The first installment of what was supposed to be White Wolf's 20-volume "complete works of Ellison" was big, beautifully designed -- and hugely disappointing.
The two books included in this single volume seem to have been chosen more for their titles than their merit. The first is Over the Edge, a mishmash of Ellison's late '60s fiction and essays, out of print for 26 years. The four new, previously uncollected pieces are mostly awful; "Walk the High Steel," in particular, would have best been left moldering in the forgotten digest magazine in which it originally appeared. But "Xenogenesis," a long essay examining the psycho side of sci-fi fandom, is fascinating and frightening.
The second book within this book, An Edge in My Voice, a collection of Ellison's columns from the L.A. Weekly and elsewhere, is as good as it was when first published a decade earlier. But no effort has been made to put the essays in current context; the updates advertised as "sprinkled throughout" are few and awkwardly inserted.
Such weaknesses, coupled with an astonishing number of typographical errors, made this an inauspicious debut in a promising series.
