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lisa_goldsteinHarlan Ellison first announced The Last Dangerous Visions, the third anthology in the Dangerous Visions series, in 1973. Various publication dates came and went over the fifty years since then, but the book never appeared. Before Ellison died in 2018 he made J. Michael Straczynski the executor of his estate, and Straczynski promised to finish the work.
And, amazingly, he did. Here it is, real, solid, out in the world. I want to make sure I give Straczynski full credit for his success, because the things I’m going to say next are not nearly as nice. (Though I have an idea for another, more positive post — I’ll see how this one goes.)
There are 23 stories in TLDV and a series of “Intermezzos.” Compare that with Ellison’s Table of Contents from 1979, which Straczynski reproduces in the Afterward: three volumes of approximately 100 stories for a total of 720,000 words. Ellison’s proposal feels like an intoxicating alternate history now, with new stories by Daniel Keyes, Vonda McIntyre, Michael Moorcock, John Varley, Avram Davidson, Edgar Pangborn, and Connie Willis, among others. I don’t know about you, but I would have loved to read “Himself in Anacreon” by Cordwainer Smith, or “Childfinder” by Octavia Butler. The Wikipedia entry for TLDV says these stories have already been published and I want to go dig them up, but like a lot of my good intentions I’ll probably never do it. *
Straczynski explains the drastic cuts, making a good case for why the anthology is so reduced. A lot of authors had grown impatient with the ever-receding publication date, bought their stories back, and sold them elsewhere. In addition, Ellison admitted to Straczynski that he’d accepted stories that “should be led out on a leash,” but that he couldn’t bring himself to cut them. Straczynski had no such compunctions. Finally, Straczynski writes that the reactionary climate of the seventies and eighties had authors self-censoring. “Most of the established writers who had gladly taken the freedom offered by those first two volumes… were now keeping their heads down to stay out of the line of fire, while the new writers were hesitant to piss off the Powers That Be who could end their careers before they had even properly begun.” **
But the anthology still somehow remains mired in 1973. It contains twenty men, three women (P.C. Hodgell, Mildred Downey Broxon, and D.M. Rowles), and one person who identifies as gender-queer, Kayo Hartenbaum — a gender ratio that these days rarely appears even in most conservative magazines. Straczynski explains that Ellison had originally included more women authors but that a lot of them had pulled their stories. To his credit, he had very much wanted to publish a story by Vonda McIntyre that Ellison had bought, but McIntyre’s estate had “decided to override Vonda’s express wishes on the grounds that the book would be too male.”
Most of the authors are from the US. Of the others, one is Australian, one English, one, Cory Doctorow, is from Canada but now lives in the US, and there are two for whom I can’t find a country of origin. I also can’t find any information on how many people of color are included in the anthology — which is fine by itself, but without that data I can only guess at a number, and my guess is one-half of one writer. That is, I think Ty Franck, who writes with Daniel Abraham as James S.A. Corey, is Hispanic, but I can’t track this down on the Interwebs. There are probably a few more that I don’t know about.
Straczynski was aware of the problem. He writes: “But I still felt there was something missing. The stories withdrawn over the years by women writers and writers of color had left the book demographically unbalanced in ways that hadn’t been the case when TLDV was first being assembled.” And so he asked for submissions from the following people: Max Brooks, David Brin, Cory Doctorow, James S.A. Corey, Adrian Tchaikovsky, and Cecil Castellucci.
I don’t know why Straczynski offers this list in his defense. Number of women: none. Number of writers of color: one-half, as I mentioned above. Straczynski will say, I’m sure, that he’d tried asking women and other WOC as well, but they’d turned him down or hadn’t responded. Well, TRY HARDER.
There’s a bigger problem, though, and this one doesn't have a solution. Since the seventies a lot of movements and manifestos have exploded through sf: cyberpunk, feminism, experiments with gender, grim-dark fantasy, a push for more writers of color and more writers from non-English speaking countries. Many of these tendencies tore the field apart for a while, but in the end it emerged stronger, a bit roughed up but also larger, more generous and thoughtful.
