The Last Dangerous Visions: A Story of Friendship

On November 13th of this year, Babylon 5 & Sense8 creator J. Michael Straczynski posted a tweet that made every hardcore Speculative Fiction fan squeal with joy. He announced that in the Spring of next year, the long-awaited anthology The Last Dangerous Visions would finally be published. 

The Tweet in Question

Now, for those of you reading this who were actually popular in high school, let me quickly explain the significance of this book.

In 1967, writer Harlan Ellison, who I've mentioned and written about several times on this blog, edited and published an anthology titled Dangerous Visions. This book was a considered a significant turning point in the field of Speculative Fiction (a broad used to encompass many types of genre fiction, including science fiction, fantasy, and horror). Up until then, SF (the field's common shorthand), was seen largely as a form of trashy, disposable popular entertainment, with little cultural, artistic, or literary merit. Dangerous Visions, helped to change that perception. 

Within its pages, writers were at liberty to use SF as a vehicle to explore major social ideas, many of them taboo, and to experiment formally with how they wrote their stories. This gave rise to a new movement in SF, commonly referred to as New Wave SF. Once this book appeared, SF writers felt that there was a whole new frontier of subject matter and approach to craft they'd previously never explored.

The book proved to be so popular that the publishers pushed Ellison to put out a second volume. Five years later, in 1972, Again Dangerous Visions appeared. Many who've read the stories within its covers see it as being even more radical and experimental than the stories within its predecessor.

In compiling the stories of Again Dangerous Visions though, Ellison found himself over-buying stories. In fact, he bought so many that he became convinced that a third anthology would need to be published. This anthology was supposed to be The Last Dangerous Visions. 

There was only one problem: the book never appeared. 

Harlan & Susan Ellison

Nobody quite knows exactly why this happened. That is, nobody except Harlan Ellison, and he never divulged that reason as far as we know in either print or conversation. It could be simply because the project got so enormous that it overwhelmed him and he trunked it. It could be because it inundated him with so much extra work that he couldn't find a way to give it the time he felt he needed to (Ellison always wrote introductions to each story published, which takes a lot of time). Or perhaps it was a pure matter of publishing logistics. Whatever the cause, the effect was obvious.

For the next 48 years, The Last Dangerous Visions would be one of those legendary books that never saw publication. Eventually, it got to the point where writers in the SF community would turn it into a routine joke at conventions. Yet, Harlan always seemed to express the belief that, one day, this book and the stories its contributors charged him with would indeed see the light of day.

Sadly, Harlan didn't get to live to see this book come to light. On June 28th, 2018, he passed away, after a long period of ill-health. Compounding this was that on August 1st of this year (2020), his widow, Susan Ellison followed suit. So, with Harlan gone and with his dear wife gone, it looked as if this legendary compendium would never appear.

J. Michael Straczynski

Enter J. Michael Straczynski.

Well known among hardcore SF fans is the connection between Harlan Ellison and JMS.

Straczynski's reading of Harlan's work when he was young and living a troubled life of dirt-poor poverty gave him the confidence to pursue his own dream of writing. Specifically, it was his book Memos from Purgatory, Ellison's nonfiction companion book to his early novel, Web of the City, about gang life in Red Hook, Brooklyn that showed Straczynski that writing wasn't an "ivory tower profession." Literature, and the people who wrote it, could come from "the streets."

Famously, JMS, as a young writer, called Harlan at his home while he was undergoing his first major writing dry-spell where he couldn't sell anything, and the conversation proceeded somewhat like this:

Ring, ring, ring...

"Yeah?" said Harlan Ellison.

Oh shit. Straczynski paused briefly. "Is...is this Harlan Ellison."

"Yeah, what do you want?"

Straczynski gulped. "Well, my, my, my name is Joe Straczynski, and I'm a writer, and my stuff isn't selling, and I wasn't wondering if you could give me some advice."

The line went silent for a second. Straczynski pictured the writer rolling his eyes and sighing with exasperation. Just what he needed: another schmuck wanting advice on a question to which there's no good answer.

"Okay, you want my advice?" said Harlan, his tone brusque. "Here it is: stop writing shit. If what you were writing weren't shit, it would sell somewhere, so my advice to you: stop writing shit."

Straczynski gulped again. "Okay. Thank you," and he hung up the phone.

Now, despite that rocky start, the Ellison-Straczynski relationship blossomed into one of mutual respect and admiration. Such was the case that, when Straczynski finally managed to sell the idea for the show that would become Babylon 5 (which...is better than Star Trek, don't @ me), he hired Harlan as a creative consultant. for the show, a role in which he'd remain for the show's duration. In addition, he received formal script and story development credit for two episodes of the show, and acted in two episodes as well (once as an obnoxious AI, and once as an unnamed Psi Cop). 

Even after the show went off the air, the friendship continued, so much so that, as Harlan knew his days were dwindling, he made Straczynski his literary executor. He became the Max Brod to Harlan's Kafka (a comparison, I think, Harlan would appreciate). 

Now, just 3 years after Harlan's passing and less than a year after his beloved wife Susan's, JMS will be bringing out this final compendium of The Last Dangerous Visions. As a tribute to his late friend, I can't think of a nicer way of honoring Harlan's memory than by finally putting out into the world the book he'd wanted to publish for so long. 

What will this book be like? I have no clue. The stories that are to be published in it are now 48 (soon to be 49) years old, so we'll have to see how well they hold up. That said, Straczynski has said that he's optimistic that the final book will be a good one. Of that, I have no doubt. Some parts of it might be better than others, but nothing is ever perfect. 

We'll simply have to wait and see.