've always heard that I should never return to the beloved books of my childhood—that disappointment could lie in wait for me there. It's true that some books have suffered when seen through the lens of adulthood—and for me, those would be the words of certain once-loved Golden Age SF writers whose words today no longer seem quite so golden. As a kid, I was blind to it, but now their language seems stilted, and I wince at their positively prehistoric treatment of women.
On the other hand, this lessening of respect for yesterday's treasures doesn't always have to be the case. It would have been a tragedy if I had not reread certain books during
adulthood—such classics as Dune and The Lord of the Rings comes to mind. I'd read each of those many times as a teenager, picked them up again with much uncertainty as an adult, and did not regret the experience.
So it was with some trepidation that I decided to look back at Harlan Ellison's groundbeaking Dangerous Visions anthology, a project about which the editor wrote at the time:
What you hold in your hands is more than a book. If we are lucky, it is a revolution.
A bold claim, one which from this vantage point I can see was prophetic. But what of now, decades later? Into which of the two categories I've mentioned above would a rereading cause it to fall? Was it still a vibrant collection? Or would time have transformed it into a museum piece, able to satisfy only historical curiosity? I hoped that the latter wouldn't be the case.
After all, stories from the collection had won two Hugo and two Nebula awards, and Harlan Ellison had been given a special award by the 1968 Hugo awards committee for the package as a whole, and we all like to think—though it isn't always the case—that award-winning works stand for the ages, and not just for their own time. But more importantly than that, the real reason I wanted the words to still stand tall and true is what the book had originally meant to me.
In 1967, when Dangerous Visions was first published to challenge the status quo of SF, I was just a kid, wondering what to do with my life. I was in love with comic books and science fiction, not yet knowing that I would someday work in each of those fields. I thought I might be a writer someday, but wasn't entirely sure. Dangerous Visions took that small spark and ignited it into a steady flame. For in addition to putting before me stories that seemed daring in a way that the other SF of the time was not, Harlan, with his introduction that placed the entire affair in context and with his intimate introductions to each story, made SF seem like a party I wanted to join.
Engaged in an eternal revolution
The reason I'm moved to write about this just now is because a 35th-anniversary edition of Dangerous Visions has just been released. (What a shock to suddenly realize that it has been that long.) Actually, book collectors will be interested to learn that a multiplicity of editions of this celebratory tome have been published by Edgeworks Abbey and ibooks—a hardcover, a trade paperback and a limited edition. But as for me, well, I'm only interested in the words between the covers. (Though Leo and Diane Dillon's cover art and interior illustrations for each story are still as powerful as they were 35 years ago.)
The hook that sold the book back in the olden days was that readers would find stories inside that could not be found anywhere else. The pages would be brimming with broken taboos and shattering sexuality unacceptable to the editors of the day. For the book to stand in this millennium, however, it must deliver more than that.
No science-fiction anthology could possibly be called dangerous today based on topic alone, not in 2002, not when Isaac Asimov's SF Magazine publishes sexually (and radically) explicit fiction, Fantasy & Science Fiction explores the alternate lifestyle of Paul Bunyan, and the novels in the field have long been examining race, gender and many other previously untouchable topics. You might think the fact that the rest of the field has caught up with Dangerous Visions on those terms would diminish it, but as for me, well, I think it rather emancipating, for we instead can now more clearly see that the true novelty of the book always was and still remains—its quality.
And the quality is still there. Samuel R. Delany's "Aye, and Gomorrah ... " still unsettles, Robert Silverberg's "Flies" still chills, Howard Rodman's "The Man Who Went to the Moon—Twice" still brings bittersweet pangs, and Frederik Pohl's "The Day After the Martians Came" still sneaks up on you.
And all the other stories, by Fritz Leiber and Theodore Sturgeon and Damon Knight and more dreamers than I can list here, still strut their stuff upon the SF stage unaged, as fresh as they ever were. In truth, that's the sort of envelope-pushing that has the best chance of lasting for future generations, and that's why Dangerous Visions still fulfills the promise of its title.
Which just goes to prove that the most dangerous fiction of all—is good fiction.
Scott Edelman started his trek to the editor-in-chief position at Science
Fiction Weekly back in 1974, when he began working as an assistant editor at
Marvel Comics. Between these two positions, this four-time Hugo Award nominee in
the category of Best Editor was the founding editor of the
award-winning magazine Science Fiction Age, in addition to editing
Sci-Fi Universe, Sci-Fi Flix and Satellite Orbit. Currently, he also edits SCI
FI, the official magazine of the SCI FI Channel. His science-fiction short stories can be found in the recent DAW anthologies Mars Probes and Once Upon a Galaxy.
