This follow-up to Ellison's 1989 Stoker Award-winning book of film (and by extension, cultural) criticism picks up precisely where its predecessor left off: with the 35th installment-dated July 1989-of his column in THE MAGAZINE OF FANTASY & SCIENCE FICTION, and continues through his 50th entry, written for this volume in September 2014. But wait, there's more: buy now, and at no extra cost, you'll get three pieces of twenty-first century film criticism bringing the collection bang -up-to-date, as well as a long-lost assessment of PSYCHO that predates even the 1965 entries in HARLAN ELLISON'S WATCHING; if that's not value for money, we don't know what is.Did I mention the stunning Overton Loyd cover?The Harlan Ellison's Watching columns included are: From 1989: Installment 35: In Which the Phantasmagorical Pales Before the Joys of the MimeticInstallment 36: In Which, Darkly and Deliciously, We Travel From Metropolis to Metropolis, TwoDifferent Cities, Both OminousInstallment 37: In Which Not Only is No Answer Given, But No One Seems to Know the Question toAskInstallment 38: In Which, Though Manipulated, We Acknowledge That Which All Men SeekFrom 1990: Installment 39: In Which We Hum a Merry Tune While Waiting for New Horrors, New HorrorsInstallment 40: In Which We Scrutinize the Sedulousness to Their Hippocratic Oath of Troglodytic, Blue, Alien ProctologistsInstallment 41: In Which an Extremely Nervous Fool with His Credentials Taped to His ForeheadTacks Trepidatiously Between Scylla and Charybdis Knowing that Angels and Wise Men Would FearEven to Dog-Paddle This RouteInstallment 42: In Which It Waddles Like a Duck, Sheds Water Like a Duck, and Goes Steady WithDucks, But Turns Out to be a TortoiseInstallment 43: In Which We Lament, "There Goes the Neighborhood!"Installment 44: In Which the Good Ship Coat-Tail-Ride Sinks, Abandoning Hundreds in TreacherousWatersFrom 1991: Installment 45: In Which Tempus Fidgets, Fugits, and Inevitably Omnia RevelatsInstallment 46: In Which We Bend So Far Over Backwards To Be Unbiased That You Can See TheNose Hairs Quiver With RighteousnessInstallment 47: In Which Artful Vamping Saves the Publisher $94.98From 1994: Installment 48: In Which the Wee Child's Icons are DemeanedFrom 1995: Installment 49: In Which the Old Man of the Sea Bites the Head off Yet Another ChickenFrom 2014: Installment 50: In Which the Playroom of the Prodigal Gives One Last GaspPre-dating Ellison's column in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, ENDLESSLY WATCHING collects a review of PSYCHO from a 1960 fanzine, 1974's "Total Impact: THE TERMINAL MAN," and Ellison's 1966 treatise on terror: "3 Faces of Fear," making its debut in a non-fiction Ellison collection.Bridging the nearly two decades between Watching columns are: 2007's "I Saw GHOST RIDER Today at the Galleria," and 2013's review of 12 YEARS A SLAVE and "Death to All Hollywood Award Shows!"As an added bonus, we've exhumed two unpublished reviews...or, rather, one unpublished review of BRAM STOKER'S DRACULA and an unpublished refusal to review HONEY, I BLEW UP THE BABY.
About the Author: HARLAN ELLlSON(R) has been characterized by The New York Times Book Review as having "the spellbinding quality of a great nonstop talker, with a cultural warehouse for a mind." The Los Angeles Times suggested, "It's long past time for Harlan Ellison to be awarded the title: 20th century Lewis Carroll." And the Washington Post Book World said simply, "One of the great living American short story writers." He has written or edited 100 books; more than 1700 stories, essays, articles, and newspaper columns; two dozen teleplays, for which he received the Writers Guild of America most outstanding teleplay award for solo work an unprecedented 4 times; and a dozen movies. Publishers Weekly called him "Highly Intellectual." (Ellison's response: "Who, Me?"). He won the Mystery Writers of America Edgar Allan Poe award twice, the Horror Writers Association Bram Stoker award 6 times (including The Lifetime Achievement Award in 1996), the Nebula award of the Science Fiction Writers of America 4 times, the Hugo (World Convention Achievement award) 8 1/2 times, and received the Silver Pen for Journalism from P.E.N. Not to mention the World Fantasy Award; the British Fantasy Award; the American Mystery Award; plus 2 Audie Awards and 2 Grammy nominations for Spoken Word recordings. He created great fantasies for the 1985 CBS revival of The Twilight Zone and The Outer Limits, traveled with The Rolling Stones; marched with Martin Luther King from Selma to Montgomery; created roles for Buster Keaton, Wally Cox, Gloria Swanson, and nearly 100 other stars on Burke's Law; ran with a kid gang in Brooklyn's Red Hook to get background for his first novel; covered race riots in Chicago's "back of the yards" with the late James Baldwin; sang with, and dined with, Maurice Chevalier; once stood off the son of the Detroit Mafia kingpin with a Remington XP-l00 pistol-rifle, while wearing nothing but a bath towel; sued Paramount and ABC-TV for plagiarism and won $337,000. His most recent legal victory, in protection of copyright against global Internet piracy of writers' work-a four-year-long litigation against AOL et al.-has resulted in revolutionizing protection of creative properties on the web. (As promised, he repaid hundreds of contributions [totaling $50,000] from the KICK Internet Piracy support fund.) But the bottom line, as voiced by Booklist, is this: "One thing for sure: the man can write." He lives with his wife, Susan, inside The Lost Aztec Temple of Mars, in Los Angeles.