SFScope is reporting that Harlan Ellison‘s backlist is going to E-Reads, with 32 out-of-print titles being made available in electronic and print-on-demand formats within the year. In fact, eight titles—including the classic short story collections Shatterday and I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream—appear to be available right now. As the catalog page for Shatterday notes, “Though his contemporary fantasies have been compared favorably with the dark visions of Borges, Barthelme, Poe and Kafka, Ellison resists categorization with a vehemence that alienates critics and reviewers seeking easy pigeonholes for an extraordinary writer.”
There are those of us who say that John Updike seriously dropped the ball back in ’99 when he failed to include Ellison in his anthology of the twentieth century’s best short fiction. If you’re curious as to what all the fuss is about before buying one of these books, New York’s Film Forum is currently screening a documentary about Ellison, Dreams With Sharp Teeth, through next Tuesday. I’ve run the (NSFW) trailer before, but what the heck, here it is again.