Most of the stories in TLDV were written before any of this. They have an ancient, musty feel to them, like a rarely visited attic. They’re set in the US or on spaceships and space stations that feel like the US, and they’re peopled by characters that are mostly male, white, and straight. ***
Of course there’s nothing Straczynski could have done about this. He’d been handed a time capsule, a dusty museum display from another era. Asking newer writers for submissions was a good start, though, as I said, he didn’t go far enough.
But the stories also lack the thrill and shock of the first two volumes. Maybe, as Straczynski says, people had stopped writing about taboo subjects. Maybe it’s impossible to recreate that long-ago excitement of the first two books. Maybe subjects that were dangerous once upon a time, like gay characters, are commonplace now. Maybe so many ground-breaking stories have been written, in part because of the Dangerous Visions anthologies, that it’s harder to come up with risky or prohibited topics.
The stories themselves aren’t bad; TLDV reads like several months of a better-than-average magazine. Except for the problems mentioned above, it doesn’t even feel all that dated, though every so often some old-fashioned tech pulls you up short. I liked Adrian Tchaikovsky’s “First Sight,” about a diplomat who shows a group of aliens how humans perceive things, with tragic results; Dan Simmon’s “The Final Pogrom,” in which a scientist thinks he has discovered a cure for anti-semitism, while another Holocaust rages outside his lab and blocks his efforts to release the cure into the world; and D.M. Rowles’s “Intermezzos,” dispatches from other realities, eerie and luminous.**** I’d recommend the volume for these and other stories, and for historical interest.
Someone somewhere is going to say that I’m bad-mouthing the anthology because I hadn’t been invited to submit a story. I don’t know what I can say to this except, “I’m not bad-mouthing the anthology because I hadn’t been invited to submit a story.”
* I heard one author on the 1979 list say that they wouldn’t mind if TLDV stayed in publication limbo forever, because their story had been written early in their career and was not very good. And no, it isn’t in the final volume — much to this person’s relief, I’m sure.
** I never noticed this, and I started publishing in the 1980s. On the other hand, I’m not an editor.
*** Exceptions are Brooks’s story “Hunger,” written as a letter from the People’s Republic of China, and Broxon’s “The Danann Children Laugh,” which could only take place in Ireland.
**** I knew a lot of people who went to Clarion the same year as D.M. Rowles. As the years passed and the anthology failed to appear, she lamented, “I’m a has-been, and I’ve never even been a been.” I wonder where she’d be now if TLDV had been published fifty years earlier.
And, amazingly, he did. Here it is, real, solid, out in the world. I want to make sure I give Straczynski full credit for his success, because the things I’m going to say next are not nearly as nice. (Though I have an idea for another, more positive post — I’ll see how this one goes.)
There are 23 stories in TLDV and a series of “Intermezzos.” Compare that with Ellison’s Table of Contents from 1979, which Straczynski reproduces in the Afterward: three volumes of approximately 100 stories for a total of 720,000 words. Ellison’s proposal feels like an intoxicating alternate history now, with new stories by Daniel Keyes, Vonda McIntyre, Michael Moorcock, John Varley, Avram Davidson, Edgar Pangborn, and Connie Willis, among others. I don’t know about you, but I would have loved to read “Himself in Anacreon” by Cordwainer Smith, or “Childfinder” by Octavia Butler. The Wikipedia entry for TLDV says these stories have already been published and I want to go dig them up, but like a lot of my good intentions I’ll probably never do it. *
Straczynski explains the drastic cuts, making a good case for why the anthology is so reduced. A lot of authors had grown impatient with the ever-receding publication date, bought their stories back, and sold them elsewhere. In addition, Ellison admitted to Straczynski that he’d accepted stories that “should be led out on a leash,” but that he couldn’t bring himself to cut them. Straczynski had no such compunctions. Finally, Straczynski writes that the reactionary climate of the seventies and eighties had authors self-censoring. “Most of the established writers who had gladly taken the freedom offered by those first two volumes… were now keeping their heads down to stay out of the line of fire, while the new writers were hesitant to piss off the Powers That Be who could end their careers before they had even properly begun.” **
But the anthology still somehow remains mired in 1973. It contains twenty men, three women (P.C. Hodgell, Mildred Downey Broxon, and D.M. Rowles), and one person who identifies as gender-queer, Kayo Hartenbaum — a gender ratio that these days rarely appears even in most conservative magazines. Straczynski explains that Ellison had originally included more women authors but that a lot of them had pulled their stories. To his credit, he had very much wanted to publish a story by Vonda McIntyre that Ellison had bought, but McIntyre’s estate had “decided to override Vonda’s express wishes on the grounds that the book would be too male.”
