Love Ain't Nothing But Sex Misspelled

Harlan Ellison is so prolific and multi-faceted a writer that it's hard to pin him down as belonging to any one genre; in fact he actively resists such catergorizations and refers to his work not as science-fiction but as "speculative fiction", a more encompassing term. For those who think of Ellison mainly as a sci-fi writer, _Love Ain't Nothing But Sex Misspelled_ will show you a different part of his range. The stories (16 of them in my copy, but he dropped and added others in various editions) have a more directly autobiographical and intimate feeling to them than many of his more "speculative" works. From the sprawling 20-page introduction (as of the second edition) onward, the reader is taken on an emotional trip that will leave you changed (and probably wanting a cigarette). In his own words from the 2nd edition introduction: "These are all stories peripherally concerned with love, and they are included here because this book was, and remains, one of my personal favorites. And each tale to be told reflects another part of my fumbling attempts to understand the mystery of love. These stories have helped change my opinion of myself where human knowledge is concerned. They total up to almost 140,000 words of groping in the dark to find the answer... Here's hoping they shed a little light." They do.