Harlan Ellison "The Abnormals"(Also "The Discarded")

---------------------------------------------- Harlan Ellison is a spectacular, emotional, controversial writer of mostly short fiction - reading him is always a personal experience. Every story is polished, sincere and uncompromising. I am particularly fond of his "angry candies", though his stories may not be to everyone's taste. Harlan Ellison "The Abnormals" (also as "The Discarded") © Fantastic, Apr 1959 Paingod & Other Delusions, 1965 --/ cool sf story --/ wonder award This story comes form a very prolific period in Ellison's writing career: He lived in New York and submitted (together with his buddy Robert Silverberg) a flood of stories to second rate publishers of SF, crime fiction and westerns. The paycheck was good and immediate, the times were good too - he nostalgically remembers the "Roaring Fifties", when one could have a viewing of top-notch Broadway production and then hole up in a jazz bar with the legends playing live - all for a very reasonable price. Granted, the short story market was already cooling off, but Ellison had found an almost perfect outlet for his "edgy" sci-fi & crime fiction - the magazine editors lapped up his stories with poorly concealed glee, slapping the most outrageous titles on his (not that graphic, really) stories: "Homicidal Maniac", "Psycho at Mid-Point" etc. All the more amazing is the fact that Ellison's fiction from that period is still reprinted and enjoyed today (while Silverberg's mountains of wordage lie mercifully forgotten). "The Abnormals" is a cool story, really - in fact some say that its TV version (written by Ellison and Josh Olson and directed by Jonathan Frakes) is perhaps the best episode of "Masters of Science Fiction" show aired on ABC. A spaceship full of mutants is exiled from Earth and turned into a nomadic tribe to haunt the spaceways. This is a classic premise, a paen to loneliness and alienation (certainly recurring themes in Ellison's writing). Robert Heinlein's mutants inside a "generation" starship ("The Universe", or "Orphans in the Sky") still haunt my memory as the creepiest environment to grace space fiction. Ellison's heroes are disfigured, disillusioned and tough - and then it just so happens that Earth suddenly remembers them, needs their help and even wants them back. Earth rulers don't really get "the finger", but they come close. Knowing that some Ellison stories end with that "all-encompassing proposition" it is no surprise. Read for yourself - this is pure pulp entertainment. review: 27-Aug-07 (read in 1994) (image credit: PS2 ad) ---------------------------------------------- See this writer's page here

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