Again, Dangerous Visions Read online

  "Sure, Harlan," he said. The voice of the asp.

  On June 28th, 1968 the contracts were signed and I began soliciting manuscripts for the book you now hold in your hands. Or propped against your belly. Or whatever.

  (As an aside, I also made sure no book club or paperback editions of Again, Dangerous Visions could be sold without my agreement, thereby assuring that the writers who contributed to this volume would have a good long trade edition run for their royalties before those deadbeats among you who wait for cheaper editions could obtain marked-down incarnations. The point of this aside is to assure those of you reading this book over the shoulders of your friends, that you won't be obtaining a cheapo version for some time, so you'd better rush out right now and buy this edition at full-price. Or rip it off from the bookstore. Either way it counts for full royalties.)

  As I got into the editing of this book, I found my greatest joy was in seeing stories by new writers who were just starting to flex their literary muscles. An only slightly less joyful joy was in seeing older writers, who'd established reputations for doing one certain kind of story, trying something new.

  The word had gotten around because of DV that asking for really far-reaching innovative fiction was not mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. And (despite what happened with Ballard) the writers responded.

  As a consequence, I find this second book in the DV trilogy much more daring and, well, "dangerous" than the first. Lupoff and Anthony and Nelson and Vonnegut and O'Donnell and Bernott and Parra and Tiptree get it on in ways I don't think would have been possible before the advent of Dangerous Visions.

  Now I realize that smacks of hoopla, and I've been pilloried repeatedly in the fan press for steadfastly and endlessly committing the crime. Understanding in front that this explanation contains not one scintilla of defense, let me advise all who will review or comment on this DV that I will do it again—the hyper-ventilating hurrah—because whatever uglies are laid at my door, it gets the word out for the rest of the men and women in this book. You see, in a very real sense, I am the custodian of this wonderland. It is my responsibility to see that every writer in this book gets the widest possible exposure for his or her work. It is a trust which I assume with considerable gratitude, and with a naked intent to smash down doors and bang on drums and buttonhole critics and beat on the ears of potential readers till they scream all right, all right, already, I'll read it . . .and then first-story writers in this book like Evelyn Lief and Ken McCullough and Jim Hemesath will have their chance, as well as established names like Ursula Le Guin and Ben Bova and Tom Sherred.

  It's not the gentlemanly way to do it, I suppose, but in a world where Evelyn Lief and Al Parra have to compete with Jacqueline Susann and Erich Segal, having the services of a flack commando can be a necessary evil.

  How it pains my mother to hear me called evil.

  The introduction to Dangerous Visions talked about that book (hopefully) being the opening shot of a revolution in the literary genre of speculative fiction. From that simple phrase came endless reams of criticism and artificial controversy. The phrase gave birth to another phrase: The New Wave.

  A few words should be expended here on the subject.

  We are a small but closely-tied community, we readers and writers of sf. We fight and love and honor and hate one another the way any small family does, and whenever one of us has the audacity to suggest that things here in the household might be run a little differently, ah, then we have recrimination, vitriol, backbiting, remorse. Danger threatens. Ta-rahhh! The lancers lurch to the rescue. The dragoons deploy. The hussars hurtle forward. To protect the reputations of Arthur C. Clarke and Hal Clement and Robert Heinlein. Oh, come on! Is someone putting us on? Does Norman Spinrad really threaten Isaac Asimov? Can John Jeremy Pierce truly believe that? No one in his right mind ever said "the new wave," whatever the hell that might be, was going to drive Murray Leinster or Poul Anderson or Frank Herbert off the printed page. In fact, Frank will have a story in The Last Dangerous Visions. (More about that later. Let's stick to the subject.) Poul was in the original DV. It's all bullshit. (Oops. There go a hundred library sales of this book. Ah well.)

  The New Wave is as much myth as The Old Wave, unless we choose to postulate The Old Wave as forming back around the time of Aristophanes and cresting out with, say, Randall Garrett.

  It's all bullshit, kiddies, and let's hear no more about it.

  DV and A,DV are composed of almost a hundred New Waves, each one just a single writer in depth, and each one going its own way, against the tides. Take it or leave it, we are a family of mavericks and toads and pteranodons, and I cannot see anyone driving Bob Heinlein anywhere he doesn't want to go.

  Does it parse? Hopefully.

  Onward.

  Even casual observers of the DV series will see that no one who appeared in DV appears in this book. Nor will any of those found in DV of A,DV be found in the final book of the trilogy, The Last Dangerous Visions. When I took on the job of editing this second book, and said there would be no repeats, I was advised I'd lost my mind, there weren't—simply weren't—enough other good writers to fill out a second book. Bullshit again, my children. Not only were there enough to fill this book with more writers than we saw in DV, but the overflow had to be put into a third volume. And we still haven't used up the riches.

  When DV was published, I thought I'd gathered in all the important writers. But since then Piers Anthony and Gregory Benford and Richard Lupoff and Gene Wolfe and Thomas Disch and the amazing James Tiptree, Jr. have burst on us, and there are more where they came from. Ours is a field of constant growth, of fresh thoughts and new dreams. Were I to edit a DV every month for the next ten years I wouldn't be able to keep up with the influx of writers.

