"A Privileged Childhood in a Halcyon Time"

In the 1930s, more than 3000 years after Moses led an enslaved Jewish population out of the land of Egypt, a small but thriving Sephardic Jewish community flourished in Cairo and Alexandria. Some settled there from the Middle East, others from Europe, particularly Spain and Portugal after the expulsion of the Jews in the 15th century.

They had become affluent and influential through finance and trade. Though devotedly clinging to their Sephardic customs and practices, by the middle of the 20th century they were well integrated into the public life of their host country, contributing to the common weal and even underwriting many significant civic works and public services. They did not flaunt their faith, indeed most of them thought of themselves as Egyptian citizens who also happened to be Jewish, not unlike German Jews in the early 1930s.

Indeed, the fates of the German and Egyptian Jews of that era are strikingly parallel. Reading Jean Naggar's recently published memoir, Sipping from the Nile, I thought of Lion Feuchtwanger's The Oppermanns, a wrenching tale of a well-to-do Berlin family of Jewish furniture merchants who in 1932 and '33 were subtly but inexorably sucked into the maelstrom of Nazi antisemitism until it ruined and destroyed them. Naggar's book is a series of snapshots -- literally, for it is illustrated with wonderful photos of her family and home -- of a robust and bountiful Jewish society just before, during, and after its destruction and the dispersion of its citizenry.

The author, born in 1937, was raised in a luxurious home built in Cairo by her grandfather. There she enjoyed a carefree, almost fairy-tale upbringing amidst a large, distinguished, prosperous and tightly knit clan. Sipping from the Nile lyrically evokes the sensual beauty of the place -- the shimmering sun-drenched atmosphere, the weight of Nile history and culture extending back to the dawn of civilization, the aromas and textures, colors and clamor of an exotic land. In this lush and magical milieu her family and other members of Cairo's and Alexandria's Sephardic enclaves were not merely tolerated but honored.

The young girl experienced what Sybil Steinberg described as "a privileged childhood in a halcyon time," pampered by loving parents, grandparents, "aunties" and servants. The splendors of an elegant mansion and well-tended gardens saturated her senses. She was sent off to the best schools, and to escape the withering heat of high summer her family traveled to luxurious watering spots in Europe. They surrounded themselves with influential men and women in politics, business and the arts. In short, she wanted for nothing. Her parents managed to shelter her from the conflagration consuming Europe so that it did not deeply penetrate her innocence and cheerful spirits, not even when it almost lapped up on Egypt's doorstep in the battle for North Africa. Reports of concentration camps and extermination of Jews circulated in her home, yet she was insulated from the worst news of horror and atrocity.

But grand forces were at play in this part of the world, and in time they pressed ever harder on the day to day life of her family and neighbors. The creation of a Jewish homeland in Palestine in 1948 and the military triumph of the newly formed state of Israel over the Arab League (including Egypt) isolated the Jewish residents of Cairo and Alexandria, and their continued presence was a knuckle rubbed in the eyes of their neighbors. Yet they might have survived this setback had not a second and this time fatal blow made life in Egypt intolerable. Egyptian President Gamal Abdul Nasser, riding a wave of anticolonial fury, nationalized the Suez Canal, unleashing a frenzy of rage against the Jews who had lived in peace with their neighbors for hundreds of years.

Naggar's account of her family's hasty and perilous escape and subsequent exile from their homeland is almost unbearably poignant. Unlike their forefathers whose Exodus was assisted by wonders and miracles -- the mighty hand and outstretched arm of God, as the Bible declares -- the author's family escaped by its wits, assisted by the good will built up with servants and neighbors. But that is small consolation: an ancient and vibrant community of some 40,000 was all but obliterated.

The family's spirits were not, however. Naggar writes,

My father never allowed his discouragement to surface. It ate at his health, but left his spirit undamaged. His family had owned and managed the largest private investment bank in Egypt. In five generations the Mosseri [the author's paternal] family had owned and managed the largest private investment bank in Egypt. In five generations the Mosseri family had built a considerable fortune, had achieved dizzying heights of ease and recognition, and had become woven into the financial, social and political fabric of the country that now disenfranchised him and claimed all that was his. My father internalized the wrenching dispossession and hid the frayed ends of the rupture from view as he set about reinventing himself and wresting a future for his wife and children. He had done it before as a very young man when fate had claimed the lives of his brother and father, and he would rise to this new challenge even as he faced middle age. My mother, too, plunged into the intricacies of loss and displacement without dwelling on her losses. She looked to the future with optimism and energy. As long as we were all safe, she could learn what was needed, and she could and did make do with what she had. Tangled and enmeshed in their own challenges and preoccupations, my parents were unwilling to recognize the extent of my distress. They deal with my pain in the only way they could, by attempting to ignore its existence as they struggled to build a new life for all of us.

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And now for a personal postscript. Jean Naggar, a leading literary agent, has been a close colleague of mine for many years, and she and her husband Serge (who occupies a warm and wonderful place in her memoir) have dined with my wife and me on a number of occasions. Yet, until I read her book, I knew absolutely nothing of her remarkable upbringing or the extraordinary world she has depicted so beautifully and tenderly. I was completely astonished by these revelations and have to wonder how one can know another person professionally without so much as a clue about her personal history. Which leads me to reflect, how many so-called close acquaintances do we know whom we actually do not know at all?

