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Strange Wine


CoverHarlan Ellison's DEATHBIRD STORIES was selected by the American Library Association as one of the Best Books for Young Adults, 1975. School Library Journal said the same thing. This modern master of the macabre invites lovers of Poe, Kafka and Borges to a gourmet's sampling of the headiest wine since Montressor's Amontiillado. STRANGE WINE: the quaffing of deep drafts of imagination . . . unsettling visions by the man whom Pete Hamill called "the Dark Prince of American letters."

Fifteen previously uncollected tales in which the Pied Piper of Hamelin is come again, this time to pipe the Apocalypse for humanity; the spirits of executed Nazi war criminals walk Manhattan streets; the damned soul of a Lizzie Borden-like murderess escapes from Hell; a horny young man is haunted by the ghost of his Yiddishe Momma; an amoral womanizer seeks his awful destiny among the derelicts and alligators living in the sewers beneath the city; gremlins write the fantasies of a gone-dry writer; the nephew of The Shadow wreaks terrible vengeance on the New York Literary Establishment; and the exquisite Dr. D'ArqueAngel injects her patients with immunizing doses of the distillate of death.

Cover Art by Leo & Diane Dillon


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This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.

First E-Reads publication: 2009 www.ereads.com
Harlan Ellison website: www.harlanellison.com

No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means electronic or mechanical including photocopy, recording, Internet posting, electronic bulletin board or any other information storage and retrieval system, or by any other method, means or process of embodying and/or transmitting information, text or the spoken word now known or hereafter devised without permission in writing from The Kilimanjaro Corporation, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a critical article or review to be printed in a magazine or newspaper, or electronically transmitted on radio, television or in a recognized on-line journal. For information address Author's agent: Richard Curtis Associates, Inc., 171 East 74th Street, New York, New York 10021, USA.

All persons, places and organizations in this book-except those clearly in the public domain-are fictitious and any resemblance that may seem to exist to actual persons, places or organizations living, dead or defunct is purely coincidental. These are works of fiction.

 

SKU: ERBAEN0078

Copyright © 1978 by The Kilimanjaro Corporation.

STRANGE WINE is an Edgeworks Abbey® Offering in association with ereads.com. Published by arrangement with the Author and The Kilimanjaro Corporation.

Harlan Ellison and Edgeworks Abbey are registered trademarks of The Kilimanjaro Corporation.
This edition is copyright © 2008 by The Kilimanjaro Corporation. All rights reserved.

Front Cover Illustration by Leo & Diane Dillon. Copyright © 1966 by Leo & Diane Dillon. Renewed, © 1994 by Leo & Diane Dillon.

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form.

E-Reads, Ltd.
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Electronic version by Baen Books
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Introduction: "Revealed at Last! What Killed the Dinosaurs! And You Don't Look So Terrific Yourself," copyright CO 1978 by The Kilimanjaro Corporation.

"Croatoan," copyright © 1975 by Harlan Ellison. Renewed, 2003 by The Kilimanjaro Corporation.

"Working with the Little People," copyright © 1977 by Harlan Ellison. Renewed, 2005 by The Kilimanjaro Corporation.

"Killing Bernstein," copyright © 1976 by Harlan Ellison. Renewed, 2004 by The Kilimanjaro Corporation.

"Mom," copyright © 1976 by Harlan Ellison. Renewed, 2004 by The Kilimanjaro Corporation.

"In Fear of K," copyright © 1975 by Harlan Ellison. Renewed, 2003 by The Kilimanjaro Corporation.

"Hitler Painted Roses," copyright © 1977 by Harlan Ellison. Renewed, 2005 by The Kilimanjaro Corporation.

"The Wine Has Been Left Open Too Long and the Memory Has Gone Flat," copyright © 1976 by Harlan Ellison. Renewed, 2004 by The Kilimanjaro Corporation.

"From A to Z, in the Chocolate Alphabet," copyright © 1976 by Harlan Ellison. Renewed, 2004 by The Kilimanjaro Corporation.

"Lonely Women Are the Vessels of Time," copyright © 1976 by Harlan Ellison. Renewed, 2004 by The Kilimanjaro Corporation.

"Emissary from Hamelin," copyright © 1977 by Harlan Ellison. Renewed, 2005 by The Kilimanjaro Corporation.

"The New York Review of Bird," copyright © 1975 by Harlan Ellison. Copyright © 1-978 by The Kilimanjaro Corporation. Renewed, 2003 by The Kilimanjaro Corporation.

"Seeing," copyright © 1976 by Harlan Ellison. Renewed, 2004 by The Kilimanjaro Corporation.

"The Boulevard of Broken Dreams," copyright © 1975 by Harlan Ellison. Renewed, 2003 by The Kilimanjaro Corporation.

"Strange Wine," copyright © 1976 by Harlan Ellison. Renewed, 2004 by The Kilimanjaro Corporation.

"The Diagnosis of Dr. D'arqueAngel," copyright © 1977 by Harlan Ellison. Renewed, 2005 by The Kilimanjaro Corporation.

Excerpts from "The Cart" by W.S. Merwin, which originally appeared in The New Yorker, are reprinted by permission of Atheneum Publishers, from the book HOUSE AND TRAVELERS by W.S. Merwin. Copyright © 1977 by W.S. Merwin.


This one, with love,
for my friends,
JULIEANNE and
CHARLES EDWARD
POGUE

All men dream . . . but not equally. They who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds wake in the day to find that it is vanity; but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they act their dream with open eyes, to make it possible.

T. E. LAWRENCE

Only fantasy has eternal youth. What happened nowhere and never can never age.

SCHILLER

GROTESQUE: " . . . the expression in a moment, by a series of symbols thrown together in bold and fearless connection, of truth . . . "

JOHN RUSKIN

GROTESQUE IN THE CLASSIC SENSE: "anticke figures"
"I write of things which I have neither seen nor suffered nor learned from another, things which are not and never could have been, and therefore my readers should by no means believe them."

LUCIAN OF SAMOSATA

"I sing of places I've never seen, of people I've never been. But savor my songs, because they're free."

PETER ALLEN

"Better the illusions that exalt us than ten thousand truths."

ALEKSANDER PUSHKIN

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The author wishes to note the following persons whose kindnesses and support enabled him to write these stories better and more easily than would have been the case without their good offices: Jane Rotrosen; Ray Bradbury; the staff of Words & Music in Charing Cross Road, London; Martin Miller, Director, Marketing Research, Mattell Toys; Vonda N. McIntyre; David Wise; the late, much-missed William Rotsler; Robert Silverberg; Barbara Silverberg; Arthur Byron Cover; both Mike Hodel and Richard Delap, now both gone; Don Pfiel; Edward L. and Audrey Ferman; Eric Protter; Arline Inge; Gerard Van der Leun; Terry Carr, my friend, also gone away; Sherry Gottlieb, Lydia Marano, and staff of the long-defunct A Change of Hobbit in Los Angeles; Stephanie Bernstein, who was senselessly murdered by an ex-con on parole, in Santa Monica; Edward Bryant; Norman Goldfind; Larry Todd; Byron Preiss; Neal Adams; Michael Moorcock; Jill Riches; Jane Gould and the staff of The Portobello Hotel in London; Joe Oles and his family; Haskell, Carol and Tracy Barkin (some of whom are née Klotz); Maggie Pierce and Linda Steele; Karah and Blaire Preiss; Prince Charles Curtis, his father Richard; and Howard Zimmerman and my exquisite honey, my wife, Susan, the Electric Baby.

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