Harlan Ellison's The Last Dangerous Visions, one of the longest-gestating SF books in history, will finally hit shelves next year, fifty-one years after it was first announced.
Ellison published Dangerous Visions, a seminal collection of short, groundbreaking SF stories from a mixture of the genre's biggest names and hottest newcomers, in 1967. It was rapturously received, selling a huge number of copies. Ellison followed it up with Again, Dangerous Visions in 1972. The Last Dangerous Visions was announced shortly thereafter, originally with a mooted 1973 publishing date. The book expanded, becoming more ambitious, and by 1979 Ellison was talking about publishing it in three volumes. Ellison claimed to be working on the project through the 1980s and 1990s, but at a certain point it became his white whale. Early memes about how the book would never come out proved popular, and author Christopher Priest even wrote a nonfiction book about the situation called The Book on the Edge of Forever.
Ellison's passing in 2018 would have seemed to have made the situation moot, but Ellison had asked his friend J. Michael Straczynski to work on bringing the project to fruition. That process has now been completed, with Blackstone Publishers picking up the rights to The Last Dangerous Visions as well as reprint rights for its two predecessors. They will issue the books as 2023 in individual volumes and a unified edition.
A full table of contents is forthcoming, although it is known that Cory Doctorow, Neil Gaiman and James S.A. Corey (aka Daniel Abraham and Ty Franck) have contributed stories. Other authors include Edward Bryant, Stephen Robinette, Max Brooks, DM Rowles, Dan Simmons, Cecil Castelluci, Stephen Dedman, Patton Oswalt, Jonathan Fast, Howard Fast, Robert Sheckley, and Adrian Tchaikovsky (and yes, the overwhelming maleness of the list has been noted, although the list is not exhaustive). The book will include a mixture of brand-new stories from contemporary authors like the above and some of the stories slated by Ellison for the book in the 1970s, as well as one story by Ellison that has not appeared before. The book will also incorporate artwork by Tim Kirk.
It will, of course, be impossible for any book to live up to fifty-one years of expectations, but it should be an interesting volume.
J. Michael Straczynski has submitted the manuscript for his completed version of the late Harlan Ellison's anthology, The Last Dangerous Visions, to a literary agency. The book is now being shopped to various publishers.
The follow-up to the award-winning Dangerous Visions (1969) and Again, Dangerous Visions (1972), the book has been in the planning stages since 1973, with Ellison regularly announcing target dates for completion and publication. At one point the book was said to number some 150 stories, requiring multiple volumes to come out. Ellison continued to regularly claim he was working on the book into the 1990s, and sometimes later still.
Following Ellison's death in June 2018, his friend and occasional collaborator literary executor J. Michael Straczynski began working to bring the book to publication. He pruned a lot of stories that had not held up, or whose return had been requested by their authors or their estates, and decided to add several new stories by contemporary authors to give the anthology a modern feel. The final word count of the anthology is a surprisingly modest 112,000.
The Last Dangerous Visions is being handled by the Janklow & Nesbit Agency, with rights to the earlier Dangerous Visions and Again, Dangerous Visions included to complete a uniform edition. Contributors to the book include Edward Bryant, Stephen Robinette, Max Brooks, DM Rowles, Dan Simmons, Cecil Castelluci, Cory Doctorow, Stephen Deman, Patton Oswalt, Jonathan Fast, Howard Fast, Robert Sheckley, Adrian Tchaikovsky and James S.A. Corey.
In a post on his Facebook page, Straczynski also notes that other, very high-profile modern SFF authors had been offered to take part but had chosen not to do so.
J. Michael Straczynski has confirmed that Neil Gaiman is the first current author to pen a story for the release version of The Last Dangerous Visions, Harlan Ellison's long, long-gestating anthology project.
As discussed previously, The Last Dangerous Visions was the third in a series of anthologies Ellison planned to publish in the 1970s, as the ultimate word on the scale and scope of the SFF field at the time. The project was immensely delayed, ballooning to enormous size, and eventually seems to have been shelved, although Ellison vowed to eventually release it. After his passing in 2018, the project was taken up by Straczynski, now serving as the executor of the Ellison Estate.
