A press release from Harlan Ellison:
Harlan Ellison, once called “the 20th century Lewis Carroll” by the Los Angeles Times, invites you to explore his 56-year career in four new books.
These four volumes, designed to bring Ellison’s writing to a new generation of readers while collecting rare works for his long-time fans, gather classic stories, entertaining essays, unpublished teleplays, and the author’s never-before-reprinted second novel from 1960.

The Brain Movies series gathers Ellison’s screenplays into collections reprinted from the author’s own file copies. See how Ellison originally imagined the many television episodes that were mangled after they left his typewriter en route to the small screen. Enjoy unprecedented access to Ellison’s writing process by studying his handwritten annotations or comparing outlines to finished scripts. Experience undiluted Ellison in the theater of your own mind, where no network executive, scissor-happy censor, or unimaginative director can come between you and the storyteller.
Brain Movies: The Original Teleplays of Harlan Ellison, Volume One collects Harlan Ellison’s television work. Reproduced from Ellison’s private files (and occasionally featuring his hand-written alterations), these scripts appear exactly as they did when the writer pulled them from his Olympia manual typewriter.
This 438-page paperback features:
“Touching Magic”—An introduction by J. Michael Straczynski, creator of Babylon 5 and writer of the Clint Eastwood-directed film Changeling, in which he describes the importance of seeing actual script pages as the author originally wrote them.
“Memos From Purgatory”—Ellison’s adaptation of his memoir about life in a Brooklyn gang. Produced for The Alfred Hitchcock Hour, this harrowing tale of juvenile delinquency is presented in two different drafts—one with Ellison’s extensive hand-written revisions—illustrating the author’s creative process.
Two stories from The Outer Limits—”Soldier,” the story that inspired the Terminator movie franchise, and the Writers Guild Award-winning “Demon With a Glass Hand,” one of the most iconic segments of the 1960s science fiction anthology.
Ellison won yet another Writers Guild Award for “Paladin of the Lost Hour,” an episode of the 1985 Twilight Zone revival written simultaneously with the Hugo Award-winning short story of the same name (featured in Harlan 101), but this particular script differs from the story in one key respect: it features the original ending Ellison planned for this classic story. This lost ending hasn’t been seen since his colleagues in the Zone writer’s room convinced him to write the conclusion that has since become famous. The original outline for the story—remarkably reminiscent of the short story in its execution—is included as well.
After leaving his post as creative consultant on The Twilight Zone, Ellison penned one more episode at the behest of the series’ new script editor, J. Michael Straczynski, and that was “Crazy as a Soup Sandwich,” presented here for the first time with the treatment from which the teleplay was developed.
The final script is “The Face of Helene Bournouw,” and if you’ve only seen the episode of Showtime’s anthology series The Hunger that bears that title, you’ve merely seen the vulture-picked bones of Ellison’s adaptation of his own chilling short story. See why Harlan had the TV episode credited to his pseudonym, Cordwainer Bird, in a script that—effectively—will be seen for the first time in this volume.
Featuring a beautiful cover portrait of Ellison by artist Iain McCaig, best known for his work on the Star Wars and Harry Potter franchises.
Attention Ellison Collectors: We have a smattering of The Babylonian Limited Edition of Brain Movies, Volume One available. This edition features 17 pages of material Ellison wrote for the TV series Babylon 5 and is signed by both Harlan Ellison and Babylon 5 creator J. Michael Straczynski. Click here for details.

Brain Movies: Volume Two: The Original Teleplays of Harlan Ellison: The second in the ongoing Brain Movies series collects six more of Harlan Ellison’s teleplays. Once again, the scripts are reproduced from Ellison’s private files, exactly as he typed them.
This 476-page paperback features:
A new introduction by Patton Oswalt, the voice of Remy in Ratatouille, Grammy-nominated comedian, and author of the New York Times bestseller Zombie Spaceship Wasteland.
“Killing Bernstein”—The unproduced teleplay adaptation of Ellison’s chilling short story originally intended for the short-lived ABC anthology series Darkroom. Appearing in an Ellison collection for the first time.
“Deeper Than the Darkness”—Ellison’s 90-minute Cimarron Strip teleplay, featuring Jack the Ripper in the Old West, that was famously ruined by the director’s poor grasp of logic.
“Mealtime”—The episode of Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea that resulted in an ABC censor having his pelvis broken by a model of the Seaview. After 47 years, Ellison’s original script finally sees the light of day without the tampering that led to the first appearance of his derogatory Writers Guild pseudonym: “Cordwainer Bird.”
“The Sort of Do-It-Yourself Affair” and “The Pieces of Fate Affair”—Two teleplays from The Man From U.N.C.L.E., featuring Ellison’s original storylines before they were revised for production. These scripts include an editor’s note explaining the scandal that kept the latter episode out of circulation for years.
“Phoenix Without Ashes”—The Writers Guild Award-winning pilot script for Ellison’s legendarily bowdlerized science fiction series, The Starlost. See Ellison’s original teleplay—the source of the recent New York Times-bestselling graphic novel—appearing for the first time in an Ellison collection.
And a beautiful new cover by World Fantasy Award-nominated artist Jill Bauman.

