SOURCE: A review of Mefisto in Onyx, in Booklist, Vol. 90, No. 8, December 15, 1993, p. 741.

In the below review, Mort offers a positive critique of Mefisto in Onyx but criticizes Ellison for the manner in which the book was published.

The hype that seems always to accompany Ellison is present once again: for one thing, Mefisto is just a long short story, originally published in Omni. For another, in his acknowledgments. Ellison slams the editors at TOR Books for their “rudeness, ineptitude, shortsightedness, cowardice, ignorant arrogance, and boneheaded behavior,” presumably because they wanted his story to appear in one of their “forgettable anthologies,” rather than in book form. Then there's the hype of Ellison's didactic narration: a treatise on taste, for instance, turning on one's choice of briefcases. All that said, Mefisto remains a terrific tale full of twists and knock-out punches, about a mind-reader called in to assess the...