Comments | nwhyte: January Books 4) Again, Dangerous Visions

nwhyte

January Books 4) Again, Dangerous Visions

Jan 17, 2008 00:20

4) Again, Dangerous Visions, edited by Harlan Ellison

This is the famous follow-up volume to the even more famous Dangerous Visions, which I read almost exactly three years ago; an anthology of 41 stories, mainly by the leading lights of sf as it was in 1972, with vast amounts of prefatory material by editor Harlan Ellison and an afterword from ( Read more... )

writer: joanna russ, writer: james tiptree jr, writer: harlan ellison, writer: ursula le guin, writer: james blish, reading resolutions 2008, bookblog 2008

Comments 6

blue_condition January 17 2008, 00:01:58 UTC

Agreed. ADV is about 1% of the book that DV was. I gave up waiting for TLDV in about... hm. A long time ago.

ccfinlay January 17 2008, 02:59:53 UTC

Some of the stories from TLDV have started to be published. John Varley's story "The Bellman" appeared in, I think, Asimov's a couple years back and was good. It has a scene with popcorn at the climax that sticks vividly with me, at any rate.

I see on wikipedia that 24 of the TLDV stories have been published now: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Last_Dangerous_Visions I've only read two of them so no guess if it would be any better.

nwhyte January 17 2008, 06:58:23 UTC

24 stories is enough for an anthology! Maybe someone should get them together and publish as The Last Dangerous Visions, Part One?

nickbarnes January 17 2008, 18:15:33 UTC

The list for TLDV got so insanely bloated that it was plainly never going to come out in one volume anyway. Long before it became plain that it was never going to be published in any form.

fjm January 17 2008, 10:34:50 UTC

This is the basic problem with the whole New Wave "let's be grown ups" thang: although there are some wonderful stylistic plays, for far too many of the men it seems to have been an excuse to let everything hang out.

ecbatan January 18 2008, 02:48:33 UTC

I read the book in about 1976, and I recall liking it more than that -- though still finding it self-indulgent. I liked Richard Lupoff's story, for instance -- though on reflection sometimes for reasons that apply to me as a teenaged boy, and might not apply now.

The Tiptree story remains an all time classic. (Not sure it really is about an unspoiled planet being wrecked by humans, mind you.) The Le Guin is nicely done but it's "Bad Ursula", didactic lecturing Ursula. Russ's story is very good, though.

A couple more nice stories -- Tom Disch's "Things Lost" I recall as being very good, for one.

But yes, on the whole, a disappointment.

I am bothered by the non-publication of The Last Dangerous Visions because I worry that great stories remain unpublished. You point out that the example of Again, Dangerous Visions suggests that maybe not so many great stories have been lost ... but it only takes one! And we know of at least one truly brilliant story that was first intended for TLDV: Christopher Priest's "An Infinite Summer". So, ( ... )