Greatest Hits

by Harlan Ellison, J. Michael Straczynski (Editor), Neil Gaiman (Foreword by), Cassandra Khaw (Introduction), Grover Gardner (Read by)

Overview

A collection of award-winning short stories by Harlan Ellison, an eight-time Hugo Award winner, five-time Bram Stoker Award winner, and four-time Nebula Award winner

Harlan Ellison’s work shaped the science-fiction, fantasy, and horror genres in the twentieth century, and this collection of his best-known and most-acclaimed stories is a perfect treasury for old Ellison fans as well as listeners discovering this zany, polyphonic writer for the first time.

Featuring these stories and many more:
“‘Repent Harlequin!’ Said the Ticktockman” - Hugo Award winner
“Jeffty Is Five” - British Fantasy Award winner
“The Whimper of Whipped Dogs” - Edgar Allan Poe Award winner

Includes two bonus stories:
“The Prowler in the City at the Edge of the World”
“Shattered Like a Glass Goblin”

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9798212639330
Publisher:	Blackstone Publishing
Publication date:	04/09/2024
Sales rank:	1,007,846
Product dimensions:	5.20(w) x 5.70(h) x (d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Harlan Ellison (1934–2018) is a legend of the SFF, horror, and speculative fiction genres. His published works include more than 1,700 short stories, novellas, screenplays, comic book scripts, teleplays, essays, and a wide range of criticism covering literature, film, television, and print media. Ellison won numerous awards, including multiple Hugos, Nebulas, and Edgars.

J. Michael Straczynski is a legendary American writer and television producer—best known as the author of The Complete Guide to Scriptwriting, as the creator and showrunner for the science fiction TV series Babylon 5 and, from 2001 to 2007, the writer for the long-running Marvel comic book series The Amazing Spider-Man.

Neil Gaiman is a #1 New York Times bestselling author of books for children and adults whose award-winning titles include Norse Mythology, American Gods, The Graveyard Book, Good Omens (with Terry Pratchett), Coraline, and The Sandman graphic novels. Neil Gaiman is a Goodwill Ambassador for UNHCR and Professor in the Arts at Bard College.

CASSANDRA KHAW is the USA Today bestselling author of Nothing But Blackened Teeth and the Bram Stoker Award-winner, Breakable Things. Other notable works of theirs are The Salt Grows Heavy and British Fantasy Award and Locus Award finalist, Hammers on Bone. Khaw’s work can be found in places like The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Year’s Best Science Fiction and Fantasy, and Tor.com. Khaw is also the co-author of The Dead Take the A Train, co-written with bestselling author Richard Kadrey.

Grover Gardner’s narration career spans 25 years and over 550 audiobook titles. AudioFile magazine has called him one of the “Best Voices of the Century” and features him in their annual “Golden Voices” update. Publishers Weekly named him Audiobook Narrator of the Year for 2005. His recordings have garnered 18 Earphones Awards from AudioFile and an Audie Award from the Audio Publishers’ Association.

Hillary Huber is a multiple Audie Award finalist, an Earphones Award winner, and an AudioFile Best Voice. She has recorded over six hundred titles spanning many genres and holds a bachelor's degree in English literature. A voracious reader and listener, she was raised in Connecticut and Hawaii but now splits her time between California and New York.

Tim Lounibos is a longtime film/TV actor whose credits include Star Trek: The Next Generation, JAG, The West Wing, Bosch, and NCIS. Tim's voice has been described as rich, soothing, expressive, gritty, and honest. He loves bringing conflicted heroes, misunderstood characters, wise elders, and sinister antagonists to life. His favorite genres include fantasy/sci-fi, crime, mystery/thriller, YA, horror, self-help, and biography. When not acting, Tim enjoys playing board games, solving escape rooms, and laughing and hanging with family and friends.

Scott Brick, an acclaimed voice artist, screenwriter, and actor, has performed on film, television, and radio. He attended UCLA and spent ten years in a traveling Shakespeare company. Passionate about the spoken word, he has narrated a wide variety of audiobooks. winning won more than fifty AudioFile Earphones Awards and several of the prestigious Audie Awards. He was named a Golden Voice by AudioFile magazine and the Voice of Choice for 2016 by Booklist magazine.

