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A review by purplewurple
Again, Dangerous Visions 1 by James B. Hemesath, Joanna Russ, Harlan Ellison, Ray Faraday Nelson, Kate Wilhelm, T.L. Sherred, Ursula K. Le Guin, David Gerrold, Chad Oliver, Piers Anthony, Gene Wolfe, Andrew J. Offutt, Edward Bryant, Kurt Vonnegut, H.H. Hollis, Barry N. Malzberg, John Heidenry, Bernard Wolfe, Ross Rocklynne, Ray Bradbury
3.0
I've never read a short-story collection as uneven in quality as Again, Dangerous Visions 1. The bookend contributions make me feel a dumber, duller person for having read them, but there are real hits among the misses too. The Word for World is Forest is average for an Ursula K. Le Guin story, which means it might be the best of the bunch in this anthology. Although I think that honor should go to Bernard Wolfe for Monitored Dreams and Strategic Cremations, two splendidly written stories.
The concept of giving sci-fi writers a platform to write what most publishers wouldn't touch because it didn't fit the Star-Trek mold of "proper" sci-fi, is certainly intriguing. Unfortunately, the resulting critiques of 70's social and cultural norms were often blunt force trauma wrapped in the thinnest of story wrappings, and at other times just bad sci-fi on LSD spiked with gratuitous vulgarity.
If you pick this up, read the aforementioned stories by Le Guin and Bernard Wolfe, plus For Value Received by Andrew J. Offutt, The 10:00 Report is Brought to you by... by Edward Bryant, The Funeral by Kate Wilhelm, When it changed by Joanna Russ, Stoned Council by H. H. Holis, and skip everything else.
The concept of giving sci-fi writers a platform to write what most publishers wouldn't touch because it didn't fit the Star-Trek mold of "proper" sci-fi, is certainly intriguing. Unfortunately, the resulting critiques of 70's social and cultural norms were often blunt force trauma wrapped in the thinnest of story wrappings, and at other times just bad sci-fi on LSD spiked with gratuitous vulgarity.
If you pick this up, read the aforementioned stories by Le Guin and Bernard Wolfe, plus For Value Received by Andrew J. Offutt, The 10:00 Report is Brought to you by... by Edward Bryant, The Funeral by Kate Wilhelm, When it changed by Joanna Russ, Stoned Council by H. H. Holis, and skip everything else.