1961 (4/5)
A prison break story. I read this before in the paperback edition of Land of Fear.
A Path Through the Darkness - 1960 (4/5)
About a guy who moves to New York to write and the relationship he has with a woman he meets. I have mixed feelings about this one. I think the two main characters are both jerks but the prose really flows in this one.
A Prayer For No One’s Enemy - 1966 (5/5)
Two high school kids help an older Jewish woman after a riot in front of a movie theater started by America Nazis. Dark and powerful.
I think one of the things that helps this story is that there’s more dialogue. It got my attention and drew me in immediately. Most of the other stories are prose heavy. When Ellison is good the prose just flows but I felt he was just too wordy in a number of the stories. This story has an excellent balance of prose and dialogue.
Punky & the Yale Men - 1965 (4/5)
A jaded writer returns to New York after finding success in Hollywood. Two men do their best to show the writer something he hasn’t seen before and they wind up bar hopping.
I am reasonably sure that Ellison is the absolute last author I would have wanted writing about love, being the incomparable cynic and smartass that he was. Unsurprisingly, since its Ellison, it succeeds beyond reason. The talents of Ellison are known far and wide, and this tidy collection about love in its many manifestations and articulations is fantastic. Typical Ellison genius, with an edge and unlikely conceptual turns. A smidgen of humor too, but not overmuch, right Harlan?
LOVE AIN'T NOTHING BUT SEX MISSPELLED was a poor collection, in my opinion. Most of the stories struck me as the work of a very young author trying too hard to Say Something Important, rather than tell a good story.
Some stories were too preachy ("The Universe of Robert Blake"), some were too melodramatic ("Neither Your Jenny Nor Mine"), and some started strong but just petered out ("What I Did On My Vacation...")
There were a few bright spots, though. The Introduction was both laugh-out-loud funny and thought-provoking. "The Resurgence of Miss Ankle Strap Wedgie" was smart, subtle, and complex, although pretty badly dated now. "Passport" had a nice solid feel to it, and "Blind Bird, Blind Bird, Go Away From Me" was surprisingly engaging and uplifting.
Note: Many of the stories praised by other reviewers were included in earlier editions of LOVE AIN'T NOTHING, but then left out of this and subsequent editions. These include "Pretty Maggie Moneyeyes", "Daniel White for the Greater Good", "When I Was a Hired Gun" and "Delusions for a Dragon Slayer".
I'm gobsmacked. Ellison is such a contentious figure in literature - and I've always enjoyed reading the drama about that! - but this is the first time as an adult that I've dug into his actual writing. Picked this because it happened to be in the house when he came onto my radar again recently, and WOW.
I almost pitched it while reading his introduction, he sounds like such an asshole, but the first story - Neither Your Jenny, Nor Mine - is one of the most powerful short pieces I've read maybe ever? Then Ellison goes on to have some other contenders for that honor in the collection. Even the weaker pieces - relatively speaking - are emotionally raw and insightful.
My take is that Ellison is an asshole because he seems to have no barriers or filters. He seems angry, and hurt, and desperate to see a better world, and he's f*ing fearless about throwing himself onto the page. Absolutely riveting reading (and I'm glad I never met him in person.)
I heard about Harlan Ellison before I ever knowingly read his work. He was often cited, often critically, as the dean--or bad boy--of science fiction fandom in the SF books and magazines I read during childhood. The first piece I read knowingly by him was "'Repent, Harlequin!' Said the Ticktockman" (1965) as contained in a collection surreptiously absorbed while in attendance at Lincoln Junior High School in Park Ridge, Illinois. I liked it, it was different, a little crazy. Ever since I have made a point of obtaining whatever Ellison works I've come across.
This one is a dud for me. The stories are hit or miss and I'm not finding anything interesting about the characters themsleves. I keep catching myself skimming the book instead of being interested in every sentence.
I also dislike the screenplay style of writing. It takes me out of the story to abstract another layer of imagining the story as a movie instead of just as a story. It breaks down a layer and doesn't allow me to suspend disbelief.
Weakest collection I've read from Ellison. First third of the book is a long neverending boring story about abortion. The rest of the book consists of short stories on various love themes - from love of God through love of country, life itself to various forms of love of people. The best stories were towards the end but there were only three or four that stood above mediocrity.
Any idea that this book would be as cynical as the title was dispelled by the intro. It's a series of sometimes funny, sometimes touching, sometimes horrifying stories about love, and I highly recommend it.
