by Victoria Silverwolf
Welcome to the last of our three discussions about an anthology of original fantasy and science fiction that's drawing a lot of attention. Love it or hate it, or maybe a little of both, it's impossible to ignore. I showed you the full wraparound cover the the first time, and offered a closer look at the front the second time, so here's the back cover. It gives you a convenient list of the authors.
As before, I'll give each story the usual star rating as well as using the colors of a traffic light to indicate how dangerous it might be.
Dangerous Visions, edited by Harlan Ellison
Art by Leo and Diane Dillion.
Go, Go, Go, Said the Bird, by Sonya Dorman
A woman desperately tries to escape her pursuers. Flashbacks tell us more about this dystopian world.
Saying anything more would lessen the impact of this intense little story. Ellison's introduction compares it to the work of Shirley Jackson, and that's a fair analogy. It's deceptively quiet and matter-of-fact at times, but full of icy horror at its heart.
Four stars. YELLOW for unrelieved grimness.
The Happy Breed, by John T. Sladek
In the near future, machines take care of all our problems, leaving us to enjoy a life of leisure. Of course, what the machines think is best for us may not agree with our own ideas.
This dark satire on automation isn't exactly subtle. It makes its point clearly enough, and follows it to its logical conclusion. The details of the characters' degeneration make it worth reading.
Three stars. YELLOW for cynicism.
Encounter with a Hick, by Jonathan Brand
Our smart aleck narrator tells us how he met a fellow from a less sophisticated background and what happened when he told the man something about the origin of his planet.
You'll probably figure out the punchline of this extended joke. Despite its predictability, I enjoyed the story's wise guy style. Others may find the narrator annoyingly smug.
Three stars. YELLOW for a wry look at deeply held beliefs.
From the Government Printing Office, by Kris Neville
Set at a near future time when childrearing has changed in an eye-opening way, this yarn is told through the eyes of a kid who is only three and one-half years old. Adults are bewildering creatures indeed!
The quirky choice of viewpoint, with its combination of precocity and naiveté, is what makes this story worth a look. I'm not quite sure what the author is saying about parents and children, but it's provocative.
Three stars. YELLOW for an unflattering portrait of Mom and Dad.
Land of the Great Horses, by R. A. Lafferty
All over the world, people with Romany ancestors feel compelled to return to a place that vanished long ago. But what will disappear next?
This synopsis fails to capture the author's eccentric style and unusual combination of whimsy and oddball speculation. If you like Lafferty, you'll enjoy it. If not, you won't. Like many of his works, it's something of a tall tale and a shaggy dog story. I dug it.
Four stars. GREEN for kookiness.
The Recognition, by J. G. Ballard
The narrator witnesses a woman and a dwarf set up a strange menagerie at night, not far from where a carnival is in progress. The mystery of the cages deepens as visitors show up.
I find this story difficult to describe. It's quite a bit different from the author's jagged, chopped up pieces for New Worlds, and from his decadent tales of Vermillion Sands. It's very subtle, and there seems to be more than meets the eye. The premise evokes thoughts of Ray Bradbury, but only in an extremely subdued way. Maybe haunting is the word I'm looking for.
Four stars. GREEN for intriguing writing.
Judas, by John Brunner
A robot sets itself up as God. One of the people who created it sets out to destroy the false deity.
The plot is simple enough, and the analogy between the worship of the robot and Christianity is made crystal clear. You may predict the twist ending, given the story's title.
Three stars. YELLOW for religious themes.
Test to Destruction, by Keith Laumer
The leader of a group of rebels is captured by the forces of a dictator. They use a gizmo to retrieve information from his brain. Meanwhile, in what has to be the wildest coincidence of all time, aliens approaching Earth also probe his brain, in order to learn how to conquer humanity. The combination is explosive.
Looking at my synopsis, I get the feeling that this isn't the most plausible story in the world. Since it's by Laumer, you know it's a fast-moving adventure yarn. As a matter of fact, it's so lightning-paced that it makes his other stories look slow. The reader is left breathless. There's a serious point made at the end, but mostly it's just a thrill ride.
Three stars. GREEN for action, action, action.