  So why, the question will be asked, are certain writers conspicuous by their absence? Why no Bester, why no de Camp, why no Heinlein, why no George P. Elliott or Wilson Tucker or Alexei Panshin? Because I've asked each of these writers at least once, and most many times, to contribute to the books, but things just didn't work out. Bob Heinlein is into new novels and he hasn't been well. Alfred Bester is editing Holiday. George Elliott was offered a better showcase and more money by Esquire and he quite rightly took the deal. Alex Panshin tried to please me with a story but I didn't like it, probably because I had to read it in a restaurant in the company of twenty shrieking sf writers and their ladies (as well as some shrieking sf writers who were, themselves, ladies) and I was half coherent from an oncoming flu bout . . .but then again, maybe it just wasn't a very good story. In any case, he didn't try me again, for which I'm sorry. Alex is a fine writer.

  As for Wilson Tucker, well, that's another story:

  I don't know whether you've ever heard of Richard Geis, but in the event you aren't that much into sf, he is a very talented writer who also edited a magazine called Science Fiction Review for many years. It was a gathering-place and watering-hole for fans and professionals, where opinion and information was offered in between the name-calling. Well, in issue #32 of SFR, in August of 1969, Piers Anthony got into a hassle with Wilson (Bob) Tucker, and the following extract from an Anthony letter appeared:

  "In reply to my urging that he publish a good new sf story in Again, Dangerous Visions (so as not to let the volume go entirely to pot by being filled with the crud of neo writers like me), Bob Tucker says he would not have a fair chance with Harlan Ellison . . .Since it is important to me that Tucker be in that volume, I am forced to rear back on my hind limbs and tackle the bull by the balls:

  "Harlan Ellison—are you there? I challenge you, by the authority vested in me as one of the youngest and turkiest of the young turks, to publish the excellent sf story Bob Tucker offers you for Again, Dangerous Visions, to pay him at least 3¢ per word against hard and paper royalties, and not to tamper with one single word in it. (You may say what you please in your introduction, however.) Kindly signify your abject acceptance of these rigorous terms by so stating publicly in this fanzine.


  "OK, Bob, you're on your own now. Submit your story. (I always like to give the tired old timers a helping hand in coping with today's more demanding market.)"

  Well, Piers did it again.

  Foot in mouth, he did a no-no.

  Understand, I have nothing but respect for most of what Piers has written these last five years, but if he thinks that kind of challenge really incites either Tucker or me, he's wrong. I'd been in contact with Tucker long before Piers set his teeth on edge. In fact, Bob had submitted an excellent short novel for my consideration. After reading and enjoying it, however, I reluctantly came to the conclusion it was not right for this book.

  Again understand, it was a good book. It just wasn't offbeat enough for this particular madhouse. It could have been published by any mainstream publisher (unlike Piers's story or Lupoff's or Nelson's or Vonnegut's) and so I very reluctantly returned it to Tucker. Since then, Bob has written and seen published to wide acclaim, The Year of the Quiet Sun, a novel that should have satisfied Piers as to Tucker's continued strength as a writer.

  But you see, that's an example of the kind of challenge the DV books have come to represent, and it explains with one instance why some writers are not present here.

  Randy Garrett isn't here because, though he called one frantic November night and tried to hype me into sending him an advance against a story he would write, he never submitted a manuscript.

  Barry Weissman isn't here because his submission, a short story about a snot vampire was too vomitous even for me! You want to know what taboo turns me right around: snot vampires. Now pillory the editor for a closed mind.

  Alfred Bester isn't here because he hasn't been writing fiction, and Arthur C. Clarke isn't here because he made this movie with Kubrick and he's just now getting back into fiction, and Algis Budrys isn't here because . . .well, that's another story. But forty-two marvelous writers are here, and maybe another fifty will appear in The Last Dangerous Visions and perhaps even a few of the men and women I've mentioned here will pull free and submit something before TLDV closes.

  But one shot is all anyone gets. The DV writers aren't represented a second time here in A,DV because they had their chance, and most of them took it. With all the gunslinging newcomers coming at us, we have very little time to wait for others to get a second-wind. And besides, some of those stories they've written for the DV books can win awards when they show up in Orbit or Quark or New Worlds or Infinity or the other all-original anthologies that have proliferated since publishers saw how well DV did. (At this point we pause to let the generosity of my nature saturate the air. No, thank you, a shpritz of Glade will not be necessary.)

  It occurs to me at this point in the general introduction that a word or three might be proffered about my introductions. Opinion is split. Critics who review the book, and fans who read it, seem divided neatly into two camps: those who dote on the introductions and feel they offer amusing and insightful asides on the writers and their work; and those who flat-out despise the supplementary material that surrounds the fiction. The former view is typified by readers like Sherry Colston of Hannibal, Ohio who wrote, "I relished the candid verbosity in your Dangerous Visions prefaces. If you can't do anything else, you can communicate." The latter position is defined by comments like those of Mr. Edmund Cooper, a writer of considerable talent himself, who said (in the London Sunday Times of 2 May 71, reviewing the English edition of DV, containing the first half of the American edition, the second part to come later in the year): "Dangerous Visions does not seem to contain any dangerous visions. It does contain one foreword, two introductions, and sixteen stories, each with an introduction and afterword." Mr. Cooper didn't think much of the book, but in as brief a review as he gave it, to dote on the supplementary material strikes me as putting him in the latter group of introduction-assayers.