The project has been somewhat reconceived (in line with Ellison's oft-stated intentions) with the idea to include a number of new stories by modern authors in the contemporary SFF field, along with up-and-comers and even one debut author. The project is planned to be submitted for publication in 2021.
Straczynski is providing additional information on the project over on his Patreon page.
Confirming speculation from earlier in the week, SFF scriptwriter J. Michael Straczynski, acting in his capacity as the executor of the Harlan Ellison Estate, has announced that The Last Dangerous Visions will finally be published in 2021.
The book is the third in a series of anthologies collecting the brightest and best SFF of the time. The first two books, Dangerous Visions (1967) and Again, Dangerous Visions (1972), were hailed as being groundbreaking and seminal in codifying the New Wave that was sweeping the genre at the time. Ellison announced The Last Dangerous Visions in 1972, with some notion of the book being published the following year. He formally announced a contents list for the book, which had grown to a monster three-volume project featuring more than one hundred stories, in 1979. Ellison confirmed the project remained extant throughout the 1980s and 1990s, but it never appeared, with various commentators offering speculation as to why (Christopher Priest offering a somewhat withering account in The Book on the Edge of Forever). By the 2000s it was generally accepted that the book would never be published, and Ellison's passing in 2018 seemed to be make that final.
However, the stories themselves - mostly - never went anywhere. Ellison still had them, apart from a few the authors had withdrawn over the years, and there seemed to be no formal obstacle to the book being published. There were some reports that Ellison's widow was working towards that end. With her passing this year and Straczynski taking over the Estate, the way is now open for the project to be published.
Straczynski notes his plans in detail at the above link, but broadly speaking the book will consist of:
Most of the 81 stories originally planned for the book and not later withdrawn to be published elsewhere. Several of the stories have become massively outdated due to subsequent events and will not be included.
Tim Kirk's artwork for the book that had been completed many years ago.
A number of new stories by modern "heavy-hitters in the genre" to keep the volume up-to-date and relevant.
A number of new stories by noted new voices and up-and-comers in the genre.
One slot will be held open for a debut story by a brand new author, with submission details to follow at a later date.
One last story by Harlan Ellison that has never been published. This story apparently ties into the reason why The Last Dangerous Visions has taken so long to come to fruition.
Straczynski notes that the rights to the stories that will not be used in the book are being returned to the authors (or their estates) to be published elsewhere. The rights to the stories in the first two books will also be reverted to their original authors on a non-exclusive basis, meaning that those stories can be published elsewhere (such as career retrospectives), as has been requested by some for many years.
Rather than seeking a publisher first, Straczynski is covering all the costs of the book (including advances for the new authors) out of his own pocket; fans can help contribute to the project via Straczynski's Synthetic Worlds Patreon in the meantime.
More information on the book, including the new authors to be included, will be announced in the coming weeks and months.
Assuming the various lists issued by Ellison over the years remain accurate, the book should include the last-ever stories to appear from authors such as Frank Herbert, Anne McCaffrey, Leigh Brackett, Alfred Bester, Octavia Butler, Daniel Keyes and Vonda McIntyre, making it of remarkable genre interest.
In a series of recent tweets, SF TV author J. Michael Straczynski has confirmed that he is acting as the literary executor of the Harlan Ellison Estate. In a series of tweets this week, he has hinted at a new project that will be seeing the light of day soon, and promised to reveal what this would be in a series of five messages. The third was released today and seem to indicate what the project will be: The Last Dangerous Visions, the single most-delayed book in the history of science fiction and fantasy.
Harlan Ellison released the short story anthology Dangerous Visions in 1967. A groundbreaking work, it won multiple awards and helped define the New Wave of late 1960s science fiction. The book included work by Harlan Ellison, Robert Silverberg, Philip Jose Farmer, Miriam Allen deFord, Brian W. Aldiss, Philip K. Dick, J.G. Ballard, John Brunner and Roger Zelazny.
The book was succeeded in 1972 by Again, Dangerous Visions, which was almost as acclaimed. Ellison began collecting a third anthology, The Last Dangerous Visions, planned for publication in 1973. Faced with the task of exceeding the previous two collections, Ellison became obsessed with the book being "perfect" and constantly tinkered with it, soliciting new stories, removing old ones, seeking out new authors and so on. In 1979 Ellison projected the book coming out in three volumes and incorporating some 113 stories by 102 authors. Thirty-two of the stories were eventually withdrawn and published elsewhere; eight others listed on the 1979 list did not appear on later contents lists issued by Ellison.
