Dangerous Visions 2 - [Anthology]

242 Pages·2011·1.29 MB·English

by  Ellison Harlan

Dangerous Visions 2

Edited By Harlan Ellison
Scanned & Proofed By MadMaxAU

CONTENTS

NEW INTRODUCTION
Harlan Ellison

THE MAN WHO WENT TO THE MOON—TWICE
Howard Rodman

FAITH OF OUR FATHERS
Philip K. Dick

THE JIGSAW MAN
Larry Niven

GONNA ROLL THE BONES
Fritz Leiber

LORD RANDY, MY SON
Joe L. Hensley

EUTOPIA
Poul Anderson

INCIDENT IN MODERAN
David R. Bunch

THE ESCAPING
David R. Bunch

THE DOLLHOUSE
James Cross
SEX AND/OR MR. MORRISON
Carol Emshwiller

SHALL THE DUST PRAISE THEE?
Damon Knight

INTRODUCTION TO THIS EDITION

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

<<Contents>>
THE MAN WHO WENT TO THE MOON—
TWICE

Introduction to

THE MAN WHO WENT TO THE MOON—TWICE

Originally, one of the lesser (but no less important) intents of
this anthology was to commission and bring to the attention of
the readers stories by writers well outside the field of
speculative fiction. The names William Burroughs, Thomas
Pynchon, Alan Sillitoe, Terry Southern, Thomas Berger and
Kingsley Amis were listed in my preliminary table of contents.
The name Howard Rodman was also listed. Circumstances
almost Machiavellian in nature prevented the appearance here
of the former sextet. Howard Rodman is with us. I am honored.
You are a fan of Rodman’s work if you watch television at
all. Because, if you watch TV in even the most peripheral way,
you do it to catch the best programs, and if that is the case you
have seen Rodman’s work. (A comment: how odd it seems to
me that science fiction fans, the ones who choose to exist in
dream worlds of flying skyways, cities of wonder, marvelous
inventions, dilating doors, tri-vid and “feelies,” are the ones who
most vocally despise modern television. The bulk of the fans I
have met, when they discover I spend part of my time writing
for the visual media, rather superciliously tell me they seldom
watch, as though watching at all might be considered gauche.
How sad it must be for them, to see television, space travel and
all the other predictions of Gernsbackian “scientification” turned
over to the Philistines. I suppose, in a way, it’s a small tragedy,
like having been so hip for years that you knew Tolkien was
great, and now suddenly finding every shmendrick in the world
reading paperback editions of Lord of the Rings on the IRT. But
it is a far, far better thing, I submit, to have TV as the mass
media it is, even as gawdawful as it is ninety-six per cent of the
time, than to relegate it to the hideously antiseptic fate
intended for it by the s-f of 1928.) Howard Rodman has been
nominated for and won more awards for television drama than
anyone currently working in the medium. His famous Naked City
script, “Bringing Far Places Together”, won Emmys and Writers’
Guild awards not only for himself but for the series, the director
and the stars. Students of exemplary teleplays will recall last
season’s Bob Hope-Chrysler Theater drama, “The Game with
Glass Pieces”. It was, in point of fact, Howard Rodman’s style
that set the tone for the best of both Naked City and Route 66
during their auspicious tenures on the channelways.

Howard Rodman was born in the Bronx, and decided at the
age of ten to be a writer. He took that decision seriously at age
fifteen and from fifteen to sixteen read a minimum of one
volume of short stories daily; from sixteen to seventeen read
only plays, five or six a day; and from seventeen to twenty-one
he wrote 3000 words a day: short stories, scenes from plays,