Amid the ruins of a world in which men become monsters, dreams turn to poison, and the only sanity lies in fantasy, these eleven stories and two essays take you beyond the brink, to study the terrifying landscape charted by Harlan Ellison. For those who have read even one of Harlan Ellison's books, no further introduction is necessary. But to those who may have escaped the pull of his imagination, here are some examples of the singular Ellison talent. Stories and essays in which: The terrifying specter of Jack the Ripper walks again, in a tale so relentlessly uncompromising in its examination of the nature of evil, you will not soon be able to shake off its spell. A stranger who may have come from Hell strips the veil of hypocrisy from a town's placid existence, exposing, with awful consequences, the evil underneath. Gods for today—the rock god ad the machine god—are described in terms even the most devout will find compelling and strangely disturbing. By misdirection and inference, Mr Ellison looks afresh at the core of alienation and race prejudice, the element of fear in films, the heart of loneliness, the bestiality of the male ego, and provides for several bad guys just desserts that will make the sadist in you leap for joy... and so... straight on!