Deathbird Stories

This collection is apparently Ellison at the height of his powers, an extended New Wave Scifi riff on the themes of gods and sacrifice. New gods of cities, of highways, of neon lights and computers. Old gods, bloody monsters buried in the earth or the psyche appearing and exacting a heavy toll from modern people.

If there’s a word to describe these stories, it’s excessive. The language is trippy and overwrought. When Ellison tempers the excess with humor, it’s quite good. When he just vents his spleen, it’s fairly miserable, as in “Bleeding Stones”, where gargoyles come to life and murder everyone in New York city, starting with an assembly of Christians.

Ellison leans too heavily on the gambit of the psycho-symbolic journey, where the protagonist leaves mundane reality and enters a liminal zone of fantasy, where he encounters a series of set-pieces and images that usually depict his pathetic nature before an actively hostile cosmos. It’s the very antithesis of showing, not telling.

I’m really divided on this collection. There are a few stand out stories, but the overall effect is a kind of pretentious misanthropy. This is of course, Ellison’s stock in trade, so what do you expect. It’s well done, but is it worth doing?