When I learned she had published a book I purchased a copy from Amazon.com and consumed it in two days during jury duty while waiting to be empaneled. The more I read the more I hoped I would not be wrenched from my growing absorption in the bygone world of Jean's youth.

It is important to state that I have written this review unsolicited and unknown to her, so that I can truthfully tell you that hers is one of most stirring and affecting memoirs I have read in years.

Richard Curtis

Full Text of Harlan Ellison's Statement on Lawsuit Against Paramount and WGA

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

ELLISON SUES STAR TREK

Harlan Ellison, multiple award-winning writer of the famed teleplay for the original Star Trek episode, City on the Edge of Forever, sued Paramount on March 13, 2009 for failing to account to, or pay, Mr. Ellison for the merchandising, publishing, or any other exploitations, of the famous teleplay, from inception to date. The suit also names the Writers Guild of America and alleges the WGA failed to act on Ellison’s behalf after numerous requests.

Ellison’s City on the Edge of Forever (the memorable episode starring Joan Collins as salvation sister Edith Keeler, the woman Kirk loved and watched die; remember?) continues, 35 years after its original NBC airing, to receive critical accolades, and has become legendary as one of the all-time money-making commercial favorites: it won the coveted Writers Guild award for year’s best teleplay; it won the “Hugo” award of the World Science Fiction Convention; it was ranked as one of the “100 Greatest Television Episodes of All Time” by TV Guide in 1997 as part of its 50 year survey; it was “One of the 100 Most Memorable Moments in Television History” in the 29 June 1996 nationwide survey; and as recently as its 20-26 April 2002 issue, TV Guide celebrated Star Trek’s 35th anniversary featuring, of the hundreds of episodes since its debut, its 35 Greatest Moments!

Harlan Ellison’s City on the Edge of Forever was #2.

Mr. Ellison’s attorney, John H. Carmichael, points out that the 1960 collective bargaining agreement between the WGA and the Producers, as amended in 1966, assures to the writers of individual teleplays “a piece of the pie.” Specifically, Mr. Carmichael states, “Writers under that WGA agreement are supposed to get 25% of the revenue from the licensing of publication rights. From Dollar One. Here, Paramount licensed its sister-corporation Simon & Schuster, through its Pocket Books division, the right to publish a knock-off trilogy of paperbacks – the ‘Crucible’ series – novels based on City, using Ellison’s unique elements: plot, specific non-Trek characters, prominently including The Guardian of Forever, singular conceptual uses of time travel, the sense of tragedy that propels the story, the mood and venue of the story in the 1930s Great Depression, and at the stories’ heart, pivotally, whether Edith Keeler lives or dies. Not merely minor points or window dressing or name-changes. No, they are the body, heart, and guts of Mr. Ellison’s original creation – the best story Star Trek ever told.

“But even as flagrant in evidence as is this case, Paramount has gone tabula rasa. Paramount will not respond to any alleged Guild requests for an accounting. Not just for the books, but for much City-related merchandise, such as a Hallmark Christmas ornament of the “talking” Guardian of Forever actually using lines Ellison wrote for his script – obvious re-uses of Ellison’s singular creation, for which he should be compensated. Paramount will not send statements; Paramount will not admit anyone is owed anything; and even when the WGA requests an accounting, they are blown off with – ‘we’ll get back to you,’ which they don’t. And the WGA seems routinely to accept such cavalier non-responsiveness without a fight. Paramount will not permit examination, and will not open the books; perhaps for fear of loosing a Super-Accountant/Pandora on them, who will open holes in their duplicity. But the WGA is clearly unwilling to take action on Mr. Ellison’s behalf, and so we must seek intervention of the Federal Courts to ensure that the principles of the collective bargaining agreement are upheld. Mr. Ellison is singularly reluctant to sue his own labor union, of which he has been a 47-year member, a valued public spokesman, and where he has twice served on its Board of Directors. In this fractious matter, Mr. Ellison is only asking for one U.S. Dollar from his Guild. But he wants a judicial determination as to whether the WGA is doing what its stated purpose has been since day-one! To fight and negotiate for him and other writers. To obtain misappropriated, withheld, hidden earnings, no matter how minuscule or difficult to retrieve – but HIS, nonetheless. These are intended, true, benefits from earlier WGA bargaining agreements. But after waiting patiently either for the Guild to move against dismissive Paramount, or for Paramount to have a brain-flare of honesty or integrity, these huge sums due continue to be dumped into the studio’s ever-hungry maw.

Mr. Ellison wants every penny of his long ago agreed-upon share of the revenue from Paramount’s relentless Trek exploitations, which have been unbelievably, financially remunerative in demonstrable measure as a result of Mr. Ellison’s significant contribution to the original Star Trek series.” Carmichael highlights: LA Times, 28 July 2007: “Paramount DVD sampler collects favorite episodes from all five Star Trek TV series.” The one starring Captain Kirk, Wm. Shatner’s pick as his favorite, is Ellison’s City on the Edge of Forever. (And see Ellison’s “Pay the Writer”–299,000 hits during the recent strike.)

Says Mr. Ellison of the suit: “To quote Gandhi: ‘First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, then you win.’

