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Deathbird Stories
by Harlan Ellison
Category: Mainstream
Description: Harlan Ellison's masterwork of myth and terror as he seduces all innocence on a mind-freezing odyssey into the darkest reaches of mortal terror and the most dazzling heights of Olympian hell in his finest collection.
eBook Publisher: E-Reads/E-Reads, 1975
eBookwise Release Date: February 2009
 
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Available eBook Formats: OEBFF Format (IMP) [490 KB]
Words: 101814
Reading time: 290-407 min.
"Savage...Powerful...Splendid...Extraordinary!"--Los Angeles Times "His stories will rivet you to the floor and change your heartbeat?as unforgettable a chamber of horror, fantasy and reality as you'll ever experience."--Gallery "Brutally and flamboyantly shocking, frequently brilliant, and always irresistibly mesmerizing."--Richmond Times-Dispatch
FOREWORD: Oblations at Alien AltarsGods can do anything. They fear nothing: they are gods. But there is one rule, one Seal of Solomon that can confound a god, and to which all gods pay service, to the letter: When belief in a god dies, the god dies. When the last acolyte renounces his faith and turns to another deity, the god ceases to be. They know the terrible simplicity of that truth, the mightiest and the mingiest of gods. They have seen their fellow gods go down to obscurity and banishment for lack of believers. They saw Achel�us wither when the cornucopia was ripped from his head by Heracles; they saw the twelve Aesir and their Asgardian heaven-home turned to mist when the Vikings took up the cross; they saw Ahriman dwindle and die when the ancient Persian empire was overrun; they saw Alaghom Naom, the "Mother of Mind," lost to men when the Conquistadores brutalized the Mayan religion; they saw Ama-Terasu, the Japanese sun goddess, go up in a nova of light brighter than the sun from which she took her name, on a special day in Hiroshima; and Amen-Ra, and Ana�tis, and Anath, and Anshar (and Kishar), and Anu, and Anubis, and Apollo ... all of them shimmered and became insubstantial as their temples were reduced to rubble. Volume after volume of sacred books of gods. And that's only into the "A's." As the time passes for men and women, so does it pass for gods, for they are made viable and substantial only through the massed beliefs of masses of men and women. And when puny mortals no longer worship at their altars, the gods die. To be replaced by newer, more relevant gods.
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