Subject: DANGEROUS VISIONS

From: [email-masked] (Variety Boston)
Date: 25 Mar 94 01:46:00 GMT

RE: Dangerous Visions

     It may seem odd to have finally gotten around to Harlan
Ellison's landmark SF anthology 27 years after it was
published, especially since I was 12 when it came out and
have had ample opportunity to read it for the past quarter
century.  Nonetheless, I have only just read it.
     While it is foolish to review a collection of original
stories that presented itself as being on the cutting edge in
1967, I wanted to reflect on how the stories have stood the
test of time when read in 1994.  My goal is not to ask
whether the stories are STILL cutting edge -- a pointless
exercise -- but whether they are still worth reading.  What
follows is, naturally, my own opinion.  Your mileage may
vary.
     On the off chance that there are people reading this who
have yet to read this collection, be warned: SPOILERS ARE
CONTAINED HEREIN.  I would rather write as a critic than a
reviewer, and not worry about giving away endings of stories
that have been in general circulation for more than two
decades.
     To leap ahead to the conclusion, my feeling is that
DANGEROUS VISIONS has not held up well. There are some
stories that still pack a wallop, and others that are good in
spite of no longer being "dangerous," but many of the others
have dated badly.

ELLISON: Let's begin with Harlan Ellison's introductions, not
only to the volume but to every story in the book.  They are
horribly self-indulgent, and as likely to produce a grimace
as provide a nugget of information about the author.  While
it amusing to read about such "young" talent as Roger Zelazny
and Samuel Delaney, it is not the 20/20 hindsight that causes
Ellison's words to grate, as it is his incessant self-
congratulatory tone.  There are certainly stories here that
fail to shock that WERE rather "dangerous" in 1967, but there
are other stories in here that aren't especially shocking
even by the standards of classic SF.  As Brian Aldiss notes
in TRILLION YEAR SPREE, the idea that the stories here were
on the cutting edge of SF says more about the insularity and
stodginess of SF in 1967 than anything else.  Certainly
compared to what was going on in the mainstream in that time,
there is little here that's especially daring.
     I am willing to concede that for the Ellison fan his
introductions may be fascinating.  Although I thoroughly
enjoyed a brief encounter with the author around 1977, I have
never been a fan.  It's not that I *dislike* his work.  It
simply hasn't appealed to me.  On the other hand, I have
always enjoyed the late Isaac Asimov's equally self-indulgent
introductory essays in HIS books, so perhaps it's simply a
matter of taste.

BLASPHEMY: No doubt in 1967 proclaiming the death or defeat
of God in an SF story was especially shocking.  Today, such
stories as Lester Del Ray's "Evensong," Damon Knight's "Shall
the Dust Praise Thee?," and Jonathan Brand's "Encounter with
a Hick" seem little more than graffiti.  Hey look: we can be
blasphemous, aren't we daring?  SF writers and fans like to
think they are especially open minded, but the condescension
of SOME towards those who maintain religious faith and
practice demonstrates otherwise.  These stories seem to exist
for the sole purpose of thumbing their nose at believers.
     The exception here is John Brunner's "Judas" which
posits a robot who has assumed the role of deity through
mimicking Christian theology.  He makes an interesting point
about how some believers will see everything through the lens
of their particular belief system.  Perhaps the lesson here
is one learned by such obviously religious writers as Orson
Scott Card -- critiques of religious organizations work much
better when the focus is on PEOPLE rather than an attempt to
attack the ineffable.

SEX: Aldiss, in TRILLION YEAR SPREE, suggests that most of
the taboos being challenged here are sexual in nature.  For
the most part that isn't true, although there ARE such
stories.  The biggest disappointment, IMHO, was Philip Jose
Farmer's "Riders of the Purple Wage."  For years I had heard
about this story, which won Farmer a Hugo award.  This may be
sacrilegious to some, but the story seemed to me to be little
more than a LOT of style and very little substance.  While
the style is impressive, it seems largely in service of some
very labored puns.  At the end of this LONG story (novella?
novelette?) I was hardpressed to see what it had all been
for.
     Robert Bloch's "A Toy for Juliette" is basically a
gimmick story (see below) but Ellison's instant sequel, "The
Prowler in the City at the Edge of the World," is an
interesting extrapolation on how people might turn to
vicarious violence for their sensual pleasure.  Here they go
back in time in the consciousness of Jack the Ripper, and the
idea of a jaded society looking for SOME sensation to make
life worth living works well.
     Carol Emshwiller's "Sex and/or Mr. Morrison" is one of
these annoying writer's exercises where simply having an
interesting idea is a sufficient excuse for not having much
in the way of characters or plot.
     The two stories that retain an ability to shock are
Theodore Sturgeon's "If All Men are Brothers Would You Let
One Marry Your Sister?" and Samuel Delaney's "Aye, and
Gomorrah...."  Sturgeon's story would probably still have
trouble getting published -- it is a defense of incest.  On
the other hand, it is not an especially good story, as the
final third is about as dramatic as PLATO's REPUBLIC
consisting almost entirely of philosophic debate.  Here, the
breaking of the taboo seemed to be paramount.  Delaney's
story stands up well (it won a Nebula) in positing neutered
spacefarers and the Earthers who are attracted to them.

