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| Strange Wine | 
 enlarge | Author: Harlan Ellison
Publisher: I Books
Category: Book
List Price: $13.95
Buy New: $7.00
You Save: $6.95 (50%)
New (3) Used (11) Collectible (1) from $3.90
Avg. Customer Rating:  16 reviews
Sales Rank: 763349
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 272
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.5
Dimensions (in): 8.1 x 5.4 x 0.7
ISBN: 0743479890
Dewey Decimal Number: 813
EAN: 9780743479899
ASIN: 0743479890
Publication Date: October 26, 2004
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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| Customer Reviews:
 A great collection March 27, 2005
4 out of 5 found this review helpful
Strange Wine is a marvelous collection of dramatically different short stories. From terrifying to hilarious with a little heartbreak in between, this book takes you an a very strange and fulfilling ride through Harlan Ellison's imagination.
My favorite? "Mom." The story of a young jewish man being relentlessly haunted by the nagging ghost of his meddling mother. All Mom want's is for her son to settle down with a nice Jewish girl and she'll stop at nothing to make it happen.
 Harlan Ellison drinks of the "Strange Wine" of imagination January 7, 2005
7 out of 9 found this review helpful
The biggest problem with Harlan Ellison's short story collection "Strange Wine" is that the introductory essay is so good. "Revealed at Last! What Killed the Dinosaurs! And You Don't Look So Terrific Yourself" is one of the best of Ellison's introductions, combining biography with diatribe, in this case a denunciation of watching television as being "soul deadening, dehumanizing, soporific in a poisonous way, ultimately brutalizing." Ellison finds watching television to be "a bad thing." In contrast he offers "Strange Wine" as a metaphor for imagination, the key element that the dinosaurs lacked that turned them into fossil fuels.
The fifteen stories collected in "Strange Wane" do not include any of the acknowledged classics of speculative fiction that Ellison has written over the years, but there is certainly enough food for thought here to make it well worth the reading. "Mom" is a nice tribute to Ellison's own mother (is there any other way to read this one?), and "From A to Z, in the Chocolate Alphabet" is the product of one of those stunts Ellison does when he writes in the window of a bookstore, but what he can do with one paragraph about a nonsense word is pretty impressive. "Lonely Women are the Vessels of Time" is a rather short, short story, but it is about loneliness, which is one of Ellison's better themes. "The Boulevard of Broken Dreams" is a harrowing little tale about a man having dreams of dead Nazi war criminals. "The Diagnosis of Dr. D'arque Angel" does a nice little twist on Faust, and "Hitler Painted Roses," another one of those stories written as a stunt, is based on the chilling idea that it is humanity and not God who determines who gets to go to Heaven and who gets dumped in Hell. Then again, "Working with the Little People" is actually rather cute, which is a rather disquieting idea when you are talking about the writings of Harlan Ellison.
There are a few misfires in the bunch: "Killing Bernstein" has a great premise when a toy company executive kills his ex-lover, only to have her show up the next day as if nothing had happened. I was thinking that this one would go in a different direction, so the ending rubbed me the wrong way, while "The Emissary from Hamelin" strikes me as being a trifle not worth Ellison's time. Even "CROATOAN" seems heavy-handed, despite the subject matter, although the final image is certainly disturbing enough. The rest of the stories are middling, with the title story being something of a disappointment given how the essay makes the phrase so significant.
So, if we were grading all of the stories in "Strange Wine" I think it is safe to say that Ellison would come out with a solid "B" average. I still maintain that once you read the essay you have gotten your money's worth with this collection, but with Ellison there are always going to be several unforgettable stories that you will enjoy having read, whether you are a big time fan or just checking out the book to see what he is ranting and raving about this time around.
The King of 'Em All, Ya'll December 8, 2004
5 out of 8 found this review helpful
When the need is for writing that merges the visceral and the intellectual, that lets you dream and turns those dreams against you, and when you want to engulf yourself in one of Ellsion's two best collections (the other being Love Ain't Nothing But Sex Misspelled), then Strange Wine is the place to hang your mind.
If any collection proves that H.E.'s grasp exceeds the realm of science fiction, this is unquestionably that collection. His worlds expand into fantasies previously unimagined, and yet his plots are only the beginning. Ultimately, his skill in understanding the most secret needs of his readership--and giving it to them without a trace of smile--is the man's true genius. Quite simply, Strange Wine is literature of a high order, one of the great books of the post WWII era.
 The title fic (and it alone) is a masterpiece September 13, 2004
11 out of 44 found this review helpful
Let's get one thing straight right here & now, Smedley. I happen to hate Harlan more than life itself. He's a ham-fisted didactic fictionist with all the subtlety of a German jazz band. (He's also a self-congratulatory self-aggrandizing non-fictionist but that's another story.) Harlan is also a self-declared atheist and I begrudge him his hypocritical schizophrenia. If he doesn't believe in any of that supernatural horsecrap then why has he spent his whole life writing it? At least Philip Dick wasn't a phony in that regard. Phil churned out that fantasy stuff and backed it up by being a full-tilt wackaloon. Harlan is also the single worst writer of fictional whimsy in the history of the universe. Remember that cutesy-poo story about the cutesy-poo space-creatures who engage in cutesy-poo sex with various Earthlings (including William Shatner, who should've known better)? Dottie Parker once provided a positive blurb for an Ellison book, but she would've been first in line to fwow up at that pathetic attempt at whimsy.
Having said all that (having sung my Hymn of Hate, as Orwell would say), let me congratulate Harlan for having written the title story. Which is a brilliant feat of imagination. And which was rightly included in a shortfic collection put together by Ursula LeGuinn. That single dreary story has singlehandedly redeemed Harlan's existence.
Drink deeply from Ellison's Strange Wine......it is potent June 18, 2003
7 out of 8 found this review helpful
It is good news that this book is soon to be republished. It's about time. I've been a fan of Ellison for a quarter of a century and this, by far, is my favourite book of his. If you have never come across Ellison before, you're in for a treat. A master story-teller, he breaks new ground with practically every story, whether it is in the style of the telling - such as "From A to Z, The Chocolate Alphabet"-, or in the subject matter - "Croatoan." Whatever the style or the subject matter, the voice of Ellison is unmistakable, -uncompromising, vivid, funny, and perceptive- so that even if an Ellison story did not have his name above it, you would quickly guess whom it was. The stories range from the humorous "Mom" to the serious "In Fear of K." Whatever he writes, he is thoroughly entertaining. What makes this collection of stories different from his others is that this collection has an introduction for every story. With any other writer, this would be an intrusion; but with Ellison, it works, because the man is funny, wise, and entertaining. They are basically a miscellany of anything that Ellison wants to talk about: How he came to write this or that story; where he wrote it; the ideas behind it- and sometimes the connection to the story is tenuous." The New York Review of Bird" for instance. You won't care. It is all good stuff. I usually find at least one story in any collection that I don't like, and this book is no exception. "Seeing" I found unreadable. This is a mere quibble. Everything else in here is just dandy. It even has a wonderful cover by Leo and Dianne Dillon. What more can a person want?
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