These days we are constantly beset by entertainment that features extreme acts of violence. We see violent deeds so often in film and television that we have become inured to them; they have, in a sense, lost their shock value. This was not so in the sixties, seventies, and eighties when Ellison was turning out most of his best, groundbreaking work. Other writers dealt with extreme subjects, of course, but Ellison was one of the first to really rub readers’ noses in it, to put a microscope to it, to create prose poetry out of descriptions of violence. “I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream” is an example of this, but the epitome of creating art out of acts of extreme violence has to be his story “The Whimper of Whipped Dogs.” It takes place in New York, and it is based on the real murder of a woman named Kitty Genovese, who was stabbed to death outside her apartment building. A New York Times article, which was later disputed, claimed that up to thirty-eight people witnessed the murder and did nothing to stop it. This incident formed the basis for Ellison’s story, which involves a cult of worshipers of a god that feeds on violence. When I attended my first-ever Harlan Ellison reading, he had the lights of the auditorium dimmed so that the reading lamp on the lectern was the only illumination. And then he read this terrifying tale with great verve and elocution. I’ve been to a lot of author readings, but nobody could dive into a story and bring life to it like Harlan Ellison. “The Whimper of Whipped Dogs,” though intense, works on all levels.

On the other hand, Ellison was often prone to excess, and as an example I offer the novelette “Mefisto in Onyx,” the longest story in this collection. It is out-and-out horror, and when it was first published it won the Bram Stoker Award for best horror story of the year. I did not enjoy it when I first read it, and I felt uncomfortable while reading it this time too; it deals with a serial killer that commits unspeakably foul murders (which Ellison describes in detail) and for me it is simply too gruesome and nasty to appreciate as art. Many others disagree, and that’s fine. It does have a satisfactory ending, I must admit. As a footnote to my opinion, I point out that it is the only story in the collection that carries a content warning above the title. I would have preferred that instead of this story Straczynski would have included the novella “A Boy and His Dog,” which does not appear herein, possibly because of its length. There are also other stories in the table of contents that I would not have included because I feel that they are mediocre and not representative of Ellison’s best work, but as Ellison expressed a popular adage referring to personal taste, “One man’s nightmare is another man’s wet dream.” I won’t point out the other stories that did not appeal to me, as your opinion, of course, may differ, and you’re entitled to it, but I will mention a few of my favorites that were excluded but that I would have added if I were editor: “Punky and the Yale Men” and “Delusion for a Dragon Slayer.”

Before I close, I will mention a couple of stories that well-earn their places in this book. The novelette “Paladin of the Lost Hour” is more subdued than much of Ellison’s work. There is little violence, and the speculative element is introduced subtly and then only becomes significant in the closing moments. For most of its length, it is a character study about two men who seem very different, but they bond in their loneliness and become friends. This story not only won the Hugo Award, but it was also adapted as an episode of the Twilight Zone, and that episode won a Writers Guild of America Award. The other story I find particularly impressive is “The Beast that Shouted Love at the Heart of the World.” The meaning of the tale and some of the elements therein are somewhat obscure, but it is another example of a collage of seemingly disparate pieces in which the whole adds up to considerably more than the sum of its parts.

The final story in the volume is a novelette called “All the Lies That Are My Life.” It is set apart in a section of its own, “The Last Word.” Despite having no science fiction or fantasy elements whatsoever, it was published in a science fiction magazine and even nominated for a Hugo Award, presumably because it is about an author who writes science fiction and fantasy. The main character is an abrasive but brilliant and popular writer, an obvious allusion to Ellison himself, who has just died in a car accident. The narrator, another writer of lesser talent and popularity, has come to the dead author’s mansion for a reading of his will, and as he describes the proceedings and the other attendees, he reminisces about the dead writer’s life and career. Spoiler alert: at the end, the deceased writer names the narrator as his literary executor. The placement of this particular story as the last entry in Greatest Hits leads inevitably to the conclusion that Straczynski, Ellison’s literary executor, identifies with the narrator, although “All the Lies That Are My Life” was written and published almost forty years before Ellison’s death.

My conclusion? Greatest Hits, like so many of Ellison’s short story collections, has a mix of brilliant and timeless classics as well as stories of lesser, one might even say mediocre, quality. At least it starts out with a bang, with many of the best stories in the first two sections: “Angry Gods” and “Lost Souls.” I hope that the wish in the introduction by Straczynski is fulfilled: that it helps Ellison’s works become known to a new generation of readers.

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