VIOLENCE: Ironically, it is the stories about violence that
are most likely to retain the ability to shock, and also
stand up the best to the ensuing years.  Robert Silverberg's
"Flies" sends a space traveller back to Earth with the task
of transmitting human emotions to an alien race.
Unfortunately the process has rendered him totally amoral,
and he brutalizes everyone he comes in contact with.
     Stories like Miriam Allen DeFord's "The Malley System"
and Larry Niven's "The Jigsaw Man" focus on the criminal
justice system.  DeFord's penalogical concept is horrifying
and her conclusion is logical.  Niven's story is also
horrifying, but in the end it is a gimmick story (people are
harvested for spare parts) and the young Niven is too easily
taken with his gimmick.  The last page or so lands with a
thud.
     Keith Laumer's "Test to Destruction" may be the best
story in the book -- from a 1994 perspective -- after
"Flies." The premise is simple: a man is tortured by a
dictator using a device that will cause him to spill the
contents of his brain at the SAME time he has been chosen by
alien invaders for tests of the potential dangerousness of
the human species.  Laumer plays one off the other to great
effect, and the conclusion -- where we discover how the hero
is changed by the experience -- is the perfect twist.

DRUGS: For SF in 1967 to acknowledge that people were taking
recreational drugs was apparently a big deal.  While these
stories no longer shock, they hold up well.  Philip K. Dick's
"Faith of Our Fathers" is dated by its presumption of a
Communist Chinese conquest of the West, but is fascinating
for questioning whether individual hallucinations are
superior to collective hallucinations.  The idea is that
everyone is drugged and sees the Leader in one way, but each
of those given the antidote seem to see him differently.
     John Sladek's "The Happy Breed" also holds up well, with
its society that tries to make all citizens perfectly safe
and happy, and which ends up with people permanently
infantilized.  Brian Aldiss's "The Night That All Time Broke
Out" is a gimmick story, but as long as one doesn't question
the premise too closely, it is fun.  (The premise involves a
natural gas that makes one subjectively experience the past.)
     The one other drug story with an impact of Dick's tale
is Norman Spinrad's "Carcinoma Angels," where a man uses a
hallucinogenic cocktail so that he may directly battle his
tumors, and ends up being totally locked within himself with
no way out.  From Spinrad's afterword one gets the impression
that the "dangerous" idea here was making the story
explicitly about cancer.  As with Dick's Communists, it is an
element that dates an otherwise powerful story.  (His comment
that cancer is the "pox" of the 20th century seems almost
innocent in the era of AIDS.)

GIMMICKS:  The gimmick stories -- tales that exist largely to
shock us with a taboo-busting gimmick -- almost always fail
the test of time.  Frederik Pohl's "The Day After the Day the
Martians Came" (retitled "The Day the Martians Came" in THE
BEST OF FREDERIK POHL) is downright embarrassing.  Reporters
make crude racial and religious jokes about Martians, and a
black porter suggests that this shifting of bigotry towards
the Martians will make a difference in HIS life.
     Equally painful is Poul Anderson's "Eutopia," where the
surprise gimmick (revealed in the last sentence) is that the
protagonist is gay.  Clearly feelings in 1967 were different
in 1994 (Ellison's references to "faggots" are especially
embarrassing) but with the shock value neutered there's not
much else there.
     Fritz Leiber won a Hugo AND a Nebula for "Gonna Roll the
Bones," a story whose gimmick is that a man is rolling craps
with the devil.  It seems to be that stories of this nature
had been around for a long time before and while there's
nothing wrong with Leiber's story, there's nothing special
about it either.
     Roger Zelazny's "Auto-da-fe" exists largely as a bull
fight retold as a battle with cars. It's not especially
amusing or "dangerous."  At least it was short.  Brevity was
the chief attraction of Joe L. Hensley's "Lord Randy, My Son"
which seemed to suggest "The Twilight Episode" of "It's a
Good Life" which, if memory serves, was based on a previously
published story.  Thus there was nothing "dangerous" -- or
even original -- about this story, even back in 1967.
     The one gimmick story that worked (although it, too,
wasn't particularly "dangerous") was R. A. Lafferty's "Land
of the Great Horses" which explains why there are Gypsies all
over the world and what replaces them when their stolen
homeland is finally returned.  It's a one joke story, but
it's short and the joke is clever.
                             ***
     As noted, there are some stories that have held up
nicely, and I certainly wouldn't attempt to rewrite history
by saying that since most of the stories (again, IMHO) have
dated badly, therefore they were ineffective in 1967.
Indeed, one could argue that it was the SUCCESS of this
volume that make the stories so ordinary by contemporary
standards.
     However, DANGEROUS VISIONS seems to have blurred over
time.  If a story exists only to shock, does it serve any
purpose when the shock value fades?  For me, a real classic
endures even if after the forces that led to its creation
have faded from memory.  By those standards, DANGEROUS
VISIONS is more of a historical artifact than a classic.

Dan Kimmel
[email-masked]