Again, Dangerous Visions
by
edited by Harlan Ellison
Table of Contents
AGAIN, DANGEROUS VISIONS
edited by Harlan Ellison®
Copyright © 1972 by Harlan Ellison.
Renewed, 2000 by The Kilimanjaro Corporation.
AGAIN, DANGEROUS VISIONS
is an Edgeworks Abbey® Offering in association with ereads.com. Published by arrangement with the Author and The Kilimanjaro Corporation.
Harlan Ellison and Edgeworks Abbey are registered trademarks of The Kilimanjaro Corporation.
This edition is copyright © 2008 by The Kilimanjaro Corporation. All rights reserved.
Front Cover Illustration by Leo & Diane Dillon. Copyright© 1966 by Leo & Diane Dillon. Renewed, © 1994 by Leo & Diane Dillon.
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FOR BRIAN & LAURAINE KIRBY
. . .and baby makes three.
INTRODUCTION
An Assault of New Dreamers
Dumas wrote The Three Musketeers in 1844. Popular demand compelled him to write two sequels, Vingt Ans Après in 1845 and Le Vicomte de Bragelonne in 1848. Arthur Conan Doyle grew tired of Sherlock Holmes and ended his career as a criminologist (as well as that of Professor Moriarty as a master criminal) with a tumble over the Reichenbach Falls in "The Final Problem." The public would have none of it. Doyle, pressed to the wall, revived his immortal sleuth three years later with "The Adventure of the Empty House." In 1959 Evan S. Connell, Jr. wrote Mrs. Bridge and it became an instant classic of contemporary fiction. No sequel was possible, but the name became a literary catchphrase, and in 1969 Mr. Connell wrote Mr. Bridge. The creators of Captain America killed off that star-spangled warrior for Democracy and the American Way near the end of World War II. In the early Sixties the Sub-Mariner, Prince Namor of Atlantis, found Cap floating around perfectly preserved in a block of ice, and revived him. Isaac Asimov has had to suffer sequelization many times. No one will let him stop telling stories of Dr. Susan Calvin and her U.S. Robots and Mechanical Men, Inc.; stories of the Foundation; stories of Lije Bailey and R. Daneel Olivaw. Ike is resigned. They have lives of their own.
I did not want to edit another Dangerous Visions.
A man may enter the Valley of the Shadow once because he has a taste for danger or because he simply doesn't recognize the terrain. But once having gone and come back, only a fool returns. In November of 1965 I began work on what I thought would be an interesting little project, the creation of an anthology of new stories, in a new mode, for the field of speculative fiction. Four and a half years later, fifty thousand hardcovers and God only knows how many paperbacks later, Dangerous Visions has become a landmark (for once my ego-dreams came true) and somehow, magically, as though it had a life of its own, Dangerous Visions has forced the creation of a companion volume, bigger than the original, and I sit here in lonely desperation, trying to beat a publication deadline, writing another Introduction. We both arrive at the same conclusion: I am a monumental fool.
Let me tell you how it happened.
No, wait a minute. Let me first tell you what Dangerous Visions did, apart from selling more copies of an sf anthology than any other in recent memory.
First, the awards.
Fritz Leiber's "Gonna Roll the Bones" and Chip Delany's "Aye, and Gomorrah . . ." won the 1967 Nebula Awards of the Science Fiction Writers of America in the categories of best novelette and best short story, respectively—incidentally beating out nominees by this editor in both categories. (Seldom has a man so willingly aided his executioners.)
At the 26th World SF Convention in Oakland, in 1968, Philip José Farmer tied for the Hugo Award in the Best Novella category with "Riders of the Purple Wage" from Dangerous Visions (for purists, he tied with Anne McCaffrey's "Weyr Search"); and Fritz took a Hugo with "Gonna Roll the Bones" for Best Novelette. (I got two Hugos that year, so I didn't feel the need to bitch or begrudge.)
And the Oakland convention gave me a plaque for editing "the most significant and controversial sf book published in 1967."
Dangerous Visions appeared on BOOK WORLD'S list of the best paperbacks of 1969. It was reprinted by the Science Fiction Book Club and sold over 45,000 copies. The Literary Guild offered it as a bonus selection. It has had—or will shortly have—translations or editions in Great Britain, Germany, Japan, Spain, Italy and France. It almost single-handedly helped bring into being a counter-revolutionary movement in the genre called "The Second Foundation," dedicated to eradicating all that Dangerous Visions stood for. Whatever that is.
