Really, all it’s about is a shelf of books, and a pile of stories, written as well as he could write them when he wrote them, which is not beside the point; which is, in fact, the whole point.

And Harlan continues to write well and passionately and fiercely. I commend to your attention his story “The Man Who Rowed Christopher Columbus Ashore” in the 1993 Best American Short Stories collection—every bit as experimental as anything produced in the wildest excesses of the New Wave and entirely successful. He knows his circle. He is willing to explore outside it.

So, twelve stories follow.

These are not stories that should be forgotten; and some of you are about to read them for the first time.

Prepare to leave the circle with a more-than-capable guide.

I envy you.

This was my foreword to the 1994 Borderlands Press edition of Harlan Ellison’s The Beast That Shouted Love at the Heart of the World.

Banging the Drum for Harlan Ellison

Harlan Ellison, sir? Lor’ bless you. Of course I remember Harlan Ellison. Why if it wasn’t for Harlan Ellison, I doubt I’d even be in this line of work.

I first met Harlan Ellison in Paris in 1927. Gertrude Stein introduced us at one of her parties. “You boys will get on,” she said. “Harlan’s a writer. Not a great writer, like I am. But I hear he makes up stories.”

Harlan looked her in the eye, and told her exactly what he thought of her writing. It took him fifteen minutes and he never repeated himself once. When he finished, the whole room applauded. Gertie got Alice B. Toklas to throw us out into the rain, and we stumbled around Paris, clutching a couple of wet baguettes and a half a bottle of an indifferent Bordeaux.

“Where are the snows of yesteryear?” I asked Harlan.

He pulled out a map from an inside pocket, and showed me.

“I would never have guessed that was where they end up,” I told him.

“Nobody does,” he said.

Harlan knew all kinds of stuff like that. He was braver than lions, wiser than owls, and he taught me a trick with three cards which, he said, would prove an infallible method of making money if I was down on my luck.

The next time I saw Harlan Ellison was in London, in 1932. I was working in the music halls, which were still going fairly strong, though they weren’t what they used to be. I had worked up a mentalist’s act, in a small way. I wasn’t exactly bottom of the bill—that was Señor Moon and his Amazing Performing Budgerigar—but I was down there. That was until Harlan came along. He found me at the Hackney Empire vainly trying to intuit the serial number on a temperance crusader’s ten-shilling note. “Give up this mentalism nonsense, and stick with me, kiddo,” he said. “You’ve got a drummer’s hands, and I’m a man needs a drummer. Together, we’ll go places.”