Stalking the nightmare
Stalking the Nightmare is a 1982 collection of short stories and nonfiction pieces by American writer Harlan Ellison. The short stories are interspersed with "Scenes from the Real World" sections, which are essays on a variety of topics. Although most of the stories had not previously appeared in any of Ellison's books, four of them were taken from his out of print 1970 collection Over the Edge.
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What Hacker News says
- I so loved that essay. I think it was in Stalking the Nightmare? My favorite was the story with the girl going nuts because he was standing on her mother's white carpet.
"Grail" is probably my favorite story from that collection.
Note to self: time to re-read!
- So, because I haven't seen it mentioned, go check out anything by Harlan Ellison. I will strongly suggest the Shatterday or Stalking the Nightmare anthologies. Those stories have some fucking teeth.
Science fiction (or speculative fiction, if you're feeling highbrow) is probably one form where I still regularly buy "Year Best <whatever>" anthologies...it's a form that is benefited heavily from short stories, because scifi is about the ideas, not so much the characters. Good science fiction has both, of course, but must have good ideas--lots of stories happen that have decent character development but the ideas stink.
I also would strongly recommend the Pump Six anthology by Paolo Bacigalupi; it's biopunk, I suppose, but pretty solid and plays well with the ideas of being past Peak Energy.
