SOURCE: “Sweets from Harlan Ellison,” in Los Angeles Times Book Review, January 1, 1989, p. 9.

In the following review, Berman offers a positive assessment of Ellison's Angry Candy, praising the author's style and imagination.

Grow up. Harlan!, we've been wanting to tell him for the last, oh, 20 or 30 years. Angry Candy might make you stop wanting to tell him, which is fortunate, because it wouldn't do any good.

“This is a book of stories that you may think of as angry candy,” Harlan Ellison tells the reader, with characteristic bossiness, in his Introduction: then he asserts that “they will please and entertain.”

And damned if they don't. At least 8 of these 17 selections rank among the finest science-fiction stories I have ever read. The others are always solid, usually funny, frequently moving, sometimes brilliant and never less than entertaining. Piled one upon another, they accumulate a breathtaking sweep and momentum. Very...