“And please make sure to remember, at the moment some Studio mouthpiece calls me a mooch, and says I’m only pursuing this legal retribution to get into their ‘deep pockets,’ tell’m Ellison snarled back, ‘F- - - -in’-A damn skippy!’ I’m no hypocrite. It ain’t about the ‘principle,’ friend, its about the MONEY! Pay Me! Am I doing this for other writers, for Mom (still dead), and apple pie? Hell no! I’m doing it for the 35-year-long disrespect and the money!

“The arrogance, the pompous dismissive imperial manner of those who ‘have more important things to worry about,’ who’ll have their assistant get back to you, who don’t actually read or create, who merely ‘take’ meetings, and shuffle papers – much of which is paper money denied to those who actually did the manual labor of creating those dreams – they refuse even to notice...until you jam a Federal lawsuit in their eye. To hell with all that obfuscation and phony flag-waving: they got my money. Pay me and pay off all the other writers from whom you’ve made hundreds of thousands of millions of dollars...from OUR labors...just so you can float your fat asses in warm Bahamian waters.

“The Trek fans who know my City screenplay understand just exactly why I’m bare-fangs-of-Adamantium about this.”

When Mr. Ellison calmed down, he continued, soberly, “They maintain fortresses staffed and insulated with corporate and legal Black Legions whose ability to speak fluent bullshit is the ramadoola of gyrating, gibbering numbers via which they cling to every dollar. And when you aren’t getting paid for the marvels you helped bring forth -- fine, hard, careful artifacts that are making others pig-rich -- at some point any sane person knows he has three, and only three choices: the first is to sit around dinner parties and ceaselessly whine over your sushi about how they screwed you, boo hoo, but you can’t beef about it Out There in the World or they’ll blacklist you; the second is to pick up an Uzi somewhere, crash your SUV through a Studio gate, and just run amok; and the third, last, choice is this one – to act like an adult, to take ‘em on in Federal Court and to make the greedy, amoral bastards blink blood out of their eyes. What they do is tantamount to common street-thug robbery... just add the pig-rich Madoff-style smoothyguts attorneys.

“And I learned today that the Actors Guild is having to fight, right now, just to maintain the very concept of residuals as part of their agreement with the Producers. So I am happy as a centipede-with-track-shoes that this infamous behavior, arrogantly ignored for too damned long, is timed to call attention to the degree to which the creative cadres in this business are getting parboiled and served up in a dog-dish! The part of this imbroglio that truly dismays me, is that my once-tough, beloved Guild – my UNION – that got massively screwed when it let the Alliance scare the slacker-gen dolts into thinking not losing a job meant ‘just bend over and grin,’ – if one’s own damn Guild won’t help you, – when you’ve entreated them for months – then hell, you’ve got no choice but to raise the skull and crossbones, hone the edge of your demon attorney, and just start cutting off noggins and nuts.

“Cowardice is like parrot fever in this town; I think there are writers and other artists who revel in being bitch-slapped, in being pilfered on a regular basis, as if they were artistic trailer-trash! And if the WGAw isn’t going to watch my back – and I’ve been their loyal hit-man, pit bull, and go-to guy for 47 years – I dread the possibility that the timorous Guild won’t raise the bloody axe for other artists, writers, actors...saner and less pissed-off than I. So you can tell’em I’m coming!”

There were flecks of blood on Mr. Ellison’s otherwise charming face.

Contact: John H. Carmichael, Esq. (949) 829-9743
ELLISON v. CBS-PARAMOUNT, Inc.
WRITERS GUILD OF AMERICA
U.S. DISTRICT COURT FOR THE CENTRAL DISTRICT OF CALIFORNIA
CASE #: CV09-1777, filed March 13, 2009
JUDGE: The Honorable Christina A. Snyder

Monty Clark's Introduction to Harlan Ellison's Sleepless Nights in the Procrustean Bed

INTRODUCTION BY MARTY CLARK

For the serious Ellison reader, there are few tasks more difficult than staying current with his nonfiction output. Harlan's work appears all over the literary map, so that it is impossible to know where he will turn up next. This is also true of his fiction, but one can always count on the publication of a new fiction collection every few years to gather together those stories which one has missed. Until now, this has not been so of his essays. They have occasionally been included in other collections and, as with the four essays which appear in Harlan's short story collection Stalking the Nightmare (Phantasia Press, 1982), have received raves. Also much in demand are The Glass Teat and The Other Glass Teat (Ace, 1983) which collected the columns of television criticism which Harlan wrote over a period of four years in the Los Angeles Free Press. However, Sleepless Nights in the Procrustean Bed marks the first time that a book has been devoted exclusively to the best of his general essays. The twenty reprinted here are from such disparate sources as Video Review, Heavy Metal and the Saint Louis Literary Supplement.

Credit for suggesting this collection of Harlan's nonfiction belongs to our publisher, Robert Reginald of Borgo Press, who approached Harlan with the opinion that "These Menckenisms deserve a permanent home; they've been undeservedly neglected by both readers and critics, who tend to focus on your more flamboyant short stories."

