![]() First edition (original title) | |
Author | Harlan Ellison |
---|---|
Country | United States |
Language | English |
Publisher | Pyramid Books |
Publication date | 1958 |
Media type | Print (paperback) |
Pages | 190 |
OCLC | 9304637 |
LC Class | CPB Box no. 2970 vol. 20 |
Web of the City (originally published as Rumble) is the first novel written by American author Harlan Ellison. The novel follows the story of Rusty Santoro, a teenage member of the fictional Cougars street gang in the 1950s Brooklyn, New York. In order to research the book, Ellison spent time in an actual street gang in Brooklyn. His book Memos from Purgatory (1961) is a non-fiction account of his time in the Barons.
In 1954, Harlan Ellison — inspired by the juvenile delinquency-themed novels of Hal Ellson [1] [2] — decided to research and write a novel about the teenage street gangs of Brooklyn. Before writing the novel, Ellison became a member of the Brooklyn gang The Barons under an assumed name. The gang's territory was in Red Hook, considered to be one of the most dangerous neighborhoods in Brooklyn. He acted as "war counselor" for the gang for ten weeks before leaving.
After leaving the street gang, Ellison went to Basic Training at Fort Benning, Georgia, to begin his military service. The bulk of the novel was written during his spare time at the camp between mid-1956 and March 1957. In an introduction to the 2013 reprint by Hard Case Crime, [3] Ellison claimed he wrote most of the manuscript in the evening hours while sitting in the toilet with a board on his lap and his portable typewriter atop the board. The book was originally bought by Walter Fultz, an editor at the small independent publishing company Lion Books. The company went out of business before it could publish Web of the City, but Pyramid Books soon bought the rights to Lion's catalog. Pyramid changed the name to Rumble and published it in 1958, while Ellison was a Private in the army. The first Ellison knew of the title change was when he received a copy of the book (with other volumes) to review.
The plot revolves around the character of Rusty Santoro, a member of a fictional Brooklyn street gang. In the novel, Santoro is caught between his meager prospects in the neighborhood and obligations to his gang, The Cougars. Throughout the book he struggles with the prospect of leaving his neighborhood and his gang life behind. The novel depicts street fights, murders, and other realities of gang life in urban areas.
Harlan Jay Ellison was an American writer, known for his prolific and influential work in New Wave speculative fiction and for his outspoken, combative personality. His published works include more than 1,700 short stories, novellas, screenplays, comic book scripts, teleplays, essays, and a wide range of criticism covering literature, film, television, and print media. Some of his best-known works include the 1967 Star Trek episode "The City on the Edge of Forever", considered by some to be the greatest episode of Star Trek ever(he subsequently wrote a book about the experience that includes his original screenplay), his A Boy and His Dog cycle, and his short stories "I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream" and "'Repent, Harlequin!' Said the Ticktockman". He was also editor and anthologist for Dangerous Visions (1967) and Again, Dangerous Visions (1972). Ellison won numerous awards, including multiple Hugos, Nebulas, and Edgars.
Ralph Ellison was an American writer, literary critic, and scholar best known for his novel Invisible Man, which won the National Book Award in 1953.
A Boy and His Dog is a cycle of narratives by author Harlan Ellison. The cycle tells the story of an amoral boy (Vic) and his telepathic dog (Blood), who work together as a team to survive in the post-apocalyptic world after a nuclear war. The original 1969 novella was adapted into the 1975 film A Boy and His Dog directed by L.Q. Jones. Both the story and the film were well-received by critics and science fiction fans, but the film was not successful commercially. The original novella was followed by short stories and a graphic novel.
Rumble Fish is a 1983 American drama film directed by Francis Ford Coppola. It is based on the 1975 novel Rumble Fish by S. E. Hinton, who also co-wrote the screenplay with Coppola. The film stars Matt Dillon, Mickey Rourke, Vincent Spano, Diane Lane, Diana Scarwid, Nicolas Cage, Chris Penn, and Dennis Hopper.