Fascination with the book peaked in the late 1990s, when Christopher Priest issued a critique of the lengthy delays to publication under the title The Book on the Edge of Forever. By this time several prominent SFF authors included in the collection had died, and their stories in the collection are among the last unpublished, complete work they left behind.
Ellison would occasionally mention the project as ongoing even in the 2000s, although it was generally regarded by that point that it would never come out. Ellison's death in 2018 would seem to have been the final word on the subject, despite the fact that the material still appeared to be extant in his archives.
Straczynski's tweets may end up being about something else, but given the three words released so far - THE LAST DANGEROUS - it's hard to see what. We'll find out for sure tomorrow and Friday when the announcement is completed, but for now it looks like, after forty-eight years, we'll finally see what Ellison was preparing.
Harlan Ellison, one of science fiction's best-known and most polarising figures, has passed away at the age of 84.
Born in 1934 in Cleveland, Ohio, Harlan Ellison held a wide variety of jobs whilst he honed his skills as a writer. He was kicked out of Ohio State University for punching a professor who said he was a bad writer and claims to have sent a copy of every story he published for the next twenty years to that professor in revenge (later, more moderate accounts suggest he was kicked out for just yelling at him).
He sold his first story to The Cleveland News in 1949 and began publishing short fiction regularly in 1955. In 1962 he moved to Hollywood and began working in the film industry, submitting scripts to shows such as The Man from UNCLE and The Outer Limits. He first attracted widespread notice with his work for the latter, particularly his 1964 episode Soldier, a story about a murderous soldier who goes back in time. Twenty years later he declared that this episode had been ripped off by James Cameron for his movie The Terminator and won a significant out-of-court settlement.
During his time working in Hollywood, Ellison incurred the ire of Frank Sinatra during a billiards game, who objected to Ellison's footware.
Ellison began working on Star Trek, penning the original script for The City on the Edge of Forever, widely acknowledged as the finest episode of the original Star Trek series and one of the very best of the entire franchise. Ellison's script was reworked by Gene Roddenberry and D.C. Fontana (among others) into the aired version, something that irked Ellison, although not to the point of removing his name from the script. Ellison won the Writer's Guild Award for the original version of the script and also the 1968 Hugo Award for Best Dramatic Presentation, for the shooting script. Ellison continuously claimed his original script was superior, publishing it several times (critics were less in agreement). In 2009 he sued Paramount for royalties and profits made from the episode; a significant out-of-court settlement was reached.
Ellison worked at Disney, for a day, before being fired after joking that they should make an animated pornographic film featuring Disney characters. He then continued his career in short fiction, penning the short stories "'Repent, Harlequin!' Said the Ticktock Man" (1965), "I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream" (1967) and "A Boy and His Dog" (1969). "I Have No Mouth" won a Hugo Award and was turned into a well-received video game in 1995, which Ellison collaborated on despite not owning a PC. "A Boy and His Dog" was filmed in 1975 (winning Ellison another Hugo) and was named as one of the key influences on the video game Fallout (1997); imagery from the film was particularly tapped in the marketing for the game Fallout 3 (2008). Presumably this escaped Ellison's attention, as he did not sue anyone involved.
In 1967 Ellison published the science fiction anthology Dangerous Visions. A ground-breaking work, it codified the New Wave movement of science fiction and was credited for almost single-handedly changing the way people thought about the genre. Three of the stories in the book won Hugo Awards and the book itself was massively successful and critically-acclaimed in and out of the genre. Ellison followed it up with Again, Dangerous Visions in 1972, which, improbably, reached similar levels of acclaim. Ellison announced The Last Dangerous Visions in 1973 and solicited approximately 150 stories for the third collection. The book was repeatedly delayed and some of the contributing authors either died or withdrew their stories. British author Christopher Priest was so incensed by the situation that he penned a non-fiction book about the affair, The Last Deadloss Visions (1987, reworked as The Book on the Edge of Forever ten years later), which exceedingly annoyed Ellison for the rest of his life. The Last Dangerous Visions, remarkably, remained unpublished at the time of Ellison's death, forty-five years after it was first announced.
