Exterminator!

Exterminator! is a short story collection written by William S. Burroughs and first published in 1973. Early editions label the book a novel.

It is not to be confused with The Exterminator, another collection of stories Burroughs published in 1960 in collaboration with Brion Gysin.

The collection contains a number of Burroughs' most popular short pieces, such as "Twilight's Last Gleamings", "The Discipline of DE", "Wind Die, You Die, We Die", "Ali's Smile", and "The Coming of the Purple Better One". Some of the stories, such as "Ali's Smile", had previously been published in other books and magazines such as Rolling Stone, Village Voice, Evergreen Review, and Esquire Magazine.

The title story is about an insect exterminator, a job Burroughs himself once held. Certain aspects of this story were used in the film version of Naked Lunch, with the main character William Lee (a portrayal of Burroughs) holding the same job at the film's beginning.

In the 1980s, actor Ed Asner recorded a spoken word adaptation of "Wind Die. You Die. We Die", while Burroughs and Kurt Cobain recorded a musical version of one of the stories as The "Priest" They Called Him.

Some of the stories were initially published elsewhere, such as "Ali's Smile", which was also later included in Ali's Smile/Naked Scientology. A different story entitled "Twilight's Last Gleamings" appears in the later collection, Interzone.