Steven Jay Cohen has been telling stories his whole life, and has worked professionally as a storyteller since 1991. A classically trained actor, he has worked both on stage and behind the microphone for most of his career. Born and raised in Brooklyn, Steven now resides in scenic western Massachusetts.

Robert Fass is a veteran actor and twice winner of the prestigious Audie Award for the year’s best narration. He has earned many Earphones Awards and AudioFile magazine “Best of the Year” accolades.

Neil Hellegers grew up in New Jersey and attended the University of Pennsylvania, where he earned a BA in theater arts and a minor in psychology before getting an MFA in acting from the Trinity Rep Conservatory in Providence, Rhode Island. He moved to New York City in 2003 and, since then, has made a career of theatrical performance, percussion, theater education, and audiobook narration. He currently lives in Brooklyn with his wife and son.

Dion Graham is an award-winning narrator named a “Golden Voice” by AudioFile magazine. He has been a recipient of the prestigious Audie Award numerous times, as well as Earphones Awards, the Publishers Weekly Listen Up Awards, IBPA Ben Franklin Awards, and the ALA Odyssey Award. He was nominated in 2015 for a Voice Arts Award for Outstanding Narration. He is also a critically acclaimed actor who has performed on Broadway, off Broadway, internationally, in films, and in several hit television series. He is a graduate of Rutgers University’s Mason Gross School of the Arts, with an MFA degree in acting.

Edoardo Ballerini is a two-time winner of the Audio Publisher Association’s Best Male Narrator Award, a two-time winner of Society of Voice Arts Awards, and was named a Golden Voice by AudioFile magazine in 2019.

Stefan Rudnicki is a Grammy-winning audiobook producer and a multiaward-winning narrator, named one of AudioFile’s Golden Voices.

Angelo Di Loreto is a versatile audiobook narrator and voice actor from Buffalo, New York, based in New York City. He has narrated titles for Audible Studios, Tantor Media, and an extensive body of self-produced work for ACX. As an actor, he has worked in various productions with the St. Joseph Academy Theater Company for the past few years and has studied and worked with voice-over and acting coaches such as Marla Kirban and Jayme Mattler. In addition to acting, Angelo is an accomplished pianist and composer, and regularly tours with his various projects.

Luis Moreno, a voice actor, has narrated several audiobooks throughout his career.

Date of Birth:

May 27, 1934

Date of Death:

June 28, 2018

Place of Birth:

Cleveland, OH

Place of Death:

Los Angeles, CA

Editorial Reviews

Various narrators bring some of Harlan Ellison's short stories to life in this new anthology compiled by the Harlan and Susan Ellison Foundation. With science fiction, fantasy, horror, and other reality-bending tales, this collection of more than 25 works will be a treat for both Ellison's fans and new listeners. Each narrator provides their own interpretation of a story, giving listeners variety in voice and perspective. Ellison himself delivers several of the stories, along with about 10 other narrators. Of particular note are Dion Graham's narration of "From A to Z, in the Chocolate Alphabet" and Stefan Rudnicki's interpretation of "All the Lies That Are My Life." C.F. © AudioFile 2024, Portland, Maine

MAY 2024 - AudioFile

PRAISE FOR HARLAN ELLISON

[O]n the evidence that Straczynski has assembled here, [Ellison’s] fiction can still scream. 
—Locus

Greatest Hits offers a reason for readers to rejoice, for it is a handy compilation of excellent and eclectic and eccentric stories… Tenacious in both terror and tomfoolery, fierce, and funny… You won’t find a better collection of single-scribe sci-fi on the planet—or beyond it.
—Los Angeles Review of Books

In his stories of fantasy and horror, he strikes closest to all those things that horrify and amuse us (sometimes both at the same time) in our present lives...Ellison has always been a sociological writer...[who was] pro-choice when itcomes to abortion...[and] an affirmed liberal and freethinker. Most of all, we sense outrage and anger—as with the best Ellison stories, we sense personal involvement, and have a feeling that Ellison is not so much telling the tale as he is jabbing it viciously out of its hiding place. It is the feeling that we are walking over a lot of jagged glass in thin shoes, or running across a minefield in the company of a lunatic.
—Stephen King
 
