Men rarely (if ever) manage to dream up a god superior to themselves. Most gods have the manners and morals of a spoiled child. –Robert Heinlein, 1973
That quote is featured in the introduction to this book. If it offended you, well guess what, it was supposed to. Harlan Ellison has made a career out of, if not actually picking fights, then at least never pulling his punches. There’s no sugar-coating in any of his writing, no shading of the truth, and certainly no dumbing-down of anything. The man will dive into any topic and wrestle out its darkest, hardest-to-face aspects, and then shove them in the reader’s face. His writing is impossible to categorize; some bookstores file him in Science-Fiction, some in Literature. Mr. Ellison refers to his own work as Speculative Fiction, so let’s go with that.
Harlan Ellison has written for comic books, TV (remind me to review his book about writing a Star Trek episode sometime), movies, and he’s published several novels/novellas. But it’s his short-stories that first caught my attention; there’s simply no one out there who can pack that much fire and poison into just a few pages. So take a belligerent author with a genius for the short story format, and add an unflinching look at God, or gods, or Gods, and what you get is Deathbird Stories. It’s one of Ellison’s many short-story collections, and also one of my favorites. Not in spite of the bitter, angry, way these stories tear into the whole concept of faith, but because if it.
I’ve been a fan of Harlan Ellison for years, but I feel like he needs to have a warning label. The man comes across as very angry on occasion; I once got to see him not-really-seriously (although maybe a little) verbally unload on someone in an autograph line, ranting about the long trip to the convention, the location of the venue, and the stifling temperature in the room. Near as I could figure, the only thing the person had done to bring all of that on was to say, “Hi, Mr. Ellison, how are you?”
The way Mr Ellison finished up his rant could summarize his attitude to a lot of things in life: “How am I? I’m PEACHY FUCKING KEEN.”
What Ellison explores in this collection, and what he’s absolutely not scared of pissing people off about, is how humanity’s gods change. There have been thousands of gods throughout history, so what happens to them when all their worshipers are gone? There are as many views of God as there are people who believe in Him (Mother Theresa’s and Pat Robertson’s interpretation of God are as far apart as Homo Sapiens from Neanderthals) so what if it isn’t just our views or the times which have changed? What if they aren’t even the same God? Maybe gods die when we stop believing in them, and then they’re replaced by whatever it is we’ve come to need now. Think about the idea that the needs of a society of fishermen and carpenters would be very different from the needs of a society of skyscrapers and traffic jams.
In Deathbird Stories are some of the new gods we’ve created (or are still creating): gods of the freeway and the casino. Of neon lights and corporations and machines. Oddly enough, there are also the gods of not believing. And quite a few gods of violence.
These aren’t happy stories, so don’t expect sweetness and heavenly choruses. “Bleeding Stones” is downright vicious. “Along the Scenic Route” is hilarious, although less so when you think about how close we are to something like that actually happening. And “The Whimper of Whipped Dogs” is horrifying; it’s Ellison’s response to the murder of Kitty Genovese, and features the idea of a god who wants the exact opposite of heroes for worshipers.
And then some of them are beautiful even while they’re being horrifying. I keep wondering how “Delusion for a Dragon Slayer” would look with illustrations, with its main character the accountant-turned-fantasy-hero trying to win heaven for himself. And the last story in the book, “Deathbird” is my favorite. It’s beautiful and sad, it nearly brings me to tears every time I read it, and I would love to see it as a movie. It’s also the one that has the biggest chance of really offending someone, for various reasons.
As much as I enjoy it, this collection makes me very uncomfortable. Ellison even includes a warning in the beginning that it might not be the best idea to read all of these in one sitting. And I think it’s worthwhile to be uncomfortable, to read something that isn’t just mindless entertainment, especially when it comes to things like God.
In my better moments, I see religion as humanity reaching for something that exists and is perfect, despite our imperfect understanding.
In my darker moments, I see religion the way Ellison, and Neitzche, and (in a kinder way) Neil Gaiman sees it: we create our own Gods. And the only thing that any of them have in common is that they are, for better or worse, exactly what we need them to be.