Harlan Ellison's "The Last Dangerous Visions" and the Harlan & Susan Ellison Memorial Library

[Jan]

What would have interested me would be a series of books collecting all the stories Ellison acquired, with notes on historical context, and including Priest's Last Deadloss Visions, followed by an all-new anthology that would reflect diverse new writers. Folks like, I dunno, Ted Chiang, P. Djeli Clark, Sofia Samatar, Karin Tidbeck, Martha Wells, Silvia Moreno-Garcia, or whoever.It wouldn't have the impact one book might have, it wouldn't have been a huge seller and a media phenomenon, but it would have tracked the work Ellison did and the changes in SF over the decades.

What JMS is doing is neither fish nor fowl. It's not Ellison's Last Dangerous Visions. It's not a new, cutting edge anthology. I don't know if the world really is waiting for this particular version of the book.

Well, next time you're a major publisher, you jut put that little thing together, why don't you.

JMS had a huge challenge to try to ensure that the remaining stories Harlan had bought (many had been returned to the authors) and some modern authors and even a previously unknown/unpublished writer would honor the books that came before while being meaningful to modern readers. Only in that way can the publication of TLDV fulfil the mission of helping to establish Ellison Wonderland (The Lost Aztec Temple of Mars) as a library and museum.

 

[Steve Roby]

Well, it'll certainly be interesting to see how it all plays out.

 

[Gov Kodos]

I'll say it.. Dangerous Visions was overrated. had some good bits. Maybe it really was pioneering for the time, but I always found the new wave boring and self indulgent. I guess you had to be there.

I found it like Ellison's own writing, great when you were an angsty/angry teen but not so daring or edgy as an adult.

 

[publiusr]

That’s the proper reaction

 

[David cgc]

The Last Dangerous Visions is listed for sale from Blackstone Publishing, with a release date of October 1, 2024. Here's the cover-copy:

“These are not stories that should be forgotten; and some of you are about to read them for the first time . . . I envy you.” Neil Gaiman, #1 New York Times–bestselling author of American Gods,

An anthology more than half a century in the making, The Last Dangerous Visions is the third and final installment of the legendary science fiction anthology series.

In 1973, celebrated writer and editor Harlan Ellison announced the third and final volume of his unprecedented anthology series, which began with Dangerous Visions and continued with Again Dangerous Visions. But for reasons undisclosed, The Last Dangerous Visions was never completed.

Now, six years after Ellison’s passing, science fiction’s most famous unpublished book is here. And with it, the heartbreaking true story of the troubled genius behind it.

Provocative and controversial, socially conscious and politically charged, wildly imaginative yet deeply grounded, the thirty-two never-before published stories, essays, and poems in The Last Dangerous Visions stand as a testament to Ellison’s lifelong pursuit of art, representing voices both well-known and entirely new, including: David Brin, Max Brooks, James S. A. Corey, Dan Simmons, Cory Doctorow, and Adrian Tchaikovsky, among others.

With an introduction and exegesis by J. Michael Straczynski, and a story introduction by Ellison himself, The Last Dangerous Visions is an extraordinary addition to an incredible literary legacy.​

New editions of the prior two books in the series are also slated to be released this year, with Dangerous Visions coming out on March 26, 2024, and Again, Dangerous Visions on June 4, 2024 (the linked pages will also probably give you a decent idea of what TLDV's cover art is going to be, since they're supposed to be a set). I thought there was also supposed to be a new edition of Ellison's own short stories as part of this overall event, but, if there is, it must be coming from a different publisher, since those two were the only books I found by Ellison on the Blackstone website. On the other hand, they were the only two I found searching their website, so maybe a new Ellison anthology is going to be released by them, just not indexed currently, as with TLDV.

(I'm not sure Ellison would appreciate George R. R. Martin putting such a specific temporal box around when he was "at the top of his form" in his blurb for DV/ADV, but I thought it was kind of funny as someone who's not totally thrilled by Ellison's schtick.)

 

[Elder Knight]

From The Way The Future Was: A Memoir, by Frederik Pohl, 1978.