Most of the authors are from the US. Of the others, one is Australian, one English, one, Cory Doctorow, is from Canada but now lives in the US, and there are two for whom I can’t find a country of origin. I also can’t find any information on how many people of color are included in the anthology — which is fine by itself, but without that data I can only guess at a number, and my guess is one-half of one writer. That is, I think Ty Franck, who writes with Daniel Abraham as James S.A. Corey, is Hispanic, but I can’t track this down on the Interwebs. There are probably a few more that I don’t know about.
Straczynski was aware of the problem. He writes: “But I still felt there was something missing. The stories withdrawn over the years by women writers and writers of color had left the book demographically unbalanced in ways that hadn’t been the case when TLDV was first being assembled.” And so he asked for submissions from the following people: Max Brooks, David Brin, Cory Doctorow, James S.A. Corey, Adrian Tchaikovsky, and Cecil Castellucci.
I don’t know why Straczynski offers this list in his defense. Number of women: none. Number of writers of color: one-half, as I mentioned above. Straczynski will say, I’m sure, that he’d tried asking women and other WOC as well, but they’d turned him down or hadn’t responded. Well, TRY HARDER.
There’s a bigger problem, though, and this one doesn't have a solution. Since the seventies a lot of movements and manifestos have exploded through sf: cyberpunk, feminism, experiments with gender, grim-dark fantasy, a push for more writers of color and more writers from non-English speaking countries. Many of these tendencies tore the field apart for a while, but in the end it emerged stronger, a bit roughed up but also larger, more generous and thoughtful.
Most of the stories in TLDV were written before any of this. They have an ancient, musty feel to them, like a rarely visited attic. They’re set in the US or on spaceships and space stations that feel like the US, and they’re peopled by characters that are mostly male, white, and straight. ***
Of course there’s nothing Straczynski could have done about this. He’d been handed a time capsule, a dusty museum display from another era. Asking newer writers for submissions was a good start, though, as I said, he didn’t go far enough.
But the stories also lack the thrill and shock of the first two volumes. Maybe, as Straczynski says, people had stopped writing about taboo subjects. Maybe it’s impossible to recreate that long-ago excitement of the first two books. Maybe subjects that were dangerous once upon a time, like gay characters, are commonplace now. Maybe so many ground-breaking stories have been written, in part because of the Dangerous Visions anthologies, that it’s harder to come up with risky or prohibited topics.
The stories themselves aren’t bad; TLDV reads like several months of a better-than-average magazine. Except for the problems mentioned above, it doesn’t even feel all that dated, though every so often some old-fashioned tech pulls you up short. I liked Adrian Tchaikovsky’s “First Sight,” about a diplomat who shows a group of aliens how humans perceive things, with tragic results; Dan Simmon’s “The Final Pogrom,” in which a scientist thinks he has discovered a cure for anti-semitism, while another Holocaust rages outside his lab and blocks his efforts to release the cure into the world; and D.M. Rowles’s “Intermezzos,” dispatches from other realities, eerie and luminous.**** I’d recommend the volume for these and other stories, and for historical interest.
Someone somewhere is going to say that I’m bad-mouthing the anthology because I hadn’t been invited to submit a story. I don’t know what I can say to this except, “I’m not bad-mouthing the anthology because I hadn’t been invited to submit a story.”
* I heard one author on the 1979 list say that they wouldn’t mind if TLDV stayed in publication limbo forever, because their story had been written early in their career and was not very good. And no, it isn’t in the final volume — much to this person’s relief, I’m sure.
** I never noticed this, and I started publishing in the 1980s. On the other hand, I’m not an editor.
*** Exceptions are Brooks’s story “Hunger,” written as a letter from the People’s Republic of China, and Broxon’s “The Danann Children Laugh,” which could only take place in Ireland.
**** I knew a lot of people who went to Clarion the same year as D.M. Rowles. As the years passed and the anthology failed to appear, she lamented, “I’m a has-been, and I’ve never even been a been.” I wonder where she’d be now if TLDV had been published fifty years earlier.