"The Beast that Shouted Love at the Heart of the World" is a 1968 science fiction

Science fiction

Science fiction is a genre of fiction dealing with imaginary but more or less plausible content such as future settings, futuristic science and technology, space travel, aliens, and paranormal abilities...

 short story

Short story

A short story is a work of fiction that is usually written in prose, often in narrative format. This format tends to be more pointed than longer works of fiction, such as novellas and novels. Short story definitions based on length differ somewhat, even among professional writers, in part because...

 by American writer Harlan Ellison

Harlan Ellison

Harlan Jay Ellison is an American writer. His principal genre is speculative fiction.His published works include over 1,700 short stories, novellas, screenplays, teleplays, essays, a wide range of criticism covering literature, film, television, and print media...

. It won the Hugo Award for Best Short Story

Hugo Award for Best Short Story

The Hugo Awards are given every year by the World Science Fiction Society for the best science fiction or fantasy works and achievements of the previous year. The award is named after Hugo Gernsback, the founder of the pioneering science fiction magazine Amazing Stories, and was once officially...

 in 1969.

Publication history

The story was first published in the June 1968 edition of Galaxy Science Fiction

Galaxy Science Fiction

Galaxy Science Fiction was an American digest-size science fiction magazine, published from 1950 to 1980. It was founded by an Italian company, World Editions, which was looking to break in to the American market. World Editions hired as editor H. L...

, and was collected with other Ellison short stories as the first story in The Beast that Shouted Love at the Heart of the World

The Beast that Shouted Love at the Heart of the World

The Beast that Shouted Love at the Heart of the World is a short story collection by Harlan Ellison published in 1969. It contains one of the author's most famous stories, "A Boy and His Dog", adapted into a film of the same name...

in 1969. Subsequent publications have been in collections such as Dark Stars, edited by Robert Silverberg

Robert Silverberg

Robert Silverberg is an American author, best known for writing science fiction. He is a multiple nominee of the Hugo Award and a winner of the Nebula Award.-Early years:...

, in 1969, The Hugo Winners: Volumes One and Two, edited by Isaac Asimov

Isaac Asimov

Isaac Asimov was an American author and professor of biochemistry at Boston University, best known for his works of science fiction and for his popular science books. Asimov was one of the most prolific writers of all time, having written or edited more than 500 books and an estimated 90,000...

, in 1971, and as part of Ellison's own retrospective collection, Edgeworks 4, in 1997.

Synopsis

The story includes many related threads, starting with a man named William Sterog who goes on a killing spree after talking with a pest control man. In the next thread, an expedition discovers a new planet with a 37 feet (11.3 m), beatific statue on it. The statue has the face of Sterog. Next, a violent and insane seven-headed dragon is captured and "drained" using a technique invented by a man named Semph. Another thread involves Semph discussing ethics with a friend. Finally, Djam Karet (roughly translated as "the hour that stretches") investigates a field that pulses with violence and madness and it is revealed that a race of advanced beings have been "draining" madness from their world and dumping it on ordinary humans.

Style

According to Ellison, the story was intended as an experiment. It is not a sequential story but is written as though events were taking place on the rim of a wheel with everything coming together at the centre. The end result is that the structure of the story is difficult to analyse and only makes sense as a whole work.

Reception

The short story has been called a "marvelously effective meditation on the nature of evil" that weaves magic into its unpromising premise. As one of the stories that signalled Ellison's development into a thoughtful and mature fantasist and secured his reputation as a bold science-fiction innovator,

Other media connections

Harlan Ellison plotted a story, scripted by Roy Thomas

Roy Thomas

Roy William Thomas, Jr. is an American comic book writer and editor, and Stan Lee's first successor as editor-in-chief of Marvel Comics. He is possibly best known for introducing the pulp magazine hero Conan the Barbarian to American comics, with a series that added to the storyline of Robert E...

, for Marvel Comics

Marvel Comics

Marvel Worldwide, Inc., commonly referred to as Marvel Comics and formerly Marvel Publishing, Inc. and Marvel Comics Group, is an American company that publishes comic books and related media...

' The Incredible Hulk comic book, issue #140 (June 1971), under the title: "The Brute that Shouted Love at the Heart of the Atom".

External links

• http://www.nesfa.org/press/Books/Gaiman.html
• http://www.sfsite.com/01b/edge25.htm