At the time this book was proposed I had spent over two years with Harlan in the enviable position of personal secretary, administrative officer of his professional corporation, and occasional grammarian. Modesty compels me to point out that the opportunity entrusted to me in assembling this book derived in large measure from being in the right place at the right time. In addition to that qualification, I brought to the task of editing these essays other qualities, among them familiarity with Harlan and his work, and a great enthusiasm for the idea of making the essays available to a larger audience. I am also probably the only person ever to read straight through the entire body of Harlan's nonfiction work (all twelve file drawers of it), a distinction which I do not expect to relinquish any time soon.

I was initially enthusiastic at the prospect of editing this collection of essays simply because I admired them and felt that they deserved to be read. It was only after I began research for the book that I came to appreciate how startlingly well-suited to Harlan's talents the essay form is. I suspect that Harlan himself is unaware of the degree to which his gifts match the requirements of the essay. In point of fact, if the form did not exist, Harlan would have had to invent it. Fortunately, this was not necessary.

In the judgment of scholars, the essay was invented by 16th-century French nobleman Michel de Montaigne. His two volumes titled Essais (meaning "attempts, experiments, endeavors") were the first to be identified as such, although of course "the word is late, though the thing be ancient." As with all literary forms, the roots of the essay stretch back to antiquity; Harlan is one of the ablest contemporary practitioners in a form favored by such honored writers as Swift and Emerson and Thoreau. Today he shares the form with columnists and commentators as diverse as William F. Buckley, Jr. and Ellen Goodman, Joan Didion and Sidney Harris, Shana Alexander and Tom Wolfe.

The 20th century has seen a broadening of the concept of the essay. Because of the huge circulation of periodicals (magazines such as Newsweek, Esquire, and the proliferating city magazines which publish essayists; newspapers which carry numerous syndicated columnists), the essay has become a major vehicle for the communication of ideas. Harlan is toiling in a literary form which is currently very popular, and therefore powerful.

As presently evolved, the essay is a short prose form which deals with a single subject. Although historically essays have ranged from the length of aphorisms to the extended essays of de Tocqueville, relative brevity characterizes modern essays. Harlan's range from a length of less than one thousand words to a maximum, in this collection, of 9400 words.

Although each essay addresses only one subject, over the years hundreds of subjects have been the target of Harlan's wandering reflections. He is conversant on nearly every subject one can think of, largely due to the fact that he is one of the most widely-read men alive. Harlan samples everything, and the input that can't be had from reading, his peripatetic mind seeks from judicious viewing of thirty channels of cable television, faithful attendance at film screenings, and constant association with colleagues and friends who are similarly well-informed. Topics for his typewriter are limited only by his interests, which is to say, not limited at all. This collection includes essays on topics from gun control ("Fear Not Your Enemies") to video dating ("True Love: Groping for the Holy Grail").

Many of Harlan's strengths as a writer are the salient characteristics of the essay form, in particular informality of structure, highly distinctive style, and a strong personal tone.

The essay is not a rigorous literary form. Its purpose is to stimulate and influence thought, rather than to educate or instruct. It accommodates, but does not require, the scholarly, philosophical approach such as that exercised by Francis Bacon. Consequently, it need not be exhaustive in its treatment of the subject. This suits Harlan quite well. He throws everything he has into the writing of a piece, rather like making a salad. On the other hand, he will ignore avenues of inquiry one might expect him to pursue. It simply does not please him to go down that road right now. (Interestingly, he will often expand on those subjects in later work; I've noted some of these in the text.) Such incompleteness would be a fault in a more didactic work, but is quite permissible within the essay form. By this I do not mean to suggest that Harlan is jarringly unsystematic in the presentation of his material; and in fact some of his shorter essays such as "Epiphany" and "Rolling Dat Ole Debbil Electronic Stone" are deceptively disciplined, tightly-wrapped little pieces. But the scattergun pyrotechnics of his mind are clearly at home in the freedom of the essay, which Samuel Johnson called "a loose sally of the mind ... not a regular and orderly performance."

It is Thomas Macaulay, however, who perhaps best expresses a consideration which I hope you will keep in mind as you enjoy this assortment of writings reprinted from a variety of sources. Macaulay himself resisted being reprinted for this reason:

The public judges, or ought to judge, indulgently of periodical works. They are not expected to be highly finished ... The writer may blunder, he may contradict himself, he may break off in the middle of a story ... All this is readily forgiven if there be a certain spirit and vivacity in his style. But as soon as he is reprinted, he challenges a comparison with all the most symmetrical and polished of human compositions.

As to style, excellence as an essayist leans heavily on a distinctive manner of expression, and there are few contemporary writers with as distinctive a style as Harlan's. Tom Wolfe, perhaps, or William F. Buckley, Jr. are as readily recognized. Harlan's style has always been high-profile; the discerning reader has no difficulty identifying an unattributed piece of his work. One marvels sometimes, re-reading a particularly striking passage, How did he do that? As Alexander Smith said of Montaigne and Bacon,

Not only is the thinking different, the manner of setting forth the thinking is different. We despair of reaching the thought, we despair equally of reaching the language.

Harlan's virtuosity is inarguable, and his command of the material allows him to write for the sheer joy of self-expression, when he so chooses, without seeming self-indulgent. Notice the playfulness in "Stealing Tomorrow," and in "Voe Doe Dee Oh Doe," a genial soft-shoe of a sketch which appears effortless in Harlan's hands, testifying to his artistic control. I defy anyone to read of "the sternwheeler spatterings of crazed hummingbirds" without smiling.

