harlan ellison the beast that shouted love

Here are my thoughts on some of the stories contained within. I mostly picked it up to read A Boy and His Dog, to experience the post-apocalyptic story as it was originally intended and to see if this version was as rapey as the movie starring Don Johnson. The Beast That Shouted Love at the Heart of the World is a collection of short stories by Harlan Ellison.

“Two are better than one because they have a good reward for their labour.” Ecclesiastes 4:9 ‘You’re funny when you get horny,’ he said.Ī boy and his dog constitute a symbiotic tandem – they can’t manage without each other. ‘Come on, son of a bitch,’ I demanded, ‘find me a piece of ass.’īlood just chuckled, deep in his dog-throat. He’d eaten pretty good, but he was cranky. I’d caught a couple of water rats for him, the big green and ocher ones, and someone’s manicured poodle, lost off a leash in one of the downunders. It was his week for annoying me he kept calling me Albert. It is the bleakest post-apocalyptic tale I ever read. The anthology is shattering but A Boy and His Dog is the biggest diamond in this royal crown of stories. He is the omniscient and omnipresent mad demiurge who sees everything and understands nothing – senile and demented creator of universe. Each head watched, waiting, hungry, insane. He had the seven-headed dog faces of an ancient Cerberus. He was a dragon, squat and round in the torso, tapered ropy tail tucked under his body the small, thick osseous shields rising perpendicularly from the arched back, running down to the end of the tail, tips pointing upwards his taloned shorter arms folded across his massive chest. On the mauve level, crouched down in deeper magenta washings that concealed his arched form, the maniac waited. Who is The Beast That Shouted Love at the Heart of the World? The great psychedelic era… Great mind-bending ideas… 'The Beast that Shouted Love at the Heart of the World' It is the beast of our savage past, hungering today, and waiting patiently for the mortal meal of all our golden tomorrows. It has never heard music, and shows its fangs when we panic.

It waited for our coming and it will abide long after we have become congealed smoke. But when it breathes again we go down in fire and mate with jackals. When it sleeps we know a few moments of peace. It feasts on darkness from the minds of men. It beheaded mercy to take possession of that place. Only the riddle of which terrible dream will set it loose. 'It crouches near the center of creation.

Harlan ellison the beast that shouted love