I personally received over two thousand letters from readers of the book ranging from a telegram from an influential New York editor who said Congratulations on publication day of the most important sf book of the decade to a Mrs. S. Blittmon of Philadelphia who wrote, in part: "When I picked up your book 'Dangerous Visions' at the library & read the 2 introductions I thought it was going to be great. I cannot tell you how sick I feel after reading [and she named two stories, one my own]. You say you had a Jewish grandmother (so did I) but I think not; she must have been Viet Cong, otherwise how could you think of such atrocities. Shame, shame on you! Science fiction should be beautiful. With your mind (?) you should be cleaning latrines & that's too nice. Sincerely . . ."
Go please the world.
Mostly, everyone was dazzled and delighted. The men and women who contributed the thirty-three original stories for Dangerous Visions went where no one had gone before and came back whispering of new tomorrows, many of them in ways the field of speculative fiction had never thought possible. Many people said my intention of publishing stories that were unpublishable in the commercial magazine markets because of taboos and editorial restrictions was only partially achieved. Others said only seventy per cent of the stories were top-grade. Others said sixty-two per cent, and one fan magazine found only twelve per cent of merit. Somehow, for all the pissing and moaning, the book managed to sell like ice cubes in Rio, managed to stand the field on its ear and alter its direction, managed to puff the prides of the writers who appeared therein, and became, as I say, a landmark. Ask anyone.
But when the dust settled, I was about eighteen hundred dollars out of pocket.
Through no frugality on the part of Doubleday, our publisher, I assure you. Strictly due to my own grandiose belief that the book was never big enough, never startling enough, never innovative enough. So I spent and spent. And as I said, when the dust cleared, I was in the hole. To date, I haven't yet hit the black on Dangerous Visions and I'm still repaying author Larry Niven for the loan he gave the book to purchase the last few stories. It doesn't matter. It was a prideful thing to assemble that book.
Only one author has vocally confessed to being upset with his participation in the project. I learned of that discontent only recently, and at risk of annoying the author and his agent, I really must relay the anecdote.
J.G. Ballard—easily one of the most innovative and serious contributors to the genre of speculative fiction—mentioned in an interview that he considered Dangerous Visions a hypocritical volume because I had asked writers to submit stories they felt could not be published in the traditional markets due to controversial content or approach, but when presented with it I had rejected "The Assassination of John Fitzgerald Kennedy Considered as a Downhill Motor Race."
The interview, in a magazine called Cypher, quoted Jim Ballard as saying I had rejected the story—ostensibly written specially for Dangerous Visions—on the grounds it would offend too many American readers.
When I read that item, I was horrified and stricken with a sinking-gut feeling . . .for I'd never seen the story. Though Ballard had, indeed, written it for the book, his agent in New York, instead of sending it on to me here in Los Angeles, had made a prejudgment that the story was offensive, and drawered it till they could return it to Ballard. Whether or not they contrived to advise Ballard I'd bounced it, I do not know, to this day. Subsequently, Michael Moorcock published the story in New Worlds in England, and it instantly drew the praise it deserved.
As one of the most exciting and controversial stories written in the field in recent memory, it would have been perfect for Dangerous Visions, and when I learned that I'd missed buying the piece because of a wholly unjustified clerical judgment, I ground my teeth in frustration. But to be accused of hypocrisy on top of the loss, was more than I could bear. Jim Ballard's story "The Recognition" in Dangerous Visions was a good story, a laudable piece of fantasy, but it simply wasn't in the same time-zone with "Downhill Motor Race," one of the germinal stories of the past decade.
When I met Jim Ballard—in Rio de Janeiro in March of 1969—we rehashed what had happened, and I thought we'd gotten the matter discussed, with mutual commiseration. Then came that Cypher quote. And though I've written him reminding him of the circumstances surrounding the "submission" of the story, there's been no reply. So if any of you out there run into J.G. Ballard, would you kinda sorta tell him what happened? I'd hate for him, or any of you, to grow much older thinking I was stupid enough to reject a story that clearly brilliant and noteworthy.
I've been known to be stupid, but I refuse to cop to a charge of brain damage.
And while we're on the subject of my stupidity, I have to own up to stupidity in having arbitrarily denied a space in Dangerous Visions to Thomas Disch, whose work these past four years has elevated him to the top level of sf writers. Because of personal blindness, I rejected a Disch story that should have been in the book and, when later I got to know Tom better, regretted my prejudice bitterly.
Fortunately, Disch is a better man than your now-humble editor, and he has written for this volume an even better story. We'll get to that in due time, but the mention of that omission on my part brings us to the next phase of this introduction:
Why another Dangerous Visions collection?
Well, Disch is one reason. Piers Anthony is another. And the forty other writers herein nail it down finally.