The Harlan 101 series offers a wide-ranging sample of Ellison’s 1700 short stories, essays, and novels, combining well-known, award-winning stories with never-before-reprinted works that haven’t been read by anyone outside the Lost Aztec Temple of Mars in decades.
Harlan 101: Encountering Ellison: Designed as both an introduction to Harlan Ellison’s vast body of work and as a manual for would-be writers, Harlan 101 collects the best of the author’s short fiction, seven essays on the craft of writing, and a collection of rarely seen oddities from Ellison’s extensive archives.
This 406-page paperback features:
A new introduction by New York Times bestseller Neil Gaiman, author of the Hugo Award-winning novels American Gods and The Graveyard Book, and creator of Vertigo Comics’ Sandman series.
The first appearance in a widely available Ellison collection of his newest short story—the 2011 Nebula Award-winning “How Interesting: A Tiny Man.”
Five Hugo Award-winning short stories, including “‘Repent, Harlequin!’ Said the Ticktockman,” “I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream,” “The Deathbird,” “Jeffty Is Five,” and “Paladin of the Lost Hour.” (Note: The television adaptation of “Paladin of the Lost Hour” is available in Brain Movies, Volume One.)
“Snake in the Crypt”—The never-before-republished story that Ellison rewrote to become “The Deathbird.” See how this average tale was re-worked into a Hugo Award-winning novelette.
The lost ending to “Paladin of the Lost Hour”—This ending only appeared in the very first publication of the short story in the 1985 anthology Universe 15; it has never been reprinted.
A disturbing and, as-yet, unfinished short story titled “Pet.”
Seven informative, yet entertaining essays on the craft of writing (four which have never appeared in an Ellison collection).
Plus sixteen other stories—some subtly revised for this publication—spanning Ellison’s career. From the 1950s comes “The Sky is Burning.” The 1960s are represented by “All the Sounds of Fear” and “Pretty Maggie Moneyeyes.” The Ellison of the 1970s appears in “At the Mouse Circus,” “Basilisk,” “Hindsight: 480 Seconds,” “The Man Who Was Heavily Into Revenge,” “Shatterday,” “Shoppe Keeper,” and “Strange Wine.” The 1980s offerings include “Broken Glass,” “Grail,” “On the Slab,” and “Prince Myshkin, and Hold the Relish,” while the 1990s bring forth “The Man Who Rowed Christopher Columbus Ashore” and “Sensible City.”

Harlan 101: The Sound of a Scythe and 3 Brilliant Novellas: For the first time in 50 years, Ellison’s second novel returns to print in a substantially revised and expanded form. Also included are three of Ellison’s best long-form stories.
This 336-page paperback features:
The Sound of a Scythe, Harlan Ellison’s never-before-republished second novel—appearing for the first time under the author’s preferred title (the original publisher renamed it The Man With Nine Lives without Ellison’s consent)—expanded by 25% from its 1960 publication and extensively rewritten by Ellison for this appearance. Virtually every page has been finessed by the author.
“Mefisto in Onyx”—The Bram Stoker Award-winning novel of a telepath who’s asked by his best friend to journey into the mind of a serial killer on death row.
“All the Lies That Are My Life”—Ellison’s novella about a world-famous writer who overshadows his best friend from beyond the grave.
“The Resurgence of Miss Ankle-Strap Wedgie”—A Veronica Lake-inspired tale of a rediscovered silver-screen star’s brutal return to Hollywood.
A new introduction by Emmy-nominated tv writer Ronald D. Moore, creator of the reimagined Battlestar Galactica and writer/producer of Star Trek: The Next Generation, Roswell, and HBO’s critically acclaimed Carnivale.
And a beautiful new cover by World Fantasy Award-nominated artist Jill Bauman.