Deathbird Stories

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Deathbird Stories
LC Class
PZ4.E4695 De3 PS3555.L62

Deathbird Stories: A Pantheon of Modern Gods is a 1975 collection of

Adrift Just Off the Islets of Langerhans: Latitude 38° 54' N, Longitude 77° 00' 13" W", which won the Hugo Award; and "The Deathbird", another Hugo Award winner. Early editions have illustrations by Leo and Diane Dillon
.

Contents

It contains the following stories (along with an introduction):

  • "Introduction: Oblations at Alien Altars"
  • "The Whimper of Whipped Dogs"
    • Inspired by the
      Kitty Genovese
      murder.
  • "Along the Scenic Route"
  • "On the Downhill Side"
  • "O Ye of Little Faith"
  • "Neon"
  • "Basilisk"
  • "Pretty Maggie Moneyeyes"
  • "Corpse"
  • "Shattered Like a Glass Goblin"
  • "Delusion for a Dragon Slayer"
  • "The Face of Helene Bournouw"
  • "Bleeding Stones"
  • "At the Mouse Circus"
  • "The Place with No Name"
  • "Paingod"
  • "Ernest and the Machine God"
  • "Rock God"
  • "
    Adrift Just Off the Islets of Langerhans: Latitude 38° 54' N, Longitude 77° 00' 13" W
    "
  • "The Deathbird"

Reception

The New York Times reviewer Gerald Jonas found that the stories "offer a mixture of overheated Hype and genuine concern for the human condition," noting that on occasion Ellison "raises excess and pretension to a form of art."[2] In 1993, the Times described a reissue of the collection as "Fantasy at its most bizarre and unsettling."[3] Writing in Galaxy, Spider Robinson reviewed the collection favorably, despite faulting Ellison's "unrelieved pessimism."[4]

One academic biography describes Deathbird Stories as "a kind of spiritual autobiography" and notes that Ellison's modern gods "gain their influence not from revelatory or charismatic social movements but from the driving anxieties of mid-twentieth century American culture."[5]

Footnotes

  1. ^ pg 297 of the Bluejay edition, from the Gratia gratiam parit: "It took ten years to complete this cycle of stories."
  2. ^ "S.F.", The New York Times Book Review, March 23, 1975
  3. ^ Laurel Graeber, "New and Noteworthy Paperbacks", The New York Times Book Review, September 5, 1993
  4. ^ "Bookshelf", Galaxy, June 1975, p.46-47
  5. ^ Gary K. Wolfe and Ellen Weil, Harlan Ellison: the edge of forever, Ohio State University Press, 2002, p.157-58

External links

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