Carcinoma Angels, by Norman Spinrad
The delightfully named Harrison Wintergreen is a guy who has always gotten what he wanted out of life. As a kid, baseball cards. As a young man, women. As an adult, tons of money. Now he's got terminal cancer. Can he triumph over the ultimate challenge?
As Ellison says in his introduction, this is a funny story about cancer. Sick humor, to be sure. Bad taste? Well, maybe, but I think you'll get a kick out of it.
Four stars. YELLOW for black comedy.
Replace a bullfight with a battle between man and car, and you've got this tongue-in-cheek tale. All the details of a traditional corrida del toros are here, transformed to fit the automotive theme.
It's a one idea story, to be sure, but stylish.
Three stars. GREEN for elegant writing.
Aye, and Gomorrah . . ., by Samuel R. Delany
Space explorers are raised from childhood to be absolutely free of sexual characteristics. It's impossible to tell if they started off as female or male; they are completely neuter in every way. People known as frelks are attracted to them.
Amazingly, this is the first short story Delany ever sold, although others have already appeared in magazines. It's superbly written, as you'd expect, and explores sex and gender in completely new, profound ways.
Five stars. RED for unimagined forms of human sexuality.
20 20 Hindsight
Looking back at the book as a whole, it's clear that the level of stories is generally high, with a few clunkers. Not all the stories are dangerous, and they could have been published elsewhere. A few are truly groundbreaking. The Silverberg, Leiber, and Delany are the best. The Sturgeon is the biggest disappointment. The Farmer is going to start the most arguments. Put on your reading glasses, fasten your seat belt, and give it a try.
I think this final third is the strongest. In fact, the book gets stronger as you go. Sure, there are peaks and valleys all the way through, but the valleys gradually get shallower, and the highest peaks are later.
The Dorman really hit me. I can't say why, really; it just did. Much like some of Shirley Jackson's best work. Harlan's comparison is quite apt.
The Lafferty was pretty good, though the end didn't quite work for me. This might actually be a good starting point for readers who've never read his stuff. Odd enough to give you a taste, but normal enough not to put the uninitiated off.
The Ballard story is probably the one of his that I've liked best, although that's not the highest hurdle to get over. Strange without being too weird, though maybe a little too long.
The Spinrad was quite good. I agree with your four stars, but it just barely hits that mark. I liked it, but never really meshed with it.
Zelazny was a bit disappointing. Given the brief from Harlan, that's an author I'd expect to really push boundaries, but he didn't at all. This story could have sold anywhere. And he could have gone for a more Hemingway-esque style to fit the theme.
But, oh, oh, the Delany. What a marvel, even if it had been his 50th short story sale, let alone his first. It's the best story in the book and the most dangerous. And the author's afterword gave it even more oomph.
Overall, this is quite a collection of stories. It doesn't exactly live up to its claims, though. Very few of these stories couldn't be published somewhere. The Farmer, maybe, though that's more due to length than content. Silverberg might have had to sell to Playboy or Knight, but he'd have found a venue. Delany's really the only one who might not have been able to find a market, even though it deserves to be read more than any other story here.
I also enjoyed the Dorman (if that's the right word). I wrote extensively about the her story on my site recently. I think it gets a "RED" for me (unless I'm misinterpreting your rubric) for it's depiction not only of cannibalism but of interfamily cannibalism. While there are earlier examples (I lay some out in my review), they are much more muted mentions (Wilson Tucker's The Long Loud Silence in its restored form, Disch's The Genocides) that are more implied…
*I apologize for the errors ("its depiction" and "about her story"). Writing on my phone while at work. ALAS! Sorry.
I know I'm beating a dead horse a bit, but Delany really does make everyone else look like amateur hour by comparison, at least in this last stretch of the book. The Zelazny wasn't the worst, but it might be the most disappointing since we're well aware that he can be a lot more audacious. His story has the same basic issue that at least half the stories in Dangerous Visions have, which is that it could've been sold to F&SF and done fine. It's not dangerous.
The title has always seemed to me to indicate morality, to see things from a moral perspective. Was Ellison taking a different look at the science fiction field when he gave ab anthology this title? It was strangely paradoxical, if this interpretation was correct, because his own stories have been generally amoral.