One important characteristic of a distinctive essay style is that it should resemble good conversation. Harlan is, of course, renowned as a conversationalist, and he is able to transfer that easy eloquence to the printed page. Perhaps not since Charles Lamb has an essayist employed such a rambling, conversational manner. This sometimes results in untidiness, for Harlan indulges in the delightful digressions which are common to both forms of expression, and such bypaths can lend a disjointed, patched-together quality. In this Harlan is apparently in the incomparable company of Montaigne, of whom Aldous Huxley said,

Free association artistically controlled--the paradoxical secret of his best essays. One damned thing after another, but in a sequence that in some almost miraculous way develops a theme and relates it to the rest of human experience.

Harlan's mastery of free association is nowhere better demonstrated than in "Revealed at Last! What Killed the Dinosaurs!" As he remarks himself at the beginning, "It seems disjointed and jumps around like water on a griddle, but it all comes together, so be patient."

Another characteristic vital to a distinctive essay style is charm. This came as a surprise to me, but the information certainly bolsters my assertion that the marriage between Harlan and the essay is a happy one, since Harlan has charm in abundance. Who can fail to be won by the self-effacement and wistful earnestness of "True Love," or simply the sparkle of an intelligent mind at work? Harlan appeals to us, as he puts it, "huckleberrily."

One could cite many other characteristics of Harlan's distinctive style; I had, for instance, prepared a lengthy section on his use of anger as a stylistic signature for inclusion here. But these traits are well-recognized by any reader who is at all familiar with his work, and it is enough to say that each of them--the arrogance, the irreverence, the gutsy ferocity, the occasional posturing--contributes to the singularity of style which is so vital a part of his success as an essayist.

The third essential characteristic of the essay is a strong personal tone. The essay in prose has been compared to the lyric in poetry, in that it is an expression of subjective emotion. This is in perfectly good taste. Expressing as they do the writer's personality with an immediacy not possible in fiction, essays allow us to know essayists as we know no other writers. Harlan's work displays the colors of his passions and personality more vividly than almost any other essayist working today. As with all good essays, Harlan's absolutely seem to be written to the person reading them; to read them is an intimate, personal, familiar experience, partly because of the conversational tone noted earlier. As a result, readers somehow feel invited into his life by the intimacy of his work--I mean this quite literally--and to the degree that this is true it is a problem in his personal life. Harlan's essays have contributed to his becoming a legend. I use the word "legend" here with great care (Webster: "a notable person much talked about in his own time") acknowledging Harlan's concern that his charisma, some might say notoriety, may eclipse the seriousness of his work. I think this is unlikely. Other writers--George Bernard Shaw comes immediately to mind--have seen their wit and personalities become as famous as their work without compromise to their literary reputations.

In a recent conversation, Harlan remarked on having come to acknowledge the need to engage in cheap theatrics in order to get people's attention. Since all Harlan cares about is posterity, he will do whatever is necessary to be remembered long enough to be accorded his rightful place in literature. As he says of Fritz Leiber (in "A Few Too Few Words"), time and posterity will say what has to be said for him. He has already been acknowledged by his contemporaries, having won numerous awards for his short fiction, and presently sharing the record for Writer's Guild awards for work in television. Ironically, however, and at the risk of finding myself on the wrong side of a disagreement with Harlan, I venture to suggest that it may well be the strength and timelessness of his essays on which his reputation ultimately will rest. Harlan was the recipient of the 1982 Silver Pen award of American P.E.N., the politically-oriented association of professional writers, for a column which appeared in the Los Angeles Weekly. (It should be noted that in so doing, he edged out competitive entries from the best dailies in California.) I believe that this is but the first evidence of a growing awareness of his importance as a commentator.

As Baltasar Gracian says, "The sage has one advantage; he is immortal. If this is not his century, many others will be."

It seems to me sometimes that Harlan considers his essays rather like stepchildren, and not the Serious Art of his fiction. I wish for all of us who admire his work and his message that he would allow himself to revel in his mastery of this powerful form in which he is so comfortable, and to acknowledge what he is, one of the most accomplished essayists of our time.

Harlan Ellison's Introduction to Partners in Wonder

INTRODUCTION: SONS OF JANUS

These are stories I have written with other writers. Collaborations, they're called. They are the products of two minds working together, sometimes in complete harmony, more often in opposition. The former, because the ideas were so right they needed no conflict to produce a coherent whole; the latter, because writers are perverse creatures who enjoy tormenting one another. And also, conscious opposition on the part of one of the collaborators, to the direction a story is taking naturally, may produce a stress that bends it unexpectedly in a totally unpredictable way. And from that can come a toad prince or a toad, depending on whether or not both writers know how to handle a fable run amuck.

The beloved Lester Del Rey--one of my early mentors in the craft of professional lying--told me once: never write a story with someone, that you can do as well by yourself. Well, I believe that. I tried writing a novel with Avram Davidson once, titled "Don't Speak of Rope." Ech. One of the most horrible experiences in a universe filled with death camps, hardhats, campus massacres and the human gamut that runs from Spiro to Manson; somewhere in a file drawer languish ten thousand words of that novel, unended, unlamented, unfortunate. So I do, I really do, agree with Lester.

