Harlan Ellison is one of the best SF short story writers around. He's also a very good editor & seems to know everyone in the field. Here he's collected the best of the best. He introduces every story quickly, concisely & often humorously. He's also included an afterword for each story by the author. I don't know that I've ever seen that before. It really works & between them, I got a lot more out of each story. ( )

These stories were touted as being shocking and almost impossible to print when they were first published way back in the late sixties. It is instructive (one way or another) to note that most of these stories wouldn't elicit anything more than a 'so what' these days. The single exception to this would be Theodore Sturgeon's 'If All Men Were Brothers, Would You Let One Marry Your Sister?'. which is one of the better written stories (IMO anyway :-)) ( )

Making a long, 33 page original anthology all good is going to be very difficult, and it is the later middle of this book that lets it down. Divided into three as another way of publishing it, Dangerous Visions 1, for example, averages 3.63. The rest of this, 3.32.

The book does finish strongly, with several good stories. Given it is 40 odd years later you can see how many stories have been used again in other anthologies, etc., or at least those of have seen. In the main it is from the first part of the book, and the very end. Fritz Leiber's excellent Gonna Roll the Bones notwithstanding, if you want to call that a middle story.

There are extensive story introductions by the editor, and as he points out when writing about Slesar and Ersatz, his intro to that story is considerably longer than the story itself.

There are also authorial afterwords of varying lengths, as well as an extensive introduction on what a pain in the arse this book was to put together with dropouts, costs, lengths, stupid publishers putting it out of print because they did that to all booksbon general principle (and that was really stupid given I think there are new editiions now.)

Certainly worth reading for historical reasons, if nothing else.

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

Usurpers hard to fool.

4 out of 5

Draining the exes.

3.5 out of 5

The old jokes again.

3 out of 5

Winnegan's World, Winnegan's Universe.

3.5 out of 5

Murderous replay punishment.

3 out of 5

Iron Maiden granddaughter future Ripper one-upped.

4 out of 5

Future Ripper release work.

4 out of 5

Elemental lifestream visits.

3.5 out of 5

Mars is cooler.

3 out of 5

"Don't you see, Mr. Chien? You've learned something. The Leader is not the Leader; he is something else, but we can't tell what. Not yet. Mr. Chien, when all due respect, have you ever had your drinking water analyzed? I know it sounds paranoiac, but have you?"

3.5 out of 5

Organlegging escape.

4 out of 5

Dicing with Death.

4.5 out of 5

Good boy, bad boy.

3 out of 5

Not my kinda place, boyfriend.

4 out of 5

Boring between wars.

3 out of 5

Mooning the sky egg.

2.5 out of 5

Mini oracle moggie mangle.

4 out of 5

Where'd he get the big undies?

2.5 out of 5

Deity gotta turn up to Armageddon, you know.

3.5 out of 5

Taboo, us.

3.5 out of 5

Gone to the dogs.

3.5 out of 5

Real woman, please.

3 out of 5

Mum, you're for dinner.

3 out of 5

Therapeutic Machines.

3 out of 5

Real-estate, dodgy.

2.5 out of 5

Fear learning.

3 out of 5

Terran slice nice.

3 out of 5

Zoo filling.

3.5 out of 5

Machine man deity overthrown defeat repair.

3 out of 5

Interrogation space assist overlord.

4 out of 5

Entrepreneur cancer fighter catatonia.

4 out of 5

Careodor.

4 out of 5

Gender altered space workers provide exotic rough trade on shore leave.

3 out of 5

3.5 out of 5

http://notfreesf.blogspot.com/2008/05...
( )

http://nhw.livejournal.com/260159.htm...

It's a great collection, 33 stories, the majority of them still fresh.

However, only the Anderson and the Sturgeon stories still qualify as "dangerous"; although homosexuality is now much less of a taboo subject than when Anderson wrote, his portrayal of it in the context of a clash of cultures I think remains valid. Likewise Sturgeon's portrayal of incest, though that if anything is probably even more of a taboo than it was in 1967.

Perhaps my brain has turned to mush, but I found both the Farmer and Emshwiller stories incomprehensible.

I'd classify the Del Rey, Hensley, and Knight stories as of the "Shaggy God" category, along with the Brand; making points about religion and/or God that seem pretty trivial now, but perhaps were more "dangerous" at the time of writing. Perhaps I have just been spoiled by Philip Pullman.

I would rate the Aldiss, Ballard, Brunner, Delany, Dick, Lafferty, Leiber, Pohl, Sladek, Spinrad and Zelazny stories as good to excellent samples of their writing, if not necessarily "dangerous". I also thought the Bunch, "Cross", Dorman, Eisenberg, and Rodman stories were pretty good though I'm less familiar with the authors' oeuvres (indeed the various databases assert that these were the only sf short stories ever published by "Cross" and Rodman, though both published other material).

I did not enjoy the Silverberg and DeFord stories (which both turned out to be about the same future development in the criminal justice system), nor the Bloch/Ellison riffs on Jack the Ripper, because the violence was too gratuitously nasty for my taste.

I thought the Laumer, Neville, Niven and Slesar stories were very weak, taking in each case a silly premise and then failing to do much with it. Actually the Niven is promising enough for most of its length but is then killed by the punchline.

But basically, money well spent. The standout stories for me were Howard Rodman's "The Doll's House", Anderson's "Eutopia" and Dick's "Faith of Our Fathers". ( )

A groundbreaking and influential anthology of thirty-three short stories of speculative fiction. Several of them are quite strong, but others didn't do much for me. The Farmer, Dick, Leiber, Hensley, Cross, Dorman, and Laumer stories were my favorites. The introductions (by Ellison, except for his story), and afterwards (by the individual authors) added a lot to the collection, and gave a great sense of perspective on the evolution of science fiction writing. ( )