The Last Dangerous Visions was a planned
sequel to the
science fiction
short story anthologies Dangerous Visions and
Again, Dangerous Visions,
originally published in 1967 and 1972 respectively. It is edited by
Harlan Ellison.
The projected third collection was started but controversially
never finished. It has become something of a legend in science
fiction as the genre's most famous unpublished book. It was
originally announced for publication in 1973, but other work
demanded Ellison's attention and the anthology has not seen print
to date. He has come under criticism for his treatment of some
writers who submitted their stories to him, whom some estimate to
number nearly 150 (and many of whom have died in the ensuing three
decades since the anthology was first announced).
Various difficulties delayed publication many times. As recently as
May 2007, Ellison has said that he still wants to get the book out
.
British
author Christopher Priest, whose
story "An Infinite Summer" had been accepted for the collection,
wrote a lengthy critique of Ellison's failure to complete the
project, published as "The Last Deadloss Visions" in the UK and, in
book form, as the 1995 Hugo Award
nominated The Book on the Edge of Forever (an allusion to
the Ellison-written Star Trek episode
The City on the Edge
of Forever) by Fantagraphics Books in the US.
The essay was once available online, but Priest has since requested
the essay be withdrawn from the
Internet.
1979 Contents List
It was announced in the April 1979 issue of
Locus that the anthology had been sold to
Berkley, who would publish the 700,000 words of fiction in three
volumes. These tables of contents were published in the June 1979
issue of
Locus. Story titles are
followed by an approximate word count. Also note that the totals
given for each book do not exactly match the published list.
BOOK ONE (34 authors, 35 stories, 214,250 words)
BOOK TWO (32 authors, 40 stories, 216,527 words)
BOOK THREE (36 authors, 38 stories, 214,200 words)
Note that these stories were either omitted from the listing in
error or were pulled from the anthology before the listing was
published:
- "Where Are They Now?" by Steven
Bryan Bieler (Sold to LDV in 1984, withdrawn in 1988)
- "The Great Forest Lawn Clearance Sale: Hurry Last Days!" by
Stephen Dedman (According to the
author's website)
- "Squad D" by Stephen King
(Submitted to LDV, but possibly not accepted)
- "How Dobbstown Was Saved" by Bob Leman
(Sold to LDV in 1981)
- "The Swastika Setup" by Michael
Moorcock (Withdrawn and replaced by "The Murderer's Song")
- "An Infinite Summer" by Christopher Priest (Withdrawn
in 1976)
- "The Isle of Sinbad" by Thomas
N. Scortia (Listed in Alien
Critic #7, 1973, but not in the Locus 1979 list)
Alternative publication of stories intended for the book
Several stories purchased for
Last Dangerous Visions were
eventually published elsewhere. Perhaps the first was Christopher
Priest's "An Infinite Summer", which appeared in Andromeda 1,
edited by Peter Weston and published in 1976.
Michael Bishop's story
"Dogs' Lives" was published in the Spring 1984 issue of
The Missouri Review. It was subsequently
reprinted in the 1985 edition of
Best American Short
Stories.
"Himself in Anachron" by
Cordwainer
Smith (died 1966), was published in the 1993 collection of
Smith's short fiction,
The Rediscovery of Man. Ellison
threatened to sue
New England Science
Fiction Association (NESFA) for publishing
Himself in
Anachron, sold to Ellison for the book by his widow, but later
reached an amicable settlement.
Nelson Bond's contribution, "Pipeline to
Paradise," saw publication in 1995 in the anthology
Wheel of
Fortune, edited by
Roger Zelazny.
It was reprinted in 2002 in Bond's second
Arkham House collection,
The Far Side of Nowhere.
Ellison has publicly acknowledged soliciting the story from Bond,
who at the time had retired from writing.
In 1999, DAW Books published an original anthology entitled "Prom
Night," edited by Nancy Springer (and Martin H. Greenberg,
uncredited), which contains
Fred
Saberhagen's
LDV story, "The Senior Prom." And in
2004, Haffner Press published a coffee-table retrospective of the
works of
Jack Williamson,
Seventy-Five: The Diamond Anniversary of a Science Fiction
Pioneer, which contains his
LDV story, "Previews of
Hell."
John Varley's "The Bellman",
which was published in
Asimov's Science Fiction
magazine in 2003 and has since been reprinted; and
Joe Haldeman's "Fantasy for Six Electrodes and
One Adrenaline Drip", which Haldeman had believed lost until
finding an old carbon copy of the manuscript and which was finally
published in his 2006 collection
A Separate War and Other
Stories.
In 2005 Haffner Press published a large reprint collection of
Edmond Hamilton's two "Star Kings"
novels and
Leigh Brackett's three
stories starring Eric Stark, called
Stark and the Star
Kings. The title story is the long-lost tale by both writers
which should have been published in
Last Dangerous
Visions.
Steven Bryan Bieler's story "Where Are They Now?" appeared in the
Spring 2008 (Volume VII, Issue 4) online magazine "Slow Trains"
.
In 2008,
Orson Scott Card published
"Geriatric Ward" in his collection of short fiction,
Keeper of Dreams. He wanted to see the
story published in
The Last Dangerous Visions, as
Dangerous Visions and
Again, Dangerous Visions had
essentially taught him the art of writing speculative fiction, but
he felt that, after so many decades, it would never happen.
At the time of this writing, these stories have also been
published:
See also
References
Wikis
Map
Search