Even so, life can occasionally become dull and predictable, and so, to spice it slightly, those of us with a flair for danger and high adventure take guided tours through the heart of Mt. Vesuvius, stalk the blood-sucking vampire bat through the swamps and fens of Bosnia and/or Herzegovina, join peace rallies, date beautiful models and, when all else fails, collaborate on fictions with other writers. I grant you the picture of world-weariness and jaded appetite I paint, the desperation of ennui that drives men to such hideous extremes as collaboration, is an ugly one. But I feel you must know what horrors and pitfalls lie behind this seemingly uncomplicated act. Ask Avram. Ech.

But the reward of successful collaboration is a thing that cannot be produced by either of the parties working alone. It is akin to the benefits of sex with a partner, as opposed to masturbation. The latter is fun, but you show me anyone who has gotten a baby from playing with him- or herself, and I'll show you an ugly baby, with just a whole bunch of knuckles.

And so, risking the hisses and catcalls of overly critical readers and critics who will call these joint efforts (if you'll pardon my carrying on the allusion from the preceding paragraph) merely gimmicky constructs, over the past many years I have yoked myself to fourteen other writers, and from these literary miscegenations have come the fictions before you.

My relationships with all of these men have been substantially more than what might be termed mere acquaintanceship. All of them are my friends, but not all of them like me. Nor do I like all of them. Many of them have done me favors I would be hard-pressed to repay in full or in kind. Others have messed me over hideously. From time to time I have been in serious disagreement with one or another of them. Between one of them and myself there was a shadow for many years. Between myself and another is something very much like the love of one brother for another. One saved my life, literally. I thought another had ruined it. One made me terribly proud of him, and then sold out, thereby destroying all my illusions about him. Two of them managed to alter the course and texture of my life. From one I learned much about the nature of love, from another the nature of hate. With one I dreamed odd dreams, and with another I learned people can only act as people, not as gods. One demonstrated there can be nobility even in failure, and another showed me how badly success can be handled.

Millions of words of conversation in the past nineteen years have passed between me and these fourteen men. Advice, shoptalk, problems, respect and denunciation. That is the nature of friendship.

But without these men, I would never have come to write the solo stories on which my reputation--however great or small it may be--is based. Without all the words they have given the world on their own, some larger part of the joy of having been a part of speculative fiction would never have been. Bloch and his psychos and the Ripper; Bova's clear view of the importance of space travel; Budrys and the Gus nobody bothers; Davidson and his sentient coat-hangers; Delany and frelking; Hensley and his son, Randy; Laumer and Retief; Rotsler and a stack of cartoons only slightly smaller than Everest; Sheckley and all his dimensions of wonder; Silverberg and thorns; Slesar and the greatest short-story ever written; Sturgeon and ... well, everything; Van Vogt and weapon shops and Jommy Cross and the corticalthalamic pause; Zelazny and he who shapes.

All of them are masters, each of them writes only as he can write, and no two can ever be confused in the minds of students of masterful sf. These are the extra special meanings for me of these superimportant people:

Laumer is strength, and Davidson is erudition, and Budrys is empathy, and Delany is youthful commitment, and Sheckley is outrageous madness, and Sturgeon is both dazzlement and love, and Bova is the rationality of reality, Silverberg is craft, Van Vogt is complex conceptualization. Rotsler is irreverence, Hensley is gentleness, Zelazny is poetic intricacy, Bloch is coming to grips with terror, and Slesar is courage and pride and dignity.

I have learned these things from these men. So it is not merely by chance that we came together finally to write. It is heady company and only a fool or an amateur would consider working with them without a full realization of how good one must be to share the same story with each of them.

The individual introductions to the stories will tell you how the pieces came to be written, the method of collaboration, any sidelights or anecdotes that informed them, any mishaps or contretemps encountered in their making, their history and their success or failure as works of art, in my estimation. (Understand: just because a story reaches print, or even sees repeated anthologization, does not mean that we, the authors, are totally delighted with the outcome. Some of these stories fail in some of the areas where we considered it important to succeed. Some started out as one thing, and wound up as quite another, thereby dampening our pleasure. But in rehashing the histories of these stories with the men who were one-half their origin, I have not found one who regretted the experiment. That says something; what, I'm not certain.)

It sounds like hype to point out that this is the first book of its kind ever published; in that one way it is the most original book of stories ever published, and in the same way it is a monstrous literary joke. Throughout, however, it is for me a delight. You cannot know what a joy it is, what a prideful thing it is, what a satisfying thing it is, to have my name linked with these men.

I have a few regrets. I'll name them. Norman Spinrad, Isaac Asimov, Michael Moorcock and Philip José Farmer. I wanted to write stories with all of them, and somehow, through no real fault of anyone, they just didn't get written. I'm sorry about that. They'll more than likely never get written now. And I think it a bad thing that there is no Ellison/female collaboration here. What a strange mind-fuck it would be to read a story on which I'd worked with, say, Kate Wilhelm or Ursula Le Guin or Joanna Russ. Yeah, I lament that.

And the lamentations are all that remain, because now having written the collaborative thing out of my system--it was a thing to do, you see--I doubt very much that I'll do it again. Oh, there may be one or two little stories that chance ordains will be written in company with another (there's a half-finished short story titled "Mefisto in Onyx" by myself and bright newcomer Ed Bryant in my file, waiting for a conclusion), but a project like this? No, not again.

