Despite the strident campaigning of its adherents, science fiction has yet to break into the cultural mainstream. While Theodore Sturgeon, Ray Bradbury, Robert Heinlein, and a number of other writers have produced first-rate literature, only Kurt Vonnegut has been able to break out of the typecasting of 'science fiction' writer and achieve wider acceptance. Now Harlan Ellison, the one-time enfant terrible of science fiction, has his chance to grab for the brass ring with Pyramid books planning to reissue eighteen of his works.

Ellison is a master of the soft cover field, having written and edited over thirty paperbacks during the last fifteen years. While best known for his science fiction, Ellison has also been a short story writer, novelistrscreenwriter (he wrote one of the all time bombs, The Oscar), TV writer, and critic. A large portion of the Pyramid series consists of Ellison's work outside the science fiction/fantasy field.

While much of contemporary science fiction is a cerebral combination of neo-hippie utopianism and obvious analogies to the present, Ellison aims straight for the jugular. His Stories are intended as assaults on the reader's, consciousness . Placing a desire for immediate impact over craftsmanship, Ellison has said that he wants to create 'explosions, not cool meditative think pieces.'

So far, Pyramid has re-issued two collectrons of Ellison's science fiction, I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream (Pyramid, 95?0 and Paingod and Other Delusions (Pyramid, $1.25). Fueled by his own pessimism, Ellison's stories deal with the pain and the loneliness of life in the future. His characters are usually outcasts from worlds iV> which technology has triumphed over the human spirit. In 'The Discarded,' a group of physically deformed exiles are deceived one last time into bringing relief to their nonhandicapped counterparts. Ellison's domain of outsiders includes five people trapped inside a computer, the last human doctor in a robotized society, and the god of pain who comes to earth to see what misery his power has produced.

Once described by the New Yorker as 'an angry Woody Allen,' Ellison's science fiction has been heavily influenced by the black humor of the late Fifties and early Sixties. Madness, Ellison has written, is in the eye of the beholder. 'The Crackpots' are a race of people devoted to making fools of themselves or so their unsuspecting guardians believe. In the brilliant ''Repent, Harlequin!' Said the Ticktockman,' a free spirit rebels against a -time-controlled future with ironic results.

Fictional collaboration is a rare enter-' prise. The clash of artistic egos and the conflict of different styles make it a risky propositiofi. However, Partners in Wonder (Pyramid,;$1.50), a collection of fourteen stories co-authored by Ellison and other science fiction writers, proves that two heads can often be better than one. Whether Ellison's angry sensibility is mixed with the technical knowledge of Ben Bova, the ■ craftsmanship of Robert Silverberg, or the bizarre notions of Robert Sheckley, the results are uniformly impressive. Ellison has included introductions to each story explaining how the cpllaborations came about and how the authors feelabout the end product.

Those familiar only with Ellison's science fiction will be pleasantly surprised by Gentleman Junkie (Pyramid, $1.25), a collection of short stories, and Spider Kiss (Pyramid, $1.25), a novel about a Fifties rock star.

Gentleman Junkie consists of twenty-five stories about the 'hung up' generation. First published in 1961, it was the only paperback ever reviewed by Dorothy Parker in her Esquire book column. Her praise bought Ellison his first taste of public recognition.

In these stories, Ellison takes a sharp brutal look at the cool world of the hipster. Jazz musicians, bohemian artists, drug addicts, juvenile delinquents — these are the people Ellison met and lived with as a struggling writer in the , late Fifties. Despite his personal involvement in the scene, Ellison does not romanticize the hipster lifestyle, which comes across as aimless and unfulfilling.

Most of these stories originally appeared in Rogue, Knave, and Caper — early Playboy imitators aimed at an audience similar to that of the Twenties pulp magazines. Although they achieved fame in different genres, Ellison and Dashiell Hammett are members of the same literary family.

Originally titled Rockabilly when it first appeared in 1961, Spider Kiss is the story of the rise and fall of Stag Preston, a Presley-like singer. Using an appropriately trashy style, the everpessimistic Ellison has outdone himself. Told from the point-of-view of Shelly Morgenstern, Preston's flack, it is a sordid picture of the early rock scene.

Every single character in the book is motivated by an unquenchable greed. Only when Morgen stern quits his job does he begin to realize that he and Colonel Jack Freeport, Preston's manager, have created a monster. With Spider Kiss, Ellison produced a rock novel that has yet to be equaled.

From 1968 to 1970, Ellison was television critic for the Los AngelesTree Press. His columns have been collected in two volumes, The Glass Teat (Pyramid, $1.25) and The Other Glass Teat (Pyramid, $ 1.25).

Most television critics refuse to take the medium too seriously, thereby -blunting the force of their own criticism. Ellison, perhaps influenced by his own experience in the medium (asscriptwriter for Star Trek, Outer Limits, and other shows), fully appreciates the importance of television and its effect on the mass culture. For Ellison, television criticism becomes a no-holds-barred war against mediocrity.

During his two year tenure, Ellison came out in favor of TV violence ('dispensing with violence on TV is tantamount to dropping a Bufferin and thinking it'll cure cancer'), repeatedly supported dissenters, offered some inside info on the hazards of writing for television, and listed the shows providing the best accompaniment for sex on a waterbed. For his efforts, Ellison received the dubious rewards of causing the Free Press building to be bombed and having the original publisher of The Glass Teat back out of doing the sequel.

Taken as a whole, the Pyramid series serves as a huge Maileresque advertisement for Ellison. With an ego that knows'no bounds, EHison constantly intrudes into his writings. The reader learns of his career as a writer, his love ¶* life, his hatred of cops, the antiSemitism he encountered as a small boy in Ohio, his involvement in the civil rights and anti-war movement, and just about anything else one might want to know about him. Like most American writers, Ellison is his own favorite character.