The Last Dangerous Visions

I've finally finished the long journey of reading THE LAST DANGEROUS VISIONS, assembled by Harlan Ellison from 1973 until his death in 2018, and finally completed by his literary executor J. Michael Straczynski.  I'm one of the people who's waited 50 years for it to appear.  So allow me to congratulate all who were involved, both living and dead, and offer this list of my favorite stories from the book.  Bear in mind that they're not necessarily the BEST stories (however that would be determined), simply the ones that moved and stimulated me the most.

1.  J. Michael Straczynski, "Ellison Exegesis."  Not a short story but a nonfiction account of Harlan's struggle with bipolar disorder.  Revelatory and heartbreaking, but ultimately an inspiring paeon to friendship.

2.  Stephen Robinett, "Assignment No. 1."  I detected a touch of Bradbury in this short but powerful tale of what all of us might face.

3.  Stephen Dedman, "The Great Forest Lawn Clearance Sale -- Hurry, Last Days!"  The final line had some of the punch of Clarke's "Billion Names of God."

4.  Cecil Castellucci, "After Taste."  Perhaps my favorite story in the book.  The shocker had some of the feeling of an EC Comcs SF tale, but goes far beyond it.

5.  Steve Herbst, "Leveled Best."  A short but powerful story touching on a classic SF theme.

6. Jonathan Fast, "The Malibu Fast."  As a New Yorker who always wanted to live in California, I naturally loved this one.

7.  Stephen Utley, "Goodbye."  Utterly original and immensely moving.

8.  Dan Simmons, "The Final Pogrom."  Timely and timeless.  As a Jew, I was particularly affected by it.

9.  Ward Moore, "Falling from Grace."  The funniest story in the book.

10.  Adrian Tchaikovsky, "First Sight."  The best "first contact" story I've ever read.

11.  Kayo Hartenvaun, "Binary System."  The author's first published story, and a memorable one.

12.  Mildred Downey Broxon, "The Danann Children Laugh."  The haunting Irish countryside atmosphere was beautifully done.

13.  Edward Bryant, "War Stories."  I confess I didn't fully understand this story, but it has some of the most powerful writing in the book.

A baker's dozen of delights.

The book is the third in a trilogy that includes DANGEROUS VISIONS (1967) and AGAIN, DANGEROUS VISIONS (1972), two classics of cutting-edge speculative fiction.  It's very satisfying to see that the trilogy is now complete.

Harlan Ellison (1934 - 2018)

Photo by Beth Gwinn/Getty Images. 

Harlan Ellison's death on June 27, while hardly unexpected, hit me hard. His was the latest in a series of deaths of men around my father's age, writers and artists whose work I had grown up with since my teens. Philip Roth, Tom Wolfe, Steve Ditko, and Harlan Ellison -- large parts of the verbal and visual accompaniment to to my life. None of them were as omnipresent and life changing as the words that Harlan sometimes characterized as his "reporting in." His urgent, unique voice makes me want to thank him even after he is no longer here to receive those thanks. Neither of us believed in an afterlife, but I'll say this anyway. Thank you, Harlan, for your stories and essays and books that helped me get through adolescence. Thank you for the wisdom and passion I continue to find in your work in my adulthood. Thank you for the kind words and encouragement you occasionally offered me on your website, Harlan Ellison's Art Deco Dining Pavilion. I sincerely doubt I would have broken through into being a published writer without your hard-headed but sympathetic noodging. I regret I didn't have the guts to approach you at Lincoln Center where they were showing the terrific film about your life, Dreams with Sharp Teeth, when I saw you chatting with your wife and some friends in the alcove before the film. I didn't want to bother you, and frankly, what could I say except what I'm saying now, only it would probably have come out sounding much worse then. Still, I wish I'd walked over and said hi. Thank you for living a life of unimpeachable integrity and the pursuit and achievement of artistic excellence. Thank you for being one hell of a raconteur, a brilliant writer, and someone who made this world a more exciting during the years you walked upon it. Thank you for making me laugh and think and realize that it's essential to give a damn.

I cheered myself up during the last week reading Blood's a Rover, the last book to be published in Harlan's Lifetime and one he held in his hands not long before he died.  It was a kick to see Vic and Blood's adventures continued after all these years of wondering what became of them. The book's short stories and snippets and teleplay, written over the course of several decades, may not quite add up to a novel, but they provide a good idea of what the novel would have been if Harlan had lived to complete it. I suspect it might have become the Huckleberry Finn of speculative fiction, and probably been banned in just as many libraries as Twain's classic. Reading "A Boy and His Dog" as part of this longer narrative caused me to realize how much your work is in the main tradition of American literature, particularly according to critic Leslie Fiedler's theory that the classic American story is about the relationship between the friendship between a white man and a non white man (African American, Native American, an alien, or, in this case a telepathic dog), and their efforts to escape being "civ'lized," as Huck Finn famously says. But like Twain, Harlan believes the romance between outsiders can ultimately lead to a greater and more truly humane civilization than the one that previously existed. Moreover, Blood's a Rover demonstrates even more clearly than before how artfully Harlan drew on his experiences running with a gang in Brooklyn and brought those insights to create a new kind of SF. Few people can write about the turf wars between gangs, whether in the 1950s or the near future, as well as Harlan did. And it's obvious to me now that there's more than a little of you in both Vic and Blood -- Vic, the classic Ellisonian man struggling to survive in an uncaring and dangerous universe, and Blood, the wise-cracking and wise-headed mentor who cares about the proper use of grammar in one's speech as much as in sheer survival. Finally, the book dispells the absurd notion that the story is in anyway misogynistic, a notion which Harlan attributed to the influence of the 1970s movie of his story. The teleplay in the last section of the book introduces us to Spike, a very different woman from the Quilla June of "A Boy and His Dog." Spike's resourceful, tough, street-smart and a good shot, with ultimately a good heart. She's a heroine that any feminist could be proud of in 2018. The book reaffirmed that despite the darkness in Harlan's work, he was a humanist who believed in the potential of our too-often misguided species. For most of his 84 years he successfully instructed, guided, chivvied, emlightened, and most of all entertained us. His many books on my shelves are a constant reminder that he's going to continue doing that for me for years to come. What can I say? I miss the guy.

Barry N. Malzberg at 75

On July 24th, one of America's most brilliant unknown writers turned 75.  Well, not quite unknown -- he's published scores of books since 1968.  But he's a neglected giant of post-60s speculative fiction, a contributor to Harlan Ellison's famed anthology Again, Dangerous Visions, a dystopian stylist whose unique visions of the future will alternately depress and enthrall you if they have not done so already, author of the novel that won the very first John W. Campbell Award, Beyond Apollo, savage critic and vital part of the sf world (as expressed in his trenchant essays collected in Engines of the Night and Breakfast in the Ruins), wizard of alternate histories and recursive SF.  In our grim era, his admittedly bleak view of man and the cosmos might well strike an even more resonant chord than it did when he first appeared on the scene nearly half a century ago.  Malzberg was a one-man American New Wave when he was turning out a new book virtually every month in the 1970s. An indefatigable gadfly and something of a genius to boot. Seek out his works or go to your graves forever deprived.