Dr. Susan Calvin is a fictional character appearing in Isaac Asimov's Robot series of science fiction short stories. According to I, Robot, Susan Calvin was born in the year 1982 and died at the age of 82, either in 2064 or 2065.
The Outsiders is a coming-of-age novel by S.E. Hinton published in 1967 by Viking Press. Hinton started writing the novel when she was 15 and wrote the bulk of it when she was 16 and a junior in high school. Hinton was 18 when the book was published. The book details the conflict between two rival gangs of White Americans divided by their socioeconomic status: the working-class "Greasers" and the upper-middle-class "Socs". The story is told in first-person perspective by teenage protagonist Ponyboy Curtis. The story in the book takes place in Tulsa, Oklahoma, in 1965, but this is never explicitly stated in the book.
David John Mazzucchelli is an American comics artist and writer, known for his work on seminal superhero comic book storylines Daredevil: Born Again and Batman: Year One, as well as for graphic novels in other genres, such as Asterios Polyp and City of Glass: The Graphic Novel. He is also an instructor who teaches comic book storytelling at the School of Visual Arts in Manhattan.
Mau Maus was the name of a 1950s street gang in New York City. The book and the adapted film The Cross and the Switchblade and biography Run Baby Run document the life of its most famous leader Nicky Cruz. Their name was derived from the Mau Mau Uprising in Kenya.
Last Exit to Brooklyn is a 1964 novel by American author Hubert Selby Jr. The novel takes a harsh, uncompromising look at lower class Brooklyn in the 1950s written in a brusque, everyman style of prose.
Mark V. Ziesing is a small press publisher and bookseller. Active as a bookseller from 1972 to present, Ziesing was active in publishing from the mid-1980s into the late 1990s. The Ziesing publishing imprint specialized in science fiction, horror, and other forms of speculative fiction. Originally based in Willimantic, Connecticut and in partnership with his brother, he published two books by Gene Wolfe under the Ziesing Brothers imprint. He later published books by Philip K. Dick, Stephen King, Harlan Ellison, Howard Waldrop, Bruce Sterling, Joe R. Lansdale, and Lucius Shepard, among others. In 1989 he returned to his home state, to Shingletown, California, where he and his wife Cindy continue to operate a catalog-based book selling business under the name Ziesing Books.
Arthur Byron Cover is an American science fiction author.
Jove Books, formerly known as Pyramid Books, is an American paperback and eBook publishing imprint, founded as an independent paperback house in 1949 by Almat Magazine Publishers. The company was sold to the Walter Reade Organization in the late 1960s. It was acquired in 1974 by Harcourt Brace which renamed it to Jove in 1977 and continued the line as an imprint. In 1979, they sold it to The Putnam Berkley Group, which is now part of the Penguin Group.
Memos from Purgatory is Harlan Ellison's account of his experience with juvenile gangs when he joined one to research them for his first novel, Web of the City. It also describes the author's experience during an overnight stay in jail.
"The Discarded" is a science fiction short story by American writer Harlan Ellison. It was first published in the April 1959 issue of Fantastic and was later included in the 1965 short story collection Paingod and Other Delusions and the third volume of the audiobook collection The Voice From The Edge.
A Drink Before the War is a crime novel by American writer Dennis Lehane, published in 1994. It was his debut novel. It is the first book in a series focusing on Boston-based private investigators Patrick Kenzie and Angela Gennaro.
Rumble Fish is a 1975 novel for young adults by S. E. Hinton, author of The Outsiders. It was adapted to film and directed by Francis Ford Coppola in 1983.
The Deadly Streets is a collection of short stories published by author Harlan Ellison in 1958.
Harold "Hal" Ellson was an American author of pulp fiction whose work primarily focused on juvenile delinquency, a field in which he has been described as "one of the most popular" writers and as "legendary".
This is a list of works by Harlan Ellison (1934–2018). It includes his literary output, screenplays and teleplays, voiceover work, and other fields of endeavor.
The Amboy Dukes is a 1947 novel by Irving Shulman, his first.