Hello everyone, welcome back to like Razer Blade Pie, a bite-size book club

about the short speculative fiction of Harlan Ellison. My favorite author of all time, I'm not saying

the best writer of all time for reasons that will become very clear as we progress. Oh, maybe even

by that giggle, it might be clear to you already. But as I usually do, I wanted to say just a little

context up front, we'll be covering Repent Harlequin said the TikTok man today. Yes, it's a long name,

get used to it, it's Harlan Ellison. And it's a story that first appeared in a thing called

Pain God and other delusions, that's one word, Pain God. And to give you an idea of the stories

inside that collection, very early in Ellison's career, the cover is An Angel being tortured by a

demon who's kind of off frame. But just so the idea of like bad things, defiling good things,

this is not going to be a pleasant ride. And it starts with an introduction, as you know,

if you've been listening to the series, one of my favorite things about Harlan is he's not

mysterious at all. He explains all his stories. He does long, some say obnoxious essays before each

story saying, look, if you don't understand the story, it's about this. And if you think it's

best something else, you're fucking stupid. It's clearly about this. And I like that for reasons

that we'll discuss. But in the introduction to Pain God in all caps, he says, are you aware of how

much pain there is in the world? And then he does this long thing about how, yes, he is aware of

that. And sometimes it seems trite. Sometimes it seems profound. Sometimes it crushes him with the

weight of all the pain that there is in the world. And sometimes that seems like a silly self-centered

notion, right? So all the ways you can approach that thought. And he mentions a few different

kinds of pain, I think, are worthy of our attention. He says, the other night I had dinner with a

good friend, we talked about an anguish that they have been experiencing for a number of years.

She's afraid of dying alone and unloved. If you've never felt this pain, you're either an alien

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