Search Worlds Without End

Much has been written about the "long Sixties," the era of the late 1950s through the early 1970s. It was a period of major social change, most graphically illustrated by the emergence of liberatory and resistance movements focused on inequalities of class, race, gender, sexuality, and beyond, whose challenge represented a major shock to the political and social status quo. With its focus on speculation, alternate worlds and the future, science fiction became an ideal vessel for this upsurge of radical protest.

Dangerous Visions and New Worlds: Radical Science Fiction, 1950 to 1985 details, celebrates, and evaluates how science fiction novels and authors depicted, interacted with, and were inspired by these cultural and political movements in America and Great Britain. It starts with progressive authors who rose to prominence in the conservative 1950s, challenging the so-called Golden Age of science fiction and its linear narratives of technological breakthroughs and space-conquering male heroes. The book then moves through the 1960s, when writers, including those in what has been termed the New Wave, shattered existing writing conventions and incorporated contemporary themes such as modern mass media culture, corporate control, growing state surveillance, the Vietnam War, and rising currents of counterculture, ecological awareness, feminism, sexual liberation, and Black Power. The 1970s, when the genre reflected the end of various dreams of the long Sixties and the faltering of the postwar boom, is also explored along with the first half of the 1980s, which gave rise to new subgenres, such as cyberpunk.

Dangerous Visions and New Worlds contains over twenty chapters written by contemporary authors and critics, and hundreds of full-color cover images, including thirteen thematically organised cover selections. New perspectives on key novels and authors, such as Octavia Butler, Ursula K. Le Guin, Philip K. Dick, John Wyndham, Samuel Delany, J.G. Ballard, John Brunner, Judith Merril, Barry Malzberg, Joanna Russ, and many others are presented alongside excavations of topics, works, and writers who have been largely forgotten or undeservedly ignored.

Anthologies seldom make history, but Dangerous Visions is a grand exception. Harlan Ellison's 1967 collection of science fiction stories set an almost impossibly high standard, as more than a half dozen of its stories won major awards - not surprising with a contributors list that reads like a who's who of 20th-century SF.

Table of Contents:

• Foreword 1-The Second Revolution - (1967) - essay by Isaac Asimov
• Foreword 2-Harlan and I - (1967) - essay by Isaac Asimov
• Thirty-Two Soothsayers - (1967) - essay by Harlan Ellison
• Evensong - (1967) - shortstory by Lester del Rey
• Flies - (1967) - shortstory by Robert Silverberg
• The Day After the Day the Martians Came - (1967) - shortstory by Frederik Pohl
• Riders of the Purple Wage - (1967) - novella by Philip José Farmer
• The Malley System - (1967) - shortstory by Miriam Allen deFord
• A Toy for Juliette - shortstory by Robert Bloch
• The Prowler in the City at the Edge of the World - novelette by Harlan Ellison
• The Night That All Time Broke Out - (1967) - shortstory by Brian W. Aldiss
• The Man Who Went to the Moon - Twice - (1967) - shortstory by Howard Rodman
• Faith of Our Fathers - novelette by Philip K. Dick
• The Jigsaw Man - (1967) - shortstory by Larry Niven
• Gonna Roll the Bones - novelette by Fritz Leiber
• Lord Randy, My Son - (1967) - shortstory by Joe L. Hensley
• Eutopia - (1967) - novelette by Poul Anderson
• Incident in Moderan - (1967) - shortstory by David R. Bunch
• The Escaping - (1967) - shortstory by David R. Bunch
• The Doll-House - (1967) - shortstory by James Cross
• Sex and/or Mr. Morrison - shortstory by Carol Emshwiller
• Shall the Dust Praise Thee? - (1967) - shortstory by Damon Knight
• If All Men Were Brothers, Would You Let One Marry Your Sister? - (1967) - novella by Theodore Sturgeon
• What Happened to Auguste Clarot? - (1967) - shortstory by Larry Eisenberg
• Ersatz - (1967) - shortstory by Henry Slesar
• Go, Go, Go, Said the Bird - (1967) - shortstory by Sonya Dorman
• The Happy Breed - shortstory by John Sladek
• Encounter with a Hick - (1967) - shortstory by Jonathan Brand
• From the Government Printing Office - (1967) - shortstory by Kris Neville
• Land of the Great Horses - shortstory by R. A. Lafferty
• The Recognition - shortstory by J. G. Ballard
• Judas - (1967) - shortstory by John Brunner
• Test to Destruction - (1967) - novelette by Keith Laumer
• Carcinoma Angels - (1967) - shortstory by Norman Spinrad
• Auto-da-Fé - (1967) - shortstory by Roger Zelazny
• Aye, and Gomorrah... - (1967) - shortstory by Samuel R. Delany

The classic companion to the most essential science fiction anthology ever published. 46 original stories edited with introductions by Harlan Ellison. Featuring: John Heidenry / Ross Rocklynne / Ursula K. Le Guin / Andrew J. Offutt / Gene Wolfe / Ray Nelson / Ray Bradbury / Chad Oliver / Edward Bryant / Kate Wilhelm / James B. Hemesath / Joanna Russ / Kurt Vonnegut / T. L. Sherred / K. M. O'Donnell (Barry N. Malzberg) / H. H. Hollis / Bernard Wolfe / David Gerrold / Piers Anthony / Lee Hoffman / Gahan Wilson / Joan Bernott / Gregory Benford / Evelyn Lief / James Sallis / Josephine Saxton / Ken McCullough / David Kerr / Burt K. Filer / Richard Hill / Leonard Tushnet / Ben Bova / Dean R. Koontz / James Blish and Judith Ann Lawrence / A. Parra (y Figueredo) / Thomas M. Disch / Richard A. Lupoff / M. John Harrison / Robin Scott / Andrew Weiner / Terry Carr / James Tiptree, Jr.

