Introduction to
THE DOLL-HOUSE:
The act of compiling most anthologies (I observed, prior to starting work on the volume before you) is ludicrously easy. There are men and women who have made whole careers of the act. An act about as complicated as clearing one's throat. I will not for a moment minimize the distillation of taste and selectivity that must be present in the editor for an anthology to be enjoyable and well rounded; it is the sole quality a reader needs to make him an anthologist. (And when even that is absent, why, of course, the book that results is not fit to be purchased.) But essentially, even at its best, the assembling of other men's work into a coherent, or "themed," grouping is not a particularly laboring labor. It merely requires a complete backlog of old pulp magazines, a number of friends with eidetic memories, and a clear line to the copyright office to ascertain what is in the public domain.
The book in your hands is rather another matter. I don't intend to make any great claims for myself as an anthologist, or suggest that some special kind of bravery was necessary to take on the job (only a special kind of stupidity). But this book entailed the actual prodding and pushing of specific writers to unleash themselves, to open up fully and write stories they had perhaps always wanted to write, but had never felt they could sell. It took the laborious months of sifting through manuscript after manuscript to find stories that were offbeat and compelling enough to live up to the advance publicity this book has received, and be as rich and explosive as I felt they had to be to justify the existence of DANGEROUS VISIONS. Not just "another anthology" was good enough. It was, then, not simply the collecting of crumbling pulp-paper tearsheets or mildewed carbons from scrivener's trunks, but the creation of almost an entity, a living thing.
The initial list of contributors I hoped would appear in the final version to be published was constantly revised. One writer was desperately ill, another was in a two-year slump, a third was so shackled by his wife's doctor's bills he had contracted to do a garbage novel under another man's more famous by-line, and still another had left the country on assignment from a major slick publication. Revise, revise, grope and revise. And when it seemed impossible to build the meat of the book as I wanted it—in the early stages I panicked more readily than now—I contacted the literary agents and sent them the prospectus for the book, asking them to select submissions carefully.
From one agent I received string-bundled stacks of refuse dredged out of reject drawers. (One ms. in one batch had a reject note from Dorothy McIlwraith, editor of the long-defunct Weird Tales, stuck inside. I hesitate to think how long that one had been kicking around.) From another agent I received incredibly inferior work by a top-name professional in the mainstream. From a third I received a story so blatantly licentious it must certainly have been written for one of those "private printings" we hear about. That it was dreadfully bad must have been the reason for its not having been sold, for the sexual explications in it were sufficient to get it in print at least in Eros. But from my own agent, Robert P. Mills (a very good agent indeed), I received only two submissions. Both of which I bought. One was by John Sladek, elsewhere in this volume; the second was "The Doll-House" by James Cross.
I confess I had never heard of James Cross before receiving this story. He was not known to me as a science fiction writer, which isn't odd because ordinarily he isn't one. In point of fact, there is no such person as "James Cross." He is a pseudonym. He has asked that his true name be kept privileged information, and so it shall be, here at least. Thus it is no wonder I looked upon this manuscript as perhaps just another quickie submission, one of the scatter-gun offerings I had been getting from the agents. I should have known better. Bob Mills does not work that way. "The Doll-House" is a bravura effort. It is as singular and effective a story as John Collier's "Evening Primrose" or Richard Matheson's "Born of Man and Woman" or Charles Beaumont's "Miss Gentilbelle." It is a one-time happening. It is part science fiction and almost entirely fantasy and completely chilling.
Of "Cross," the author writes the following:
"For a year now I have been both professor of sociology at George Washington University and associate director of the university's Social Research Group, where my current assignment is directing a national study on the incidence of various psychosomatic symptoms and the use of psychotropic drugs among the adult population of the United States.
"Before that, for more than a decade, I was involved in specialized foreign research for the U. S. Information Agency and other branches of the government—work dealing with the collection of sociological and psychological intelligence and with the measurement of propaganda effectiveness. This particular type of research was my field since the beginning of World War II. Earlier, I was a newspaperman. I have degrees from Yale, Columbia and Southern California.
"I live in Chevy Chase, Maryland. I am happily married and have four interesting (if sometimes deplorable) children, ranging down from eighteen to two. My wife is a very good public relations consultant. In my spare time, when I am not writing, I am reading, sleeping, eating, traveling, playing golf or tennis, or watching ball games on TV. In the course of my life I have: been a theatrical press agent; taught at three universities; played semi-pro ball (left-handed knuckle ball and "junk" pitcher); been a naval officer and later a foreign service officer; written and acted in an abortive educational TV show.
"'James Cross' is a pen name. I started using it because: (a) I publish articles in various professional journals under my given name, and I did not want to get the two entities mixed up or give reviewers a chance at the easy jibe that as a writer of suspense novels I was a good sociologist and as a sociologist a good writer of suspense novels; (b) most of my writing was done while I worked for the government and had to be cleared in advance—even fiction. 'James Cross' was a way of making me unofficial.
"I have had four novels published to date: Root of Evil, The Dark Road, The Grave of Heroes, and in February 1967 Random House brought out To Hell for Half-a-Crown, a suspense novel with an international setting. All have appeared in hardcover and paperback reprint and have been translated into such languages as French, Italian, Swedish, Dutch and Norwegian. The Dark Road was serialized in the Saturday Evening Post. I have had two book club sales, but since they were Swedish and Dutch, the circulation was relatively limited and did not make me rich. Pity."
Ellison again. Thus "James Cross" prepares us for that for which there is no preparation: a genuine experience. "The Doll-House" is a marvelous story.
Those of you with tiny daughters will never again, after reading this story, be able to watch them playing on the floor with their Barbie dolls in their playhouses, without a chill quiver of memory.