I think I speak for my collaborators when I say that we hope this book lightens your burdens, brings an occasional smile to your lips, puts a twinkle in your eyes, a shiver down your spine, an idea or two in your heads, and when you close the book finally, you will feel that our time--and yours--was not ill-spent.

For all of them, I say, thank you for dropping in on our little session, and for myself I say, thank you for letting me coat-tail your talents; thank you gentlemen, one and all.

HARLAN ELLISON
New York City
21 July 70

Harlan Elllison's Introduction to Children of the Streets

2004: Looking Down the Street a new introduction to Children of the Streets by Harlan Ellison®

This book was first published when I was twenty-seven years old. As I write this new introduction, I am one month away from my seventieth birthday. What the world was like, when I wrote these stories, is as lost and arcane as the prime time of the Ottoman Empire. No self-respecting vato loco or gangbanger would even consider using a zip gun (if, in fact, he had ever heard of such an implement); give him an Uzi or an AK-47. Or, even better, an Austrian 9mm Steyr MPi 81 with a 25- or 32-shot detachable box. Switchblade? Fuggedaboutit.

The book was originally titled Children of the Streets, but the paperback publisher felt something, well, 'juicier' or 'more sexy' was necessary in those days of lurid news-stand covers. He retitled it The Juvies, the term for juvenile delinquents that was in every tabloid headline. I only hated the new identity. And, oddly, this book became the only one of my seventy-five never to be reprinted. Until now. And now, of course, is a new world in which these stories are artifacts of a lost culture, a time as buried in the sands of memory as daily life of the Incas at Machu Picchu.

Yet I have rather a warm spot in my heart for this little collection. 'No Game for Children', for instance, was the first story I wrote while in the US Army. During basic training, no less. I was drafted in 1957, between World War II.3 and World War II.4, and I made the error of punching out a racist 2nd lieutenant in the reception center at Fort Dix, New Jersey. Laid the momser out with one good right hook, and they were going to court-martial me on the spot, but since I was not actually in the army, the worst they could do was to ship my young carcass off to Ranger basic training at Fort Benning, Georgia. Standard basic training in those days was eight weeks. For the Rangers, one did ten weeks. One day I may write about all that. It's only been forty-eight years. I'm sure I'll get over the trauma of those two years in the military any decade now.

But the connection to my affection for this book, via my stint among the weapons-bearers, is that I didn't have the time to write that I'd enjoyed prior to my induction. I could only write late at night, after twenty-five-mile forced marches with full pack and M-1 at port arms. Or on weekends. So I ceased writing quick fiction for a buck, and I wrote what I'd really wanted to write, stories worthy of the talent I knew was in me somewhere.

And out of that limiting situation came the 'Rough Boys', 'No Game for Children', 'Memory of a Muted Trumpet' and quite a few others that critics have said were my best early works. At least five of those appear here, rediscovered after more than four decades.

What a strange, long trip it has been! The world of New York, Brooklyn and west-coast street gangs read as if they were cautionary tales by Louisa May Alcott or Horatio Alger. The universe in which we now move is far more deadly, far more random, infinitely less (what a peculiar word) ethical or strictured with unspoken rules.

Gangbangers today, particularly here in Los Angeles, will kill anything that moves if it's in the path of a drive-by hit. They don't give a shit if it's a three-year-old baby or a gray-haired old woman in support hose. They use weaponry intended for insurrections and militias, and the venal scum who manufacture those weapons get fatter and more blood-engorged by the day. It is a madhouse out there.

When I wrote these stories, it seemed the youth of our nation were at the crossroads. They were, I thought, foolishly perilous times. Little did I know.

I don't want to sound too impoverished of spirit, too sad and cynical, but it does sober one up to realize that no matter how bad or mean the crossroads look, there are always streets to be taken that are darker and more damnable than even the most tenebrous of us can imagine.

Here's hoping that in another forty-something years, when Children of the Streets is reprinted, that whoever writes the 2044 introduction (it sure as li'l green apples won't be me), s/he will be able to say: 'Ellison should've lived long enough to see how swell everything became.'

Yeah. That's a good thought with which to leave you. Enjoy the book, howzabout?

Harlan Ellison April 2004

Roger Zelazny's Foreword to Harlan Ellison's From the Land of Fear

Foreword
In Praise of His Spirits Noble and Otherwise

Here sighs, plaints, and deep wailings resounded through the starless air: it made me weep at first.

Strange tongues, horrible outcries, words of pain, tones of anger, voices deep and hoarse, and sounds of hands amongst them,

made a tumult, which turns itself unceasing in that air for ever dyed, as sand when it eddies in a whirlwind.

Inferno (Canto III, 22--31)

PREAMBLE

Harlan Ellison wrote the stories in this book, and they come from all over that strange thing we call a writing career. When a man is a writer and writing means as much to him as it does to some of us, his career and his life are pretty much inseparable things. He is what he is because of everything he's been up until the Now that equals the current Is, and the writing is an integral part of the Now of its composition and the Is of that time's being for him. I don't know how else to put it without breeding a Sudden Metaphysic.

Now, many of these stories come from Nows long gone by and from many an Is which has since become a Was.

