2008 books
57) Harlan Ellison, All the Sounds of Fear, 1973
58) Harlan Ellison, The Time of the Eye, 1974
For it's UK publication Ellison's 1971 retrospective Alone Against Tomorrow was split into these two volumes All the Sounds of Fear and The Time of the Eye, and this was Ellison's first collection of twenty bona fide 'greatest hits' with stories chosen for their aspects on isolation and alienation. Unfortunately there are too many that I really don't care for, and '"Repent, Harlequin!" Said the Ticktockman' still leaves me cold even after several re-reads over many years. There are others that are worth seeking out, such as the Hugo-winning (but rather heavy-handed) 'I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream', 'Lonelyache' is a memorable metaphysical urban nightmare, 'Deeper than the Darkness' is a good meditation on learning non-violent resistance to brutality, and 'In Lonely Lands', which possesses the same Martian melancholy as John Wyndham's 'Time to Rest'. I'm continuing to pick may way through Ellison's short fiction but finding that there's rather more chaff than I expected... or maybe this was all once-great stuff, most of which hasn't stood the test of time too well.