In 1980 Ellison and Ben Bova sued Paramount Pictures, contending that their TV series Future Cop was based on Ellion and Bova's story "Brillo." Paramount decided to defend the case and lost, being forced to award the writers $330,000.
In the mid-1980s Ellison worked on the rebooted version of The Twilight Zone, hiring George R.R. Martin as a writer on the show before Ellison quit in anger after disagreeing with the studio on the show's creative direction.
Ellison met Hollywood scriptwriter J. Michael Straczynski when the latter tracked down his telephone number and called him up, nervously asking what advice he could give a budding writer whose work wasn't selling. "Stop writing shit," was Ellison's response. They later met in person and struck up a friendship and collaborative relationship. Straczynski solicited Ellison's advice on his in-development TV series Babylon 5, and when the show was picked up by Warner Brothers Harlan Ellison came on board as creative consultant. Ellison contributed several voices on the show and cameoed as a Psi Cop in the Season 4 episode The Face of the Enemy, alongside Star Trek's Walter Koenig. Ellison hit on the idea of writing a sequel to his Outer Limits episode Demon with a Glass Hand, entitled Demon on the Run, for Babylon 5, but after several attempts was unable to complete a script to his satisfaction. He did collaborate with Straczynski on the Season 5 episode Objects in Motion. Straczynski spoke briefly about his passing today.
In the 2000s Ellison became known for his increasingly angry activism on behalf of writers: his rant "Pay the Writer!" where he talks about the contempt Hollywood holds for writers despite them being their most important resource went viral and has been cited many times in response to the suggestion that writers should work "for exposure." Ellison also became known for being disrespectful at public events; his most notorious moment came at the 2006 Hugo Awards when he groped writer Connie Willis on stage during the ceremony. He later apologised for the incident, but then complained when his apology was apparently not accepted.
It'd be fair to say that Harlan Ellison was one of science fiction's most colourful and divisive writers. A passionate advocate for not just creative impulse of writing but also paying the writer their due, he worked hard to ensure that his work was not plagiarised and his rights infringed. He wrote more than 1,500 short stories (some of them whilst sitting in bookstore windows in a kind of live performance art process) and dozens of scripts. He won seven Hugo Awards, three Nebulas and three Writer's Guild of America Awards, along with the 2005 SFWA Grand Master Award and the World Fantasy Award for Lifetime Achievement. His actual fiction - sometimes overshadowed by the author's tendency towards gossip-inducing shenanigans - was often scathing and powerful. According to John Clute, Ellison's writing shows that he was "a central witness to the pain of the world."
Ellison was also irascible, rude, quick to anger and slow to forgive. He never burned a bridge when he had the option of dropping a Tsar Bomba-class nuke on it instead. By the end of his days he'd managed to piss off everyone from Frank Sinatra to Gene Roddenberry to James Cameron. His colourful "bad boy of SF" image was tarnished by some of his behaviour at conventions towards the end of his life, particularly the shameful Connie Willis episode.
Love him or hate him, Ellison was impossible to ignore and will be difficult to forget. That, I think, is an epitaph he would be content to go out on (having first suspiciously checked his back catalogue and consulted a lawyer to ensure it hadn't been stolen from one of his short stories).
io9 have unearthed a 1982 television roundtable discussion between SF titans Harlan Ellison, Isaac Asimov and Gene Wolfe, where they talk about genre definitions and how awesome the genre is.
An interesting look at the SFF field from a very different time.
Legendary SF short story and scriptwriter Harlan Ellison has offered to pen the new Star Trek movie, production on which is expected to start late next year for release in 2012. Ellison has some impressive form, having previously penned The City on the Edge of Forever, sometimes cited as the best episode of Star Trek ever.
This news is surprising, as Ellison has long been unhappy with the way Gene Roddenberry altered his original script and only recently settled a lawsuit with Paramount over payment issues from the 42-year-old episode. Ellison is a huge fan of JJ Abrams, director of the latest Star Trek movie, and is apparently keen to work with him.
No word on a response from Abrams or Paramount. Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman are still slated to work on the second Star Trek, movie, despite recently bailing on the third Transformers film.
