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A review by octavia_cade
Dangerous Visions by Harlan Ellison
2.0
There's no getting around it: I found great swathes of this unutterably tedious. There's 32 stories here, I believe, and of those 32 there were a grand total of 6 that I actually liked. They were "Flies" by Robert Silverberg, "The Man Who Went to the Moon - Twice" by Howard Rodman, "The Jigsaw Man" by Larry Niven, "Lord Randy, My Son" by Joe L. Hensley, "Go, Go, Go Said the Bird" by Sonya Dorman, and "Aye, and Gomorrah" by Samuel R. Delany. The Silverberg had an ending that made me wince, the Rodman and the Hensley were quiet and sadly beautiful, the Niven and Dorman stories were genuinely creepy, and the Delany was both original and interesting. All of these I would read again.
I would not, however, read through this anthology again to get to them. I grant you that it was put together close to 50 years ago now, and perhaps it was more shocking then, but some of what Ellison clearly considers to be dangerous comes across now as just silly, and some of the rest are trying too hard. How some of them got published at all is beyond me - there's a handful here that are just not very good. I've often heard this marketed as one of the great sci-fi anthologies of all time, but all I can think is that I've read more challenging, dangerous pieces being published on a regular basis today. Finally, I would have preferred not to have the two unprepossessing novellas shoe-horned in. I've never read Philip José Farmer before this and I have to say: my country is in lockdown at the moment, due to pandemic. We are all supposed to stay at home and see no-one. It's been two weeks, it feels like two years, and even pandemic-time moves quicker than that endless goddamn trainwreck. The clock stopped while I read it, and that is not a compliment. "Riders of the Purple Wage" won a Hugo for best novella, apparently. I cannot imagine why.
I would not, however, read through this anthology again to get to them. I grant you that it was put together close to 50 years ago now, and perhaps it was more shocking then, but some of what Ellison clearly considers to be dangerous comes across now as just silly, and some of the rest are trying too hard. How some of them got published at all is beyond me - there's a handful here that are just not very good. I've often heard this marketed as one of the great sci-fi anthologies of all time, but all I can think is that I've read more challenging, dangerous pieces being published on a regular basis today. Finally, I would have preferred not to have the two unprepossessing novellas shoe-horned in. I've never read Philip José Farmer before this and I have to say: my country is in lockdown at the moment, due to pandemic. We are all supposed to stay at home and see no-one. It's been two weeks, it feels like two years, and even pandemic-time moves quicker than that endless goddamn trainwreck. The clock stopped while I read it, and that is not a compliment. "Riders of the Purple Wage" won a Hugo for best novella, apparently. I cannot imagine why.