Harlan Ellison
DEATHBIRD STORIES
TO COUNT LEO TOLSTOY
14 February 1910
“To me God does not yet exist; but there is a creative force constantly struggling to evolve an executive organ of godlike knowledge and power: that is, to achieve omnipotence and omniscience; and every man and woman born is a fresh attempt to achieve this object….
“The current theory that God already exists in perfection involves the believe that God deliberately created something lower than Himself when He might just as easily have created something equally perfect. That is a horrible believe…
“You said that my manner in [Man and superman] was not serious enough, that I made people laugh in my most earnest moments. But why should I not? Why should humor and laughter be excommunicated? Suppose the world were only one of God’s jokes, would you work any the less to make it a good joke instead of a bad one?”
“If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him.”
“It is expedient there should be gods, and, since it is expedient, let us believe that gods exist.”
“Men rarely (if ever) manage to dream up a god superior to themselves. Most gods have the manners and morals of a spoiled child.”
CAVEAT LECTOR
It is suggested that the reader not attempt to read this book at one sitting. The emotional content of these stories, taken without break, may be extremely upsetting. This note is intended most sincerely, and not as hyperbole.
Introduction:
Oblations at Alien Altars
Gods 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
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 Achelous wither when the
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.
Perhaps one day soon the time will pass for Jehovah and Buddha and Zoroaster and Brahma. Then the Earth will know other gods.
Already we begin to worship these other, newer gods. Already the Church fights to hold its own. The young grow away from the old religions, the world seems to swing between the old and the new; more and more each day interest in the occult, in the magical, in the phantasmagorical surges to the fore—leaving priests and rabbis and ministers concerned where their next god will come from.
This group of stories deals with the new gods, with the new devils, with the modern incarnations of the little people and the wood sprites and the demons. The grimoires and
They are a strange, unpredictable lot, these new, vital, muscular gods. How we will come to worship them, what boons they may bestow, their moods and their limitations—these are the subjects of these stories.
A New Testament of deities for the computerized age of confrontation and relevance. A grimoire and a guide. A pantheon of the holiest of holies for modern man.
Know them now…they rule the nights through which we move.
Kitty Genovese met one of them, as did the students of Kent State University. Black men have known them far longer than white men, but have been ill served by them.
So know them now, in these stories. Offerings can be made at their altars in new-car showrooms and gambling casinos and in crashpads and penthouses.
Worship in the temple of your soul, but know the names of those who control your destiny. For, as the God of Time so aptly put it, “It’s later than you think.”