Categories are too small—even the catch-all category of science fiction—to describe Harlan Ellison. Lyric poet, satirist, explorer of odd psychological corners, moralist, one-line comedian, purveyor of pure horror and of black comedy; he is all these and more.
—The Washington Post
 
A furiously prolific and cantankerous writer (who) looked at storytelling as a "holy chore," which he pursued zealously for more than 60 years. His output includes more than 1,700 short stories and articles, at least 100 books and dozens of screenplays and television scripts ranked with eminent science fiction writers like Ray Bradbury and Isaac Asimov.
—The New York Times
 
Harlan Ellison was, after all, one of the most interesting humans on Earth. He was one of the greatest and most influential science fiction writers alive. He marched with Martin Luther King, Jr. in Selma, lectured to college kids, visited with death row inmates, and once mailed a dead gopher to a publisher. Ellison brought a literary sensibility to sci-fl at a time when the entire establishment was allergic to any notion of art. To say he was one-of-a-kind would be trite, and he would likely hate that. What he was, was a legend.
—NPR 
 
[Harlan] was very influential in changing the field, making it more open to social issues, to explorations of characters. He's had an enormous influence on science fiction with his writing, and he's also been aninfluential editor...setting an agenda for a new kind of science fiction writing that would be more socially engaged and responsive to the times.
—Jeff Lathan, Science Fiction Studies
 
There's a real power to the way he uses the language and how he draws pictures in your mind.
—Ron Moore
 
You see Ellison's unswerving social conscience throughout his fiction and critical essays...forcefully and eloquently-and at some length­ lamenting the failure of the Equal Rights Amendment and railing against the scourge of misogynistic "knife-kill" films.
—Rogerebert.com
 
The words-there is an attention to the words. There is an attention to the sound of the words. You're reading them in your head, and they sing.
—Neil Gaiman
 
The spellbinding quality of a great nonstop talker, with a cultural ware­ house for a mind.
—The New York Review of Books
 
Feisty, furious, yet extraordinarily kind and generous; Harlan Ellison was one of a kind.
—Leonard Mahin
 
Harlan Ellison—terrific prose, razor-sharp intellect, pulp gut punches and invention when needed, terse poetics...an original.
—Guillermo del Toro
 
An original and valuable writer...a twentieth-century Lewis Carroll. 
—Los Angeles Times
 
Saul Bellow, Philip Roth, Norman Mailer, stand aside. Harlan Ellison is now a better short story writer than you will ever be again during the rest of your lives.
—Ray Bradbury
 
The incredible Harlan Ellison writes as if an inner fuse is about to blow before he can get all the words on his pages.
—Anne McCaffrey
 
He doesn't write like anybody else. What emerges is a surprising, eclectic, almost protean series of visions, often disturbing, always strongly felt.
—Michael Crichton
 
Harlan was not just a great fantasist and/or science fiction writer; he was a great writer, period. When he was at the top of his form, there was no finer short story writer in all of English literature. [He] had an enormous influence on the writers of the generation that followed, my own generation. He fought for racial equality, marching with King at Selma. He fought for women's rights and the ERA. He fought publishers, defending the rights of writers to control their own material and be fairly compensated for it. He was a hero to us.
—George R. R. Martin
 
 
 

From the Publisher

Ellison, a major figure in twentieth-century science fiction, died in 2018. His short stories, some of which provided the basis for episodes of The Twilight Zone, ‘ripped my mind open and showed me what the possibilities of fiction were,’ Neil Gaiman writes in the foreword to this new collection of Ellison’s best-known work.”

New York Times Book Review

Harlan Ellison was, after all, one of the most interesting humans on Earth. He was one of the greatest and most influential science fiction writers alive. He marched with Martin Luther King, Jr. in Selma, lectured to college kids, visited with death row inmates, and once mailed a dead gopher to a publisher. Ellison brought a literary sensibility to sci-fi at a time when the entire establishment was allergic to any notion of art. To say he was one-of-a-kind would be trite, and he would likely hate that. What he was, was a legend.”

NPR