It seems amazing that a writer like Harlan Ellison, with twenty years of work and many memorable stories behind him, has never been studied seriously and at any length before. This is surely because he writes fantasy, and fantasy as a genre is still more or less ignored, even today, when other, more specious "minorities" are having their day in the sun. I find particularly ironic the term "mainstream." Coined by writers of the 1930s to designate that other, better literature, it has helped drive into the ghetto what in fact has always been a dominant mode of literary expression in America. The kind of tale Ellison writes was done not only by Poe, but by Hawthorne, Melville, and Twain as well—mythical allegories which explore the mind and soul of a nation without a long cultural tradition or firm landmarks. Ellison belongs in this genuine mainstream. (p...