Harlan Ellison (editor) - Dangerous Visions (1967)

 

Can there really be anyone wondering why I picked up this collection when I saw it, excepting I suppose those who haven't heard of it? I honestly don't want to think about the kind of person who hasn't heard of this collection or who doesn't know what it was, but anyway, Dangerous Visions was the one that changed everything, according to both Harlan Ellison and its subsequent reputation.

It's an anthology of short stories specifically commissioned for the collection, with nothing reprinted from any previous appearance in one of the digests - as was common practice at the time. Ellison was after the sort of material that might be too weird or edgy for Analog, Galaxy, and the rest, with the intention of bringing readers the cutting edge of science-fiction as it was deemed to be at the time - a parallel and complement to England's new wave showcasing how the genre had begun to vibe with the counterculture, so to speak.

So there's some good stuff here, and some great stuff, and at least a couple of masterpieces; but even with some of the contributions being so short - even shorter than Ellison's lengthy introductions in a couple of cases - five hundred pages is a lot. Dangerous Visions isn't a casual undertaking, and while it may be that one is expected merely to dip in every once in a while, that isn't how I read, and I'm sure it's significant that I drew greater pleasure from the first half of the book with honourable mentions warranted by Dick's Faith of Our Fathers and Philip José Farmer's Riders of the Purple Wage - even though I had to tackle that one twice before it made sense. Unfortunately, beyond these, there's such quantity here that I haven't retained much beyond a general impression of enjoying most of it, excepting Keith Laumer's Test to Destruction. Ellison's introduction to this one laments Laumer being known mainly for Retief the space detective - adventure yarns which he churned out to pay the bills and which aren't a patch on his lesser known serious work; and lucky for us, Test to Destruction is a fine example of his serious work, even though it's a suspense-filled thriller about space espionage. I gave up after a couple of pages so it may blossom into a masterpiece beyond that point for all I know. Test to Destruction is followed by Norman Spinrad's Carcinoma Angels and Samuel R. Delaney's Aye, and Gomorrah… so I got to those a bit quicker, which was nice; particularly as I hated the previous thing I tried to read by Delany.

I suppose these visions were dangerous at the time, given the percentage of the American population who believed that the Beatles represented Communism. If they seem less obviously dangerous in 2024, they have nevertheless mostly retained a certain spiky quality and have as such aged well.

The Einstein Intersection

Samuel R. Delany The Einstein Intersection (1967)
My wife picked this up as we were browsing in the used book store, handing it to me with the words, this looks like the sort of thing you would read. It did, and I had an outstanding mental note to get around to reading something by Delaney at some point or other, so I ignored the possibility of mockery and took it as a challenge.

The Einstein Intersection won a Nebula award, and I can sort of see why, at least up to a point. Delaney's writing is wild and literary, word jazz touching on Fritz Leiber, a distant cousin to beat poetry, so it's not insignificant that Gregory Corso should be referenced at the beginning of one chapter.

While day leaned over the hills I passed the first red flowers, blossoms big as my face, like blood bubbles nested in thorns, often resting on the bare rock. No good to stop there. Carnivorous.

I squatted on a broken seat of granite in the yellowing afternoon. A snail the size of my curled forefinger doffed his eyes at a puddle big as my palm. Half an hour later, climbing down a canyon wall when yellow had died under violet I saw a tear in the rock: another opening into the source-cave. I decided on nighting it there, and ducked in.

See what I mean?

The story occurs in some kind of post-human realm wherein this world of Einsteinian laws, having intersected with a universe following a different set of rules, has changed—changed, strangely, wonderfully, incredibly, as it claims on the back cover. I can sort of follow what happens, and see how this intersection relates to the narrative, but as to what any of it may be about, I haven't a fucking clue. Delaney himself suggests it's about myth in one of a number of excerpts from his journal - quoted at the head of certain chapters - in which he discusses the process of writing the book we are actually reading; which is nice, but unfortunately left me suspecting I'd rather have read Delaney's journal. The Einstein Intersection is stuffed with memorable and intriguing images, and I particularly enjoyed the canonisation of Ringo Starr as a mythic figure on equal footing to Orpheus, but I'm afraid I otherwise found it to be a bit of a dog's dinner.