It’s easy to forget, amid his various self-inflicted scandals, that Harlan Ellison is one of the most celebrated living writers right now, and still a hell of an SF writer. And the cheap paperback he wrote that started it all is finally back in print tomorrow.
One of my hobbies is chasing down hard-to-find books by SF writers, both in and outside the genre, in actual bookstores. And some of them are very, very hard to find: I spent a decade looking for Michael Moorcock’s Behold The Man, for example, before Mojo put it out a few years ago.
But I missed the reprinting of Harlan Ellison’s first novel, a crime story called Web of The City. This book is the first novel Ellison put into print and has a badass story behind it: Ellison, to properly write about Brooklyn street gangs, actually joined a Brooklyn street gang for several months.
It shows in his work. The reprint by Hard Case Crime hits stores and Kindles tomorrow, but you can check out an excerpt right now.
They circled, stepping, stepping, stepping carefully, measuring each movement. Footwork had to be close, because the slightest fouling of feet, and down a man could go. And that meant not only down. It meant out.
The ground was worn into a rough circle as they went tail-around-head past each other. The gang fanned out and watched, making certain an idle sweep of the blades could not touch them. The two boys bent forward from the shoulders, putting their bellies as far back as possible, for that was the direction in which trouble lay.
Feet widely spread, they stopped every few seconds, swinging, making certain they did not throw themselves off-balance.
Grunts and explosions of sweat marked their circular passage and soon Rusty felt his arms getting weak. He stooped slightly and it was a soft sight to Candle that the effect of the retching, the movement, the swinging, the tension, had taken hold. He moved in for the kill. But he was premature. Rusty caught the other’s arm as it came up, caught it on his other wrist, the hankie wound tightly, and Rusty let a squeal of pain loose as the blow ricocheted off. Candle’s hand had struck his wrist with impact and the shake threw Rusty off-balance. Candle was on him, then, with the knife coming back for a full overhead swing, and Rusty tossed himself sidewise. Candle went past, and the hankie snapped tight, dragging Candle almost off his feet.
Rusty moved back away, dragging Candle with him, and in a second, before the advantage could be gained, they were circling each other, both steady, both wary. The air was filled with the flash and flick of steel as each tried to slip one past. Rusty countered and parried each thrust from the deadly Candle and the stout boy did the same.
Rusty’s hair loosened from its rigid wave and flopped over his eyes. He could not waste a hand to swipe it away however. He could not blow it up with his lips, so he tossed his head quickly, right at the height of a full-arm swing.
It fell back and he resigned himself to the handicap. Candle’s hair was sandy, crew-cut, and gave him no trouble. But what he had considered an advantage—the heavy black leather jacket— was not. The jacket bunched against the inside of his elbows, made swinging difficult and cut short Candle’s reach at times.
Candle kicked out with a faking movement and Rusty leaped back, jerking his neck at the end of the hankie. The stout boy had been steadied for that. Then Candle was in close and the knife was around back of Rusty somewhere, his own arm pinned at his side. He fought in close to Candle, and they shoved at one another with their shoulders, edging one another a few inches, then back again.
Finally, Rusty shoved off and got his feet steadied for the swing he knew was coming. But it came from an entirely new direction. Candle’s knife hand stayed in sight, and his free hand caught Rusty in the kidneys.
Rusty’s face went pasty and he staggered back. Candle hit him again, this time with the handle of the knife, wrapped in his fist, in the side of the head, and Rusty started to fall. He grabbed out, and Candle came across with the knife once more. Rusty felt the razor-keen blade slice flesh between thumb and forefinger. He wanted to scream, but could not without drop- ping the hankie, so he wadded it more behind his teeth, and sank to his knees. Blood poured across his hand.
Candle stepped back for the death-swing and it came up like a jet from around the stout boy’s knees. Rusty jerked sidewise, throwing out one leg. Candle went down in a heap and the hankie popped from his mouth with a snap.
Rusty was on his feet in an instant and Candle lay there staring up at him, the hankie hanging ludicrously from Rusty’s thin lips.
The gang went insane. “Kill him! Jab him! Knife! Knife! Knife!” they screamed, and one hand shot out of the crowd to snatch away Candle’s blade from where it lay in the dirt. Another hand caught Rusty’s arm and shoved him forward. He stumbled and stopped.
“Get him, he was gonna put you down!”
Rusty stared down at Candle, lying on his elbows, at his feet. There was a queer mixture of fear and surliness on the boy’s heavy features. He had lost, but he was going to be angry about dying. It made no sense, but that was the way he looked. Rusty stood silently as the storm of directions grew behind him.
As he stood there, Candle’s cool, green eyes met his own and he saw right to the center of the boy. He saw all the garbage that Candle had substituted for guts, for integrity, for honesty; and Rusty was frightened again. Not so much frightened at how close, but scared because this was the way he had been, before Pancoast had showed him there were other ways than the ways of the gutter.
He knew he had slipped back and knew the gang would now expect him to resume his position at the head of the Cougars. He didn’t want that! He wasn’t going back to all that. Inside him, two warring natures fought for the mind of Rusty Santoro.
The hand holding the knife moved itself, of its own volition, and the blade reversed itself—overhand, so that one downward stroke would slash the throat of the terrified Candle. The stout boy sat looking up at Rusty, knowing his life hung by a thread, hung on that thread of decency—that he called cowardice—he knew was in the boy.
Rusty moved an inch forward and the gang went crazy.
“Kill him! Kill him! Knife ’im!”
Rusty tried to stop his feet, tried to say to himself, this is no good, but the days of the gang were back with him, smothering him like a blanket and he knew the only way he would be safe from an enemy was to kill the enemy. His arm came back and the blade poised there in nothingness for an instant, then started the downward arc that would slice deeply. The hand moved, and then it stopped.
All the hatred passed away. Everything was clear again. Clear and smooth.
“Clear and smooth,” Rusty said, to no one at all.
No one understood.
But they understood what he did next.
He put the blade under his boot and with all his strength bent upward. The blade did not give and he pulled up his foot, brought it down with a crack on the blade. The knife snapped in two, at the base of the steel, and Rusty let it lay there.
“I’m through,” he said.