With some authors, when you read their earliest work, and you can see the rough edges. There are flashes of brilliance, the promise of what’s to come with the benefit of experience. Then there are the writers who arrive fully formed, already operating at full power. As a teenage science fiction and fantasy fan in the ’70s, that happened for me with a couple of authors—James Tiptree, Jr. (Alice Sheldon) immediately comes to mind.

Then there’s Tom Reamy. An enthusiastic participant in fandom, his short stories were an immediate revelation when they arrived in the pages of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction and various anthologies. He was nominated for and won awards, and he seemed poised for a long, exciting career. Then he passed away from a heart attack at the age of only 42, a new story in his typewriter. His posthumously published novel Blind Voices, a dark, Bradburyesque fantasy, proved that he was just as talented doing longer work.

Under the Hollywood Sign is a complete collection or Reamy’s work, and it’s required reading for any fan of science fiction, horror, and fantasy, particularly the dark variety. The stories I still remember from my teen years, the ones that have stuck with me for decades, are all here—Twilla, Beyond the Cleft, The Detweiler Boy—and they are just as bold and brilliant as I remember. Another standout, the Nebula-winning San Diego Lightfoot Sue, is quite simply one of favorite short stories of all time.

Reamy was not afraid to delve into shadowy places, and some of these stories are dark indeed, but there is also humor and joy. Many of the stories are open ended, with an ambiguity that I love. He refused to lead the reader by the nose from beginning to end, but instead trusted them to follow the clues he scattered through the pages.

One other thing that makes this a must read: Included here is a never-before-published, 17,000 word story, Potiphee, Petey and Me, that was originally sold to Harlan Ellison for his fabled Last Dangerous Visions. It’s a fun, freaky, playful, downright gonzo piece of work that’s packed with enough ideas for an entire novel. It would have fit perfectly into the Dangerous Visions world. One can only imagine where Reamy would have gone had he survived.

It’s wonderful having all of Reamy’s work in one place, and I can only hope, as a lifelong fan, that Under the Hollywood Sign introduces a new generation to his work.