Even so, even though there were handfuls of authors who never made it into Dangerous Visions, I was quite literally dragged, kicking and screaming, to Again, Dangerous Visions. I'll tell you about it.
After DV came out (you'll excuse me if I resort to initialese; the book is long enough as it stands, over 250,000 words, without having to write out Dangerous Visions every time), in 1967, and the memory of what aggravation it had been to get the damned thing together had faded from Doubleday editor Larry Ashmead's mind, he considered the sales figures, added them to the amount of prestige the book had brought to the otherwise foundering Doubleday empire, and he decided there should be a companion volume.
I am too much the gentleman to comment on the history of congenital insanity in the Ashmead ancestry, save to report Larry is inordinately proud of a spinster Ashmead aunt who was said to have had repeated carnal knowledge of a catamaran, and a paternal great-grandfather who introduced the peanut-butter-and-tuna-fish ice cream sundae in the Hebrides.
For my part, I was still recuperating from DV, both physically and financially. The high praise and bitter denunciations of the book were totaling at that time, and I was sitting back, breathing deeply, and thinking how good it was that the entire DV affair was ended. That was early in June of 1968.
The phone rang.
It was Ashmead.
"Hi, Harlan!" He always opens his conversations that way with me. As though he's really genuinely pleased to be talking to me. Sneaky sonofabitch.
"Hi, Larry," I responded, "what's happening? How's the latest Allen Drury disaster doing?"
"Making a fortune," he said.
"You ought to be ashamed of yourself, actually taking money for dreck like that. Why don't you get into a decent line of work, like racehorse doping or pre-pubescent white slavery?"
"We also publish Irving Stone, Leon Uris and Taylor Caldwell. Any one of whom makes more than you make in a year, in any five minute period."
"I only wish on you plagues of mice, locusts, salamanders, Irving Wallace, Jacqueline Susann and Harold Robbins. Also you should never be able to get a good point on your pencils." I'd have wished Erich Segal on him, but who knew about that horror in 1968? We Jews have a fine mind for curses.
"Just called to tell you we're putting DV out of print."
"Terrific," I said. "It's the hottest selling anthology in sf history, nothing but rave reviews, colleges are starting to use it as a text and you put it out of print. What corporate genius came up with that one?"
"It's Doubleday policy."
"That's what Adolf Eichmann said. Do you broast chickens on the side?"
"How'd you like to do another Dangerous Visions?"
I hung up on him.
He called me back. "We were cut off."
"We weren't cut off. I hung up on you."
"Oh. What I said was: 'How'd you like to do another Dangerous Visions?' "
I hung up on him again.
So he called me back again and before I could say anything he screamed very shrilly, "DON'T HANG UP ON ME!"
"Okay," I said, "I won't hang up on you, but don't you use filthy language to me over the phone. I'm of a delicate nature."
"But why not? I think it would be a marvelous idea."
"I'll hang up on you again."
"Think of all the writers who've been influenced by the book. Writers who need that kind of showcase, writers who need a break, writers who want to spread their wings, writers who . . ."
"Ashmead, knock it off. I used that hype on you when I was trying to sell you Dangerous Visions in '65."
"I know. I was using the memo you sent me. You misspelled fledgling."
"Go away, I'm retired from the editing business."
But he persisted. Lawrence Ashmead is a very persistent man. Anyone who publishes Asimov has learned to be persistent. Also comatose.
So I decided the surest, quickest way to scare him off was to demand three times as much money as Doubleday had ever offered for a science fiction book. So I demanded it. (No, I'm not going to tell you how much that was, so stop bugging me.)
"It's a deal!" Larry chirruped. When he has swallowed a canary he
always chirrups.
I sank instantly and completely out of sight in a funk of watertight absoluteness.
"You has done me, Ashmead," I muttered, chewing my armpit. I felt like a satyr condemned to a hell of sex-crazed nymphomaniacs, each with her own special spirochete or Oriental fungus.
"Just remember how happy you were when DV won all those awards," he said. "Don't you remember how happy you were?" My mind's camera quickly flashed the memory behind my eyes. I remembered those Nebula citations Larry and I had picked up for the award-winning Leiber and Delany stories. I saw again my expression. It didn't look happy to me. It looked like a man who has just eaten a ripe persimmon. It looked like this:
Photo by Jay Kay Klein
I shrugged away the ghastly after-image of myself (in corrupted missionary tuxedo shirt and ludicrous facial stricture), of Ashmead (dapper, smug, already plotting my future horror) and said, "Okay, I'll do another volume of the damned thing, but I'll do it at my own pace. You have got to promise on the lives of your cats that you won't noodge me about deadlines. I can take ten years if I want to."
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