Hi, I'm David Bart Kurtley, author of the book Save Me Please and other stories,

and welcome to episode 591 of Geeks Guide to the Galaxy.

Today on the show will be discussing the short story collection The Top of the Volcano,

the award-winning stories of Harlan Ellison,

and reviewing 11 stories from the book that didn't appear in the collection Harlan Ellison's

greatest hits, which we reviewed back in episodes 583 and 586.

And those stories are, a boy and his dog, the region between, Basilisk, a drift just off the

islets of Langerhands, latitude 38 degrees 54 minutes north, longitude 77 degrees, zero minutes,

13 seconds west, Croatowen, count the clock that tells the time with Virgil Odom at the

East Pole, soft monkey, the function of dream sleep, the man who rode Christopher Columbus ashore,

and the human operators. And this will include spoilers for all of those stories, so just be aware of that.

And I'm joined today by my good friend Tom Gorencer, making his 34th appearance on the show.

He's the author of the business book Think Like Google.

The short story collection Intergalactic Refrigerator Apparement seldom carry cash,

and the popular science book

How It's Made, which he wrote for the Discovery Channel. His middle grade Nolfel, the magic

ski mountain, is out now. So Tom, welcome to the show. Thanks, Dave. I'm glad to be here.

Okay, so we're going to be starting off with a very famous Harlan Ellison story. This is, I mentioned one of my favorite Harlan Ellison stories that I read as a kid.

It's called A Boy and His Dog.

And so this story, it's set in a post-apocalyptic wasteland, a sort of Mad Max kind of wasteland,

where rape and murder are just everyday occurrences.

And the main characters are a teenage boy who's grown up in this wasteland,

...