Table of Contents:

• An Assault of New Dreamers - (1972) - essay by Harlan Ellison
• The Counterpoint of View - (1972) - shortstory by John Heidenry
• Ching Witch! - (1972) - shortstory by Ross Rocklynne
• The Word for World Is Forest - (1972) - novella by Ursula K. Le Guin
• For Value Received - (1972) - shortstory by Andrew J. Offutt
• Mathoms from the Time Closet - (1972) - shortfiction by Gene Wolfe
• Robot's Story - (1972) - shortstory by Gene Wolfe
• Against the Lafayette Escadrille - (1972) - shortstory by Gene Wolfe
• Loco Parentis - (1972) - shortstory by Gene Wolfe
• Time Travel for Pedestrians - (1972) - shortstory by Ray Nelson
• Christ, Old Student in a New School - (1972) - poem by Ray Bradbury
• King of the Hill - (1972) - shortstory by Chad Oliver
• The 10:00 Report is Brought to You By... - (1972) - shortstory by Edward Bryant
• The Funeral - (1972) - novelette by Kate Wilhelm
• Harry the Hare - (1972) - shortstory by James B. Hemesath
• When It Changed - (1972) - shortstory by Joanna Russ
• The Big Space Fuck - (1972) - shortstory by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
• Bounty - (1972) - shortstory by T. L. Sherred
• Still-Life - (1972) - shortstory by Barry N. Malzberg
• Stoned Counsel - (1972) - shortstory by H. H. Hollis
• Monitored Dreams and Strategic Cremations - (1972) - shortfiction by Bernard Wolfe
• The Bisquit Position - (1972) - shortstory by Bernard Wolfe
• The Girl With Rapid Eye Movements - (1972) - shortstory by Bernard Wolfe
• With a Finger in My I - (1972) - shortstory by David Gerrold
• In the Barn - (1972) - novelette by Piers Anthony
• Soundless Evening - (1972) - shortstory by Lee Hoffman
• * - (1972) - shortstory by Gahan Wilson
• The Test-Tube Creature, Afterward - (1972) - shortstory by Joan Bernott
• And the Sea Like Mirrors - (1972) - shortstory by Gregory Benford
• Bed Sheets Are White - (1972) - shortstory by Evelyn Lief
• Tissue - (1972) - shortfiction by James Sallis
• Elouise and the Doctors of the Planet Pergamon - (1972) - shortstory by Josephine Saxton
• Chuck Berry, Won't You Please Come Home? - (1972) - shortstory by Ken McCullough
• Epiphany for Aliens - (1972) - shortstory by David Kerr
• Eye of the Beholder - (1972) - shortstory by Burt K. Filer
• Moth Race - (1972) - shortstory by Richard Hill
• In re Glover - (1972) - shortstory by Leonard Tushnet
• Zero Gee - (1972) - novelette by Ben Bova
• A Mouse in the Walls of the Global Village - (1972) - shortstory by Dean R. Koontz
• Getting Along - (1972) - novelette by James Blish and J. A. Lawrence
• Totenbüch - (1972) - shortstory by Parra y Figuéredo
• Things Lost - (1972) - shortstory by Thomas M. Disch
• With the Bentfin Boomer Boys on Little Old New Alabama - (1972) - novella by Richard A. Lupoff
• Lamia Mutable - (1972) - shortstory by M. John Harrison
• Last Train to Kankakee - (1972) - shortstory by Robin Scott Wilson
• Empire of the Sun - (1972) - shortstory by Andrew Weiner
• Ozymandias - (1972) - shortstory by Terry Carr
• The Milk of Paradise - (1972) - shortstory by James Tiptree, Jr.
• Ed Emshwiller - (1972) - essay by Anonymous

An anthology more than half a century in the making...

In 1973 celebrated writer and editor Harlan Ellison announced the third and final volume of his unprecedented anthology series, which began with Dangerous Visions and continued with Again, Dangerous Visions. But for reasons undisclosed, The Last Dangerous Visions was never completed.

Now, six years after Ellison's passing, science fiction's most famous unpublished book is here. And with it, the heartbreaking true story of the troubled genius behind it.

Provocative and controversial, socially conscious and politically charged, wildly imaginative yet deeply grounded, the thirty-two never-before-published stories, essays, and poems in The Last Dangerous Visions stand as a testament to Ellison's lifelong pursuit of art, uniting a diverse range of science fiction writers both famous and newly minted, including Max Brooks, Edward Bryant, Cecil Castellucci, James S. A. Corey, Howard Fast, P. C. Hodgell, Dan Simmons, Robert Sheckley, Adrian Tchaikovsky, Mildred Downey Broxon, and Cory Doctorow, among others.