Mention the name Harlan Ellison, one of the most gifted short-story writers of the 20th century, and most people will think of a writer of fantasy, or science fiction, or absurdist humor. That’s if they remember him at all, since he hasn’t written much in the past decade, and in our MTV age, memories seem to last no longer than the time between the traffic light turning green and the honking of the horn behind you.

This extraordinary man, who has a brain large enough to hold every nugget of cultural arcana that the mind of man has seen fit to create, at one time had produced only two mysteries, more than a decade apart. Both won the Edgar Allan Poe Award.

Younger readers won’t remember a horrific crime that occurred in New York in the 1960s: the brutal murder in a New York street of a woman named Kitty Genovese. Thirty-eight people heard her screams for help while a man stabbed her repeatedly. No one did anything, except for the man who called from his high window for the attacker to leave her alone.

Miss Genovese crawled to the door of her apartment building but couldn’t get in. Five minutes later, the man returned and stabbed her again, then raped her, then stabbed her some more until she died. All the while, she screamed and begged for help. No one left the safety of their apartments. No one called the police. Men, women, and families left the pretty, petite young woman to her fate.

Ten years later, Mr. Ellison wrote “The Whimper of Whipped Dogs” about the moment that shamed all New Yorkers, and it won the 1974 Edgar for Best Short Story. Read it once, and it will haunt your dreams forever, as that terrible night will haunt forever the dreams of all those who didn’t want to get involved.

Fourteen years later, Mr. Ellison’s second mystery story, “Soft Monkey,” was published, and it, too, took first prize at the Edgar banquet.

Mr. Ellison is 71 years old now, with more energy than a kindergarten classroom full of children on speed, but much of his hard work lately has gone into a lawsuit he filed against America Online – who, in his opinion, was stealing from writers, which (rightly) offended his deep moral sense. The court finally agreed with that opinion, and he won – at the cost of several years of his life and virtually everything he had earned from a hugely successful career.

It may be a while before Mr. Ellison’s next book is completed. He has owed me a short story for an anthology for three years, and he promised to complete that same story for his wife for her birthday – three years ago. (I’m sending him this column to let him know I haven’t forgotten.) Since we can’t expect anything new for some time, let me tell you about a new edition of one of his least known books.

I admit I’ve been looking for an excuse to write about Harlan Ellison, and here it is. “Children of the Streets” (Severn House, 182 pages, $27.95) is a retitling of an early paperback original, “The Juvies.” Strangely, this new title was the book’s original title, but his publisher in 1961 wanted to use “The Juvies” because it was “juicier.” “Juvies” was the of the moment slang for juvenile delinquents and was commonly used in tabloid headlines because it fit better than the longer term.

Perhaps more strangely, the present publisher wanted a title change because he thought “juvies” might somehow be regarded as a derogatory term for Jews. I’m not making this up. So, 44 years later, for every wrong reason, Mr. Ellison got the title he wanted.

This is not his best book, and it has certainly dated over the years. As he points out himself in his introduction, the switchblade knives and zip guns used by the toughest gang members in that more innocent age have been replaced by Uzis or AK-47s. Now gang wars don’t result in broken noses or bloody legs, but innocents murdered in drive-by shootings.

The stories in this collection are mainly about tough youths who are in gangs, either because they want to be or because they have no choice. The first piece is an account of Mr. Ellison’s 10 weeks as part of a New York gang. He was young enough (and stupid enough) to think that risking his life was worth a good story. He was scared, and he got beat up, but he got a helluva story.

Titled “Ten Weeks in Hell,” it is a chilling and powerful piece about violent youths who fail to understand such rudiments of human intercourse as remorse, pity, kindness, and fairness. In themes that show up again and again in the book, allegiance to the other thugs in the gang, however blind and depraved that loyalty may be, is all that matters.

In another story, “No Game for Kids,” a street thug goes a little too far in a battle with a gentle professor who lives next door. Readers will naturally root for the victim of the idiotic cruelty of the teenage hoodlum. I won’t give away any endings, but believe me when I tell you that Mr. Ellison has surprises galore in this volume – as he does in all his books. He has written or edited 75 of them, and I can’t think of one that is predictable.

When I said this isn’t Harlan Ellison’s best book, that’s like saying something isn’t Mozart’s finest sonata: It’s still better than most people ever dream of being.

Mr. Penzler is the proprietor of the Mysterious Book Shop. He can be reached at openzler@nysun.com.