In Chapter 11, Pohl writes of being Harlan Ellison's editor.

... What I didn’t know was that Harlan was planning a role reversal. I began to hear about an anthology he was planning to edit, something called Dangerous Visions. The publisher involved said that, as near as he could figure out, what it mostly was, was stories that had been rejected by everybody in the business. Told that that didn’t seem like the best idea anybody had ever had, he added, “Well, according to Harlan, it’s because they’re so good and so different that everyone is afraid to print them. Except me,” he added, turning pale.

It is an article of faith with some writers that such stories exist, kept from an eager audience by the poltroon editors. It is an article of faith with me that this is hogwash. Some editors do hesitate to publish offtrack stories, but if the story is any good, some other editor, sooner or later, will snap it up. Then Harlan called me up:

“Fred, I want a story from you for Dangerous Visions, the kind of story that no editor dares to print.”

“Harlan, I don’t know what kind of story that is.”

“Shit, man! Of course you do. Like you’ve been printing all along in Galaxy!”

Actually, I think Dangerous Visions was a pretty good collection, and I’m pleased to be in it. My story is called “The Day the Martians Came.” Or should be. What it says in the book is “The Day After the Day the Martians Came,” because when Harlan realized what opportunity lay before him, he couldn’t help himself; he changed the title.​

 

[publiusr]

He and Alan Moore ever in the same room?

 

[David cgc]

Just bumping the thread since the day has been reached that many though would never come: The Last Dangerous Visions is officially available wherever books are sold.

 

[The Realist]

Pretty amazing. Unfortunately, like many of the book's promised publication dates, my interest is also decades past.

 

[Allyn Gibson]

Pretty amazing. Unfortunately, like many of the book's promised publication dates, my interest is also decades past.

Indeed. It's not Ellison's book. It's JMS's reconstruction, redaction, and reimagining of Ellison's book. The latter is not anywhere near as interesting to me as the former.

 

[Jan]

For those interested, here's a non-paywalled review of the book.

Harlan Ellison’s Final Scream Resonates in The Last Dangerous Visions

Harlan Ellison’s The Last Dangerous Visions has been one of the world’s greatest unreleased pieces of art for half a century. Against all odds, it is finally finished thanks to his close friend and literary executor, J. Michael Straczynski. It as good as hoped for, and it also serves as...

www.houstonpress.com

For those who are into audiobooks, JMS recorded a portion, "Ellison Exegesis", the first time he's ever read any of his work for the public.

 

[The Realist]

I was able to read a large chunk of Straczynski's "Ellison Exegesis" on Amazon's preview function, and the above review and another article I saw basically summarize the gist of it. It explains a lot. I loved Ellison when I was in my teens and twenties, and he was in fact a considerable influence on my politics and youthful worldview. I moved on a long time ago (in some ways Ellison spoke best to the ambitious adolescent mind, I think), but I still have a good bit of fondness for him, and it's sad to hear just how much he secretly struggled.

 

[Allyn Gibson]

I was able to read a large chunk of Straczynski's "Ellison Exegesis" on Amazon's preview function, and the above review and another article I saw basically summarize the gist of it. It explains a lot. I loved Ellison when I was in my teens and twenties, and he was in fact a considerable influence on my politics and youthful worldview. I moved on a long time ago (in some ways Ellison spoke best to the ambitious adolescent mind, I think), but I still have a good bit of fondness for him, and it's sad to hear just how much he secretly struggled.

Thanks for pointing out the Kindle sample. I went and read it myself.

Like you said, it explains a lot. It also isn't terribly surprising and lines up with what Christopher Priest wrote and published in The Last Deadloss Visions thirty years ago. (The Brian Aldiss and Greg Feeley letters in particular get at the issue--Ellison's undiagnosed bipolar disorder and the issues that caused his writing--almost exactly.)

 

[Daddy Todd]

I listened to Straczynski reading his "Ellison Exegesis" last night. It was a gut punch. I have to admit I got misty a couple times.

Cheers, Joe, for being Harlan (and Susan's) true friend.