Love has 10,000 names, a million faces. America's most destructive contribution to 20th century living has been that damaged product plastic romance. It twists & savages us. After a lifetime of lies about what love's supposed to be, are you finally angry & depressed enough to be part of a recall on that shabby, mildewed merchandise? If so, join Ellison as he dissects the soul & body of love in our time. In 16 scalpel-sharp stories ranging from legalized Nevada whorehouses to steaming Georgian lynch towns, from Tijuana abortion mills to Hollywood sound stages, the one whom Oui magazine charmingly named "the perpetually angry young punk of the bizarre" rips the Saran-Wrap off love, hate, sin & twittering passion--to disclose the raw meat beneath. Here are 16 poisoned arrows from fantasy's improbable Cupid in which he presents a world of hearts & flowers guaranteed to revise thinking about where love's found & how it looks. New Introduction: Having an Affair with a Troll (1976) essay Introduction to 1st Edition (1976) essay Neither Your Jenny nor Mine (1964) story The Universe of Robert Blake (1962) story G.B.K.-A Many-flavored Bird (1962) story Riding the Dark Train Out (1961) story Valerie: A True Memoir (1972) essay The Resurgence of Miss Ankle-strap Wedgie (1968) novella Daniel White for the Greater Good (1961) story Blind Bird, Blind Bird, Go Away from Me! (1963) story What I Did on My Vacation This Summer by Little Bobby Hirschhorn, Age 27 (1964) story Mona at Her Windows (1962) story When I Was a Hired Gun (1973) essay A Path Through the Darkness (1963) novelette Battle Without Banners (1964) story A Prayer for No One's Enemy (1966) novelette Punky & the Yale Men (1966) novelette I Curse the Lesson & Bless the Knowledge (1976)
Have you ever tried to pull on a turtleneck over a halo? ("The Resurgence of Miss Ankle-Strap Wedgie")
It is not enough for a little boy to know his place in the Universe. He must also know which Universe is his. ("The Universe of Robert Blake")
"You save Blue Chip Stamps?" the gas jockey asked. "Yeah. I'm saving up." He grinned pleasantly. Make conversation. Build the clientele. "Oh? For what?" "A hydrogen bomb." ("Neither Your Jenny nor Mine")
I am very grateful blowguns and poisoned darts have never been marketed in this country by Wham-O. ("I Curse the Lesson and Bless the Knowledge")
That boy with his imperious blond good looks, the Aryan Superman: could he really know? Could he somehow, this American child born between clean sheets, with the greatest terror a failing mark in school, could he somehow know what that hated black swastika meant to her, to whole generations, to races of individuals who had worn yellow Stars of David and the word Juden, to shattered spirits and captured hearts who stood on alien roads as Stukas dived, or walked in desolate resignation to already filling mass graves, or labored across no-man's-lands with shellbursts lighting the way? Could he know, or was this something else... a new thing, that merely looked like the old sickness, the fear? ("A Prayer for No One's Enemy")
Ellison takes on the '60s in this bloated collection of often self-important "issue" stories. So you get a story about antisemitism, a story about lynching black men, a story about black prisoners, a story about the mistreatment of women in Hollywood - and more than one story about Ellison's mistreatment of, or mistreatment by, women in general (if chauvinism gives you a rash, pack some cortizone). A lot of these stories have strong passages and cracker jack dialogue or descriptions - which is the norm with Ellison. But they are otherwise not very memorable. The exception is the first story in the collection, Neither Your Jenny Nor Mine, about a careless girl whom the Ellison stand-in has to take down to Mexico for an abortion. This story hums with danger and takes you on a journey that is guaranteed to upset your stomach.
Fiction - I am accustomed to Ellison's science fiction (or speculative fiction as he called it) but this is an interesting diversion. A lot of these short stories are vaguely autobiographical from what I know of his life. Lots of cynicism and some dark ideas around relationships and human interactions. I read this book probably forty plus years ago. I still remember some of the stories. Canadian references - mention of North Bay hunting timber wolves; movie set about the Springfield mining disaster; mention of Youssef karsh; someone owns a Labrador dog. Pharmacy references - mention of a pharmacist's wife.
A great collection, with the exception of the kick off, "The Resurgence of Ms. Ankle Strap Wedgie," which I've started a dozen times yet never finished. I've heard from many folks about how great the story is, but it never meshed for me. Everything else in the book is 5-star, 60's-era Harlan at his best, which is second to none.
Japan edition No fourth commandment Lonelyache No game for children This is Jackie Spinning Neither your Jenny nor mine Have coolth The lady had Zilch Kid killer Blind bird, blind bird, go away from me! Punky & Yale men I corse the lesson and bless the knowledge
It's funny, 'cause, in a lot of ways, this should have been the book of his that I related to the least; I mean, a lot of the "overly aggressive tough guy who is super sensitive about his lack of height" that is Ellison comes out here, but it comes out in a way that doesn't ruin it. A lot of the more personal stories in this collection are written in the "first person nostalgic" viewpoint; something written by an old man remembering his younger years.
But yeah. Another beautiful collection from Ellison.
I can't say how impressed I am by Harlan Ellison and I can't believe that no one has ever recommended him to me before! Shame on you if you have read his books and don't recommend him to everyone! This is a book of short stories about Love, Lust, and Sin. Not all about romantic type love either, one of the stories is about the love that a soldier has for his brothers in arms. Another is about a writer with a broken heart, and another is about a convicted rapist, etc. Ellison likes to push the limits like a slightly more modern Hemingway.
In short, this is about one of three books that I have read that I would give 5.5 stars to is I could. I MUST find more of his books.
Doing a little research I found out he was one of the writers for the old Science Fiction Show Babylon Five. How awesome is that? Nerds and techies of the world unite!