Dangerous Visions 2 - [Anthology] Edited By Harlan Ellison

In November 1967, the introductory lines I’d written for Dangerous Visions in the January of that year began to be read throughout the science-fiction world. Sitting in Terry Carr’s apartment in Brooklyn Heights that January, backed against the wall with the final deadline for copy, I began my general introduction to the book it had taken me two years to construct.

“What you hold in your hands is more than a book. If we are lucky, it is a revolution.”

Now it is a year and a half later. As of March 12th, 1969, Dangerous Visions has sold over sixty thousand copies in combined trade edition and book club release. It has won for its various authors a fistful of Nebula and Hugo awards, and even a special citation from the 26th World Science Fiction Convention. (That citation, incidentally, reads as follows: “To Harlan Ellison, Editor of ‘Dangerous Visions,’ the Most Significant and Controversial SF Book Published in 1967”)

Now how about that, dreamers of the dream? Maybe there is a God after all. These thirty-five writers and artists and editors set out to put together the most significant and controversial book of the year, and by dingies they seemed to have done it.

On the other hand, if Dangerous Visions was such a breakthrough, why are there so many people who denigrate it? Why did librarians throughout the country refuse to stock it on their shelves? Why did the ex-editor of the SF Book Club get thousands of returned copies, with incensed letters from mommies, scoutmasters, teachers and clergy demanding to know why their kids’ precious bodily fluids had been polluted with this cesspool volume? Why has there sprung up a counter-revolutionary movement in the genre backed by something named John Jeremy Pierce, dedicated to pursuing a “holy war,” the goal of which is eradicating Dangerous Visions and books like it? Why, at symposiums from Berkeley to the Bronx, have critics railed and cursed this book? Why did one esteemed critic take it upon herself to name Dangerous Visions the bible of something she calls “The New Wave”, and then spend pages informing her readers how detestable it was?

And on the other hand (this being the world of science fiction, we can have as many appendages as we choose), why did one newspaper reviewer say, “Dangerous Visions is one of the best anthologies in the genre to be published in the last decade. And I rather imagine that it will stand unchallenged for a good long while”? Why does almost every author who appeared in the book speak with pride of his contribution to the project? Why did your humble editor receive over three thousand letters about the book ranging from this one, from a Mrs. S. Blittmon of Philadelphia:

Dear Mr. Ellison,

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]. 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 ...

to this one, from Monte Davis of New York City:

Dear Mr. Ellison:

Hoo-boy!!! And lots of similar exclamations which I will leave to your (doubtless fecund) imagination, all of which are intended to convey the idea that “Dangerous Visions” is one hell of a book. Leaving aside for the moment that ugly idea about the “new thing,” your green-jacketed beast is simply the most wildly entertaining thing I have encountered in many months. To one (like me) starved by the paucity of any sort of literary or intellectual freshness in the magazines, and the painfully small supply of readable new books, it came as a complete and total mind-fucker ...

It went on and on like that, and now, a year and a half later, it still hasn’t stopped. Entire issues of fan magazines have been devoted to this book; professional editors have literally gotten into feuds with their contributors over stories too-Dangerous Visions-like; entire careers of Big Name Writers have been altered by their work in the book; careers have been resuscitated and in one instance a career was throttled in its crib. But the changes in the science fiction field that seem to have stemmed from the publication of Dangerous Visions are even more striking.

The book opened the door with its popularity and controversy for a spate of “original” anthologies, intended to circumvent the narrow-thinking of much magazine science fiction editing. While Damon Knight’s Orbit series began before Dangerous Visions was released, I do not think Damon will pillory me for stealing his thunder when I opine that Dangerous Visions has made the market for his series larger, unlocked the thinking of many writers, and in many ways battered down the barricades for more unfettered writing, much of which he is now publishing in his anthologies. Harry Harrison’s new Nova collection of originals follows the pattern set by Dangerous Visions. Joe Elder’s The Farthest Reaches and Anne McCaffrey’s Alchemy & Academe are two more “original” collections that might well have foundered had it not been for Dangerous Visions.

The advance monies writers now get, as a result of the trailblazing chunk grabbed off by Dangerous Visions in both hardcover and paperback editions, has doubled and tripled.

But most important, we have damned well gotten that revolution. If you doubt it, just say “new wave” to Sam Moskowitz. If you doubt it, just suggest to Fred Pohl that he publish an all-New Wave issue of Galaxy. And sit in on the panel discussions at a science fiction convention: there are still the worthwhile and interesting discussions of “the red shift as source-material for astronomical sf stories”, but now—in addition—you hear learned treatises on Science Fiction as the Literature of Revolution, How To Write the Kinetic Mixed-Media SF Novel, Parallels of Symbolism in James Joyce and Philip Jose Farmer, Taboos in Magazine-Published Science Fiction. Everyone is talking all at once, and the dialogue has made this the most exciting period in the history of science fiction. The critics and the academicians have found that this lowly “fiction of the people” has some legitimate aspirations to greatness, that the men who have devoted their lives to this kind of writing are in most ways equal to the turks lauded on the New York Times bestseller list.

And while it is perilous to make conclusions about the effect Dangerous Visions has had on the field as a whole, or its lasting impact, it is safe at least to remark on the furor the book has caused, fulfilling its intent: mind-blasting.

In this brief introduction to the second paperback volume of the Dangerous Visions reprint, I’ve tried to bring you up to date on what has happened since its hardcover publication. In Volume Three I’ll tell you about the companion volume currently in the works, and how many of the writers in this first triad-volume have been affected by what they did in Dangerous Visions.

But right now, you are about to visit with ten men and women who—whether it was in terms of blasphemy or gentleness or black humor—dared to dream their own special dangerous visions. You can’t help but enjoy.

I’ll see you in the next volume. Stick around.

HARLAN ELLISON

Los Angeles

16 March 69

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