In other words, they're from all over that thing we call a writing career, and because of this they differ from one another--which is a good thing indeed for those of us who would, in a way, observe a pilgrim in his progress. They differ, because of a thing called growth.

About growth: It means getting bigger, one way or another. Now forget essential biology and switch to the psyche: The voice you will hear in such things as Battle Without Banners is the voice of a bigger man than Time of the Eye. Why? That man knows more because he's lived more, is more. What's why. And growth operates on many levels: One, of course, is that of technical competence. Another, and I think more important one, is insight/outsight/hindsight/foresight. This capacity increases as one gets bigger. What would Thomas Mann or Hokusai be like if they'd lived to be a hundred and fifty and remained in full possession of this capacity? I wish I knew. I love them both. After reading Harlan's Introduction to this volume, I hope that he makes it at least that far, for he made a promise in there, knowing it or no, and he's a man who keeps his promises.

Harlan is around my age, and he was born in Painesville, Ohio, like twenty-five miles east of Euclid, Ohio, which is where I'm from, and we grew up that close to one another without ever running into each other and saying, "Hi! You want to write, too! Huh?" I wish I had known him in those early and, I suppose the word is "formative," days. I wish I had known him then, because I like him now.

Harlan, I am happy to say, is a man free of influences. He is his own man, come hell or high water, and that's one of the things I love about him. He will freely acknowledge a debt to such an humane and exceedingly capable writer as Lester del Rey--but this will be in the way of a journeyman's compliment to the man who taught him how to use certain tools, because he and Lester del Rey really have very little in common in the way of style and thematic materials. Harlan is eclectic when it comes to subject matter, autodidactic when it comes to what he knows, offensively personal (in a military, not pejorative, sense) when it comes to telling you about it and, to use a Henry James term because it applies here, he is possessed of his own "angle of vision." Whatever he sees, he sees. It is never anybody else's borrowed view of the subject that informs his materials. He is his own camera. Period.

And in all these respects, he has grown, is growing, will--I feel--continue to grow, because he's got something inside him that won't let him rest until he says what he must, at any given moment, say.

Okay, so much for uniqueness. I call him unique and I mean to honor him by it.

End of Preamble

BEGINNING OF AMBLE

What does it take to be a writer and why? The quotation from Dante which I stuck at the head of this piece contains the answer. There are these sounds, this tumult, turning in that air for ever dyed, eddying in a neat simile and beginning with that all important word "Here." Everybody hears the sounds, some people listen and a writer, for some damfool reason, wants to put them down on paper and talk about them--here, right now. So that's the answer to the question: "Some damfool reason." It's why Dante wrote, too. My damfool thing, the thing inside me that makes me say what I have to say, is a thing that I don't understand at all, and sometimes I curse it because it keeps me awake at night. So I can't tell you what Harlan's is, but go look at those nine lines of Dante's once more.

They're filled with spirits making the kinds of sounds you will hear in this book. That's why I put them there. Harlan writes about sighs, plaints, deep wailings, strange tongues, horrible outcries, words of pain, tones of anger, voices deep and hoarse and the sounds of hands moving to do many things. It's been around four years since I last read the Inferno, but when I sat down to write this piece, those lines suddenly came into my head. Because of the fact that I trust my personal demon when it comes to matters such as this, they're valid.

Listen to the sigh in My Brother Paulie, just there at the end, the plaint in A Friend to Man, the deep wailings in Battle Without Banners, the strange tongues in Life Hutch, the horrible outcry of "We Mourn For Anyone ... ", the words of pain in Time of the Eye, the tones of anger in Back to the Drawing Boards and the voices deep and hoarse in The Sky Is Burning. And there are hands moving everywhere, slapping, poking, gesturing hands.

I think Harlan Ellison is a pilgrim, and in this book we have a chance to observe his progress. These stories are culled from Nows as far back as 1957 and as current as Our Now, ten years later. What does it take to be a writer and why? Maybe a pilgrim instinct, a thing akin to the sentiments of all those dead lemmings, is a part of it. Any writer from Daphne Du Maurier to Joseph Heller is an idealist. Idealists are always turned-on and hung-up, and if they write, they turn themselves on, wring themselves out, and hang themselves up to dry where everybody can see. I suspect Harlan is a naked pilgrim. He's always turning on, wringing out and hanging up in public, sans clothing. He is a wise guy who insists on telling you the whole story. So, okay. The form he will insist on exhibiting is always interesting. You may disagree like all hell with him, but as with Jacob's Angel, you'll know you've been in a fight. He's that kind of writer. He's busy surviving, so if you get a knee below the belt--well then, the pilgrim profession is kind of rough. That pacifist he thinks he might be is quite willing to rabbit punch you to get his point across. I don't see any contradiction in that. I won't hit you with a word like enantiadromia, but I will suggest the anecdote of the old Bishop who had taken a vow not to draw blood and so rode off to the Crusades bearing a smooth mace.

End of Amble

BEGINNING OF SPRINT

The Circle is drawn, the words will now be spoken and the spirits will then appear, one by one, from out That Dark Land. It remains only for you to learn where some dreams stray and the ones that didn't will pass then before you. Be prepared. Be Prepared. Here's Harlan.

End of Sprint

BEGINNING OF FLIGHT
FASTEN YOUR SEAT BELTS PLEASE

Roger Zelazny

Baltimore, Md.