Preorder Ellison’s Can & Can’tankerous

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Can and CantankerousLater this year Subterranean Press will issue Harlan Ellison’s collection Can & Can’tankerous, ten previously uncollected tales from the fifth and sixth decades of Ellison’s career. The volume is available now for preorder.

Table of Contents

  • How Interesting: A Tiny Man
  • Never Send to Know for Whom the Lettuce Wilts
  • Objects of Desire in the Mirror Are Closer than They Appear
  • Introduction to “Loose Cannon” by Neil Gaiman
  • Loose Cannon, or Rubber Duckies from Space
  • From A to Z, in the Sarsaparilla Alphabet
  • Weariness
  • The Toad Prince, or, Sex Queen of the Martian Pleasure-domes
  • Incognita, Inc.
  • Goodbye to All That
  • He Who Grew Up Reading Sherlock Holmes

Bonus Material (Limited Edition Only)

  • Who Wilts the Lettuce? (The original 1957 typescript)
  • Blonde Cargo (The original 1958 typescript)
  • Weariness (The original 2005 typescript)
  • Sensible City (The 2009 revised version)

Can you match the titles with the publisher’s descriptions?

  • a written-in-the-window endeavor that invites re-reading from the start before you’ve even finished it;
  • a second entry in his (now) ongoing abcedarian sequence;
  • a “lost” pulp tale re-cast as a retro-fable;
  • a melancholy meditation for departed friend and fellow legend, Ray Bradbury;
  • a 2001 revision of a 1956 original;
  • an absurdist ascent toward enlightenment (or its gluten-free substitute);
  • a 200-word exercise in not following the directions as written (with a special introduction by Neil Gaiman that weighs in at four times the word count of its subject);
  • a fantastical lament for a bottom-line world;
  • the 2011 Nebula Award-winning short story; and
  • Ellison’s most recent offering, a fusion of fact and fiction

I knew you could.

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10 thoughts on “Preorder Ellison’s Can & Can’tankerous”

  2. I cover Ellison here pretty regularly, and if I had a dollar for every time somebody followed my story with a dumbass reference to LDV I would be a wealthy man. Of course, Ellison doesn’t read this blog, so the only person you’re calling out is me.

  4. It’s not a dumbass reference, Mike, it is fair comment. Ask all the writers who never had their LDV stories published, while Ellison strutted about and did his enfant terrible routine at conventions.

    OPUNTIA #302 will appear this week with a look back at DV and ADV, as well as a checklist of stories that Ellison listed for LDV. And I might add that I do appreciate Ellison’s work and have so written in the past.

    LDV was never published back when because of its length as a physical book. Why couldn’t it be published now as an ebook where the length won’t matter? Many of us would be interested in that.

  6. I asked Harlan Ellison that question very politely.. He growled and purred his answer. I took it to mean, yes, it will come out and I am tired of answering the question. I imagine he was being polite to me because he was in the company of a woman I once dated. I imagine he is more than tired of hearing That Question several decades later. My question happened in 1974. Why bother the man? There are many other things to ask him.

    There have been lists of stories withdrawn from LDV, stories printed, and a list of the now dead writers. Of course, another list of writers awaiting their first published story. If published today, would be an oddity because of being out of place in time with all the stories written in the 1970’s. Pre Internet.

    Publish it? A LAST DANGEROUS VISIONS story of the month has been proposed.

    The only real grumbling I have is not being able to see the Tim Kirk illustrations.

    Mike: thanks for pointing out the other book. I’ll probably order it, as I did a couple of his other titles you mentioned. At least it isn’t a $40.00 paperback.

  7. Dale: Dumbass was just a more civil attempt to warn you off. Your harping comment is unoriginal. It is humorless. It is repetitive. It scores a cheap point by crapping on my work.

  9. Perhaps. I could end every Ellison news item with this:

    “Obligatory Ellison Disclaimer: Harlan still has not published Last Dangerous Visions after four decades of delay, therefore no attention needs to be paid to anything he actually has published. Never mind that all the best stories have appeared elsewhere, that you would only mock the book if it came out now and that you are secretly pissed at being deprived of the opportunity.”

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