  As a well-known chowderhead has said, let me make one thing perfectly clear. People who don't care for the introductions should skip over them. It's that simple, really. They come free. There are over a quarter of a million words of fiction in this book, each word paid for and consequently reflected in the price you pay for the total volume. The introductory stuff is written by me, and I write it free of charge. I sit here for endless days and hammer out lead-ins to the stories that include as complete biographical and bibliographical information as the writers have provided me, and I spice it up with personal reminiscence and observations about the authors. Putting aside the purely factual information, there's maybe another forty thousand words of absolutely free wordage, provided for your possible amusement and edification. If introductions—and notably my introductions—bug you . . .turn to the stories. I don't like Bonanza much, but unlike the people who drove The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour off the air because it tinkered with their ideas of what other folks should view, I simply twiddle the dial and get another program.

  Because of the mixed reactions to the introductions, I had serious thoughts about simply presenting the stories without any attendant gimcrackery. But it occurred to me that that was censoring the pleasures of one group to satisfy the prejudices of another, and frankly, that idea stinks on ice. So in advance, to those fan critics and newspaperfolk who'll be getting this book for review (and most of you get the entire tome for free, so who the hell gave you the right to bitch?) may I suggest you worry about evaluating the fiction and leave the curlicues and gingerbread to those who care about such things? I mayn't? Well . . .

  And for those of you who are curious as to why I spend all this time doing the introductions, when I only get banged on the head for my trouble, understand this: I enjoy writing about my friends, about the writers of sf, about the real and very fallible human beings behind those flawless fictions. And as long as I'm going in debt, spending years cobbling up this monster, I'm damned well going to enjoy myself while I'm about it.

  There is much to be said for making oneself as happy as possible. Even if it means making Edmund Cooper miserable.

  Let's see, what else is there to talk about? I guess I should do some lofty number about how sf has come of age and how Kurt Vonnegut is on the cover of Saturday Review and how some of us are even asked to lecture at institutions of higher education, and all the textbooks now featuring sf stories along with Thomas Hardy and George Eliot, and all that jive, but frankly it's a drag; this is a book of good stories (I think), and you were all called here this evening to enjoy them. So I'll skip all the proofs that speculative fiction is hotter than sliced bread, and make just a few comments about TLDV, and we can all pass on through to the KEYNOTE ENTRY by Mr. Heidenry and the stories that follow him.

  The Last Dangerous Visions will be published, God willing, approximately six months after this book. It was never really intended as a third volume. What happened was that when A,DV hit half a million words and seemed not to be within containment, Ashmead and I decided rather than making A,DV a boxed set of two books that would cost a small fortune, we'd split the already-purchased wordage down the middle and bring out a final volume six months after this one.

  In that book will be such authors as Clifford Simak, Wyman Guin, Doris Pitkin Buck, Graham Hall, Chan Davis, Mack Reynolds, Avram Davidson, Ron Goulart, Fred Saberhagen, Charles Platt, Anne McCaffrey, John Jakes, Michael Moorcock, Howard Fast, James Gunn, Frank Herbert, Thomas Scortia, Robert Sheckley, Gordon Dickson and a gaggle of others. I'm waiting on stories from Daniel Keyes and a new kid named James Sutherland and Laurence Yep and a few more, but this is only a partial taste. There will be novels by Richard Wilson and John Christopher (yeah, that's right, full novels) and short stories by Bertram Chandler and Franklin Fisher, and really fine work by newcomers like Vonda McIntyre and Octavia Estelle Butler and George Alec Effinger and Steve Herbst and Russell Bates and . . .

  I grow excited. Let me compose myself.

  The four and more years since DV hit have been electric ones for our little field of literary endeavor. Previously, anthologies tended to contain almost exclusively the work of
"recognized names" in the genre. Damon Knight's Orbit series and Chip Delany's Quark series and the others, and DV, made it obvious that names are no longer the important commodity we have to sell. The newer writers, the ones who grew up on sf since the Forties, these are the ones who are taking our carefully-nurtured ideas and turning them inside out to show us visions of tomorrows we never dreamed ourselves.

  We're constantly being assaulted by these new dreamers, and if nothing else is accomplished by the DV books, it will be satisfying to me merely to know that by the time all three volumes are racked on your shelf—pushing off everything else there with size if not quality—we'll have given half a hundred young turks their turn.

  Hopefully, somewhere in this book there are more Hugo and Nebula winners, but that isn't the important dream. The important one is that herein contained are names you may never have heard before, of men and women who will dazzle and delight you, not merely for the time it takes to read this book (or as Liberty magazine would have put it in 1937: reading time, 2 years—6 months—2 weeks—11 days—19 hours—45 minutes—13 seconds) but for all the years to come in which speculative fiction will figure more and more prominently as a fiction for our times.