The Last Dangerous Visions (often abbreviated TLDV, sometimes as LDV) is an original speculative fictionanthology following Dangerous Visions (1967) and Again, Dangerous Visions (1972). Like its predecessors, it was edited by American author Harlan Ellison, with introductions to be provided by him. Ellison died in 2018 with the anthology unfinished.
The third anthology was started but, controversially, failed to be published and became something of a legend in science fiction as the genre's most famous unpublished book.[1][2] It was originally announced for publication in 1973, but did not seen print until fifty years later. Ellison came under criticism for his treatment of some writers who sold their stories to him, estimated to number around 120.[3] Many of these writers have since died.
British author Christopher Priest, whose story "An Infinite Summer" had been commissioned for TLDV in 1974 and withdrawn after four months without any response, wrote a lengthy critique of Ellison's failure to complete the project. It was first published by Priest in 1987 as The Last Deadloss Visions, a pun on the title of Priest's fanzineDeadloss where it appeared.[4] It proved so popular that it had two more editions, expanded with reader letters and other events, later in 1987 and 1988. In 1994 it was further expanded as The Book on the Edge of Forever (an allusion to Ellison's Star Trek episode, "The City on the Edge of Forever") from American publisher Fantagraphics Books, this was nominated for the Hugo Award for Best Related Work.[5] Priest also released the final draft online.[6]
On June 28, 2018, Ellison died, with the anthology still unfinished.
J. Michael Straczynski work
On November 13, 2020, the Ellison estate's executor J. Michael Straczynski announced that he would oversee the project to publish the book.[7][8] Straczynski's volume did not include withdrawn stories nor stories "overtaken by real-world events", so the final length was just a sixth of the originally intended, but included new stories from major contemporary science fiction writers as well as work from new authors, including one story from an unpublished writer, Kayo Hartenbaum. The book was advertised as containing "one last, significant work by Harlan which has never been published" which "ties directly into the reason why The Last Dangerous Visions has taken so long to come to light," although in practice this turned out to be an essay by Straczynski describing Ellison’s battle with bipolar disorder. The stories were accompanied by artwork from Tim Kirk (who had been commissioned in the 1970s). The rights to all stories not used reverted to the authors.
Ellison contents
The contents of The Last Dangerous Visions were announced on several occasions, beginning in the January 1973 issue #7 of the semiprozineAlien Critic.[9] Stories were being added, dropped, or substituted between each announced version. The most complete version was announced in 1979; listed were 113 stories by 102 authors, to be collected in three volumes.
Contents as of 1979
It was announced in the April 1979 issue of the Locus magazine that the anthology had been sold to Berkley Books, which planned to publish the 645,000 words of fiction in three volumes. A table of contents was published in the June 1979 issue (#222). Story titles are followed by an approximate word count (note that the totals given do not match the sum of individual stories; Ellison may have added his introductions to each volume). Authors marked with a '†' have died since submitting their work to Ellison. Stories marked with a '‡' have been published elsewhere by the author or their estate.
Book One
34 authors, 35 stories, 214,250 words.
"Among the Beautiful Bright Children"‡ by James E. Gunn† (9100)
"Dark Night in Toyland"‡ by Bob Shaw† (4000) – published in 1988; withdrawn by Shaw's estate after his 1996 death
"Ugly Duckling Gets the Treatment and Becomes Cinderella Except Her Foot's Too Big for the Prince's Slipper and Is Webbed Besides" by Robert Thurston (3500)
The following nine stories were not in the 1979 list but are listed in previous published contents, or known as submitted to Ellison – as Ellison kept on acquiring new stories long into the 1980s, this is the case with most of them.[citation needed]
"Where Are They Now?" by Steven Bryan Bieler was sold to LDV in 1984 and withdrawn in 1988.
"The Great Forest Lawn Clearance Sale: Hurry Last Days!" by Stephen Dedman, according to the author's website.[citation needed]
"Squad D" by Stephen King was submitted to LDV in the late 1970s, but reportedly not accepted in its initial draft.
"How Dobbstown Was Saved" by Bob Leman was sold to LDV in 1981.
"The Swastika Setup" (10,000 words) by Michael Moorcock was withdrawn and replaced by "The Murderer's Song" between the 1973 and 1979 lists (see also below); it was published in a 1972 magazine and a 1976 collection The Lives and Times of Jerry Cornelius.
"An Infinite Summer" by Christopher Priest was commissioned, ignored and withdrawn in 1974 and published in 1976.
"The Sibling" by Kit Reed† was originally sold to LDV and published in 2011.[10]
"The Isle of Sinbad" (10,000 words) by Thomas N. Scortia† was listed in the 1973 Alien Critic but not in the Locus 1979 list.
"A Thin Silver Line" by Steve Rasnic Tem was announced as "forthcoming in The Last Dangerous Visions" in 1994.[11]
Straczynski notes on p. 393 that the Intermezzos by D. M. Rowles were purchased by Ellison, and on p. 353 that Dan Simmons’s story was accepted by Ellison in 1982 or soon thereafter. Some other stories in Straczynski’s anthology, e.g. “Assignment No. 1” by Stephen Robinett and “The Size of the Problem” by Howard Fast, were presumably accepted by Ellison, as the authors died before Straczynski took over as editor.
Straczynski contents
Straczynski's anthology includes 31 stories (8 of them short "intermezzos") by 24 authors.[12] 7 of the stories, marked '*' below, were selected by Straczynski; the remainder were selected by Ellison.
"A Brief Introduction to The Last Dangerous Visions" by J. Michael Straczynski
“The Danann Children Laugh” by Mildred Downey Broxon
“Judas Iscariot Didn’t Kill Himself: A Story in Fragments” by James S. A. Corey *
"Afterword: Tetelestai! Compiling The Last Dangerous Visions" by J. Michael Straczynski
Stories published elsewhere
As of early 2025, over forty stories purchased for Last Dangerous Visions have been published elsewhere.
The first was "The Giant Rat of Sumatra, or By the Light of the Silvery" by the Firesign Theatre which appeared as the LP The Tale of the Giant Rat of Sumatra (1974) and in the same year in The Firesign Theatre's Big Mystery Joke Book[13]
"An Infinite Summer" by Christopher Priest which appeared in Andromeda 1 (1976) edited by Peter Weston. – As noted above, Priest withdrew it from TLDV four months after it was commissioned and delivered without any response, so Ellison never formally purchased, i. e. paid it.
"Ten Times Your Fingers and Double Your Toes" by Craig Strete (1980)
"Primordial Follies" by Robert Sheckley (1981 in German, 1998 in Italian)
"The Murderer's Song" by Michael Moorcock (the replacement for "The Swastika Set-Up") was first published in German translation in 1981, appeared in the 1987 anthology Tales from the Forbidden Planet and was republished several times in Moorcock's collections. (Moorcock commented in 2001 semi-jocularly: "Harlan is a good friend of mine and I have a fairly easy relationship with him on this. Every five years I take the story I originally did for him and let someone else have it. Then I write him a new story."[14] But further iterations, if any, are unknown.)
"Universe on the Turn" by Ian Watson was published in 1984 in Last Wave and in his 1985 collection Slow Birds.
"Himself in Anachron" by Cordwainer Smith (died 1966) was included in the 1993 retrospective collection The Rediscovery of Man. Ellison threatened to sue the New England Science Fiction Association for publishing the story, sold to Ellison for the anthology by Smith's widow.[15] Soon they "reached an amicable settlement" allowing the book to remain on sale; Ansible speculated "Perhaps, when he consulted the contract, HE might have found his rights to the story had long expired?"[16]
"Mama's Girl" by Daniel Keyes has only appeared in Japanese translation[17] (Collected Stories, Hayakawa, 1993).
"Pipeline to Paradise" by Nelson Bond appeared in the anthology Wheel of Fortune (1995), edited by Roger Zelazny. It was reprinted in 2002 in Bond's second Arkham House collection, The Far Side of Nowhere. Ellison publicly acknowledged soliciting the story from Bond, who at the time had retired from writing.[18]
"Previews of Hell" by Jack Williamson was included in his coffee-table retrospective Seventy-Five: The Diamond Anniversary of a Science Fiction Pioneer (2004) from Haffner Press.
In 2005 Haffner Press published a large reprint collection of Edmond Hamilton's two "Star Kings" novels and Leigh Brackett's three stories starring her Eric Stark character, entitled 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.
"Fantasy for Six Electrodes and One Adrenaline Drip" by Joe Haldeman (which he had believed lost until finding an old carbon copy of the manuscript) was published in his 2006 collection A Separate War and Other Stories.
"Where Are They Now?" by Steven Bryan Bieler appeared in the Spring 2008 (Volume VII, Issue 4) online magazine Slow Trains.[19]
"Squad D" by Stephen King, a submission to The Last Dangerous Visions which Ellison had not accepted outright,[citation needed] also appeared in Shivers VIII.
"Various Kinds of Conceits" by Arthur Byron Cover was included in The Unquiet Dreamer: A Tribute to Harlan Ellison (2019) from PS Publishing.
"A Thin Silver Line" by Steve Rasnic Tem also appeared in The Unquiet Dreamer.
"Free Enterprise" by Jerry Pournelle was published in the 2019 Baen Books collection The Best of Jerry Pournelle under the title "The Last Shot".
"Play Sweetly, In Harmony" by Joseph Green was published in Green's collection Otherwise Lost in 2020.[13]:comments
"Not All a Dream" by Manly Wade Wellman was issued as a chapbook in 2023[22] to customers preordering the two volume Haffner Press The Complete John the Balladeer.[citation needed]
"The Stone Which the Builders Rejected" by Avram Davidson in AD:100 Volume 1, a 2023 collection of his unpublished stories
"Potiphee, Petey and Me" by Tom Reamy in Under the Hollywood Sign: The Collected Stories of Tom Reamy, Subterranean Press 2023
"XYY" by Vonda McIntyre in Little Sisters and Other Stories, Goldsmiths Press 2024[13]
"Halfway There" by Stan Dryer was released on the author's blog[23][13]
↑ Letter from Ellison, pp. 22–25. "Listed at random—not as they will appear finally in the anthology." Priest summarized: "68 authors and stories (plus the three promised rewrites) … total word-length of 445,250." Plus "60,000 words of introductions I [Ellison] have yet to write, or the 50,000 words of Afterwords that are written … over 75 full-page illustrations done by Tim Kirk"
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