Book Review: Dangerous Visions #3

Book Review: 'Dangerous Visions #3' edited by Harlan Ellison

1 / 5 Stars

Let's take a trip back to 1967, and the release of one of the New Wave era's most significant anthologies, Harlan Ellison's Dangerous Visions. The 520+ pages of the hardbound edition later were partitioned into a three-volume set of mass market paperbacks, all published by Berkley Books in 1969, with cover art by Don Ivan Punchatz. All three volumes retain the interior black-and-white illustrations made by Leo and Diane Dillon.

My review of volume #1 is here. Someday I'll get around to reading and reviewing #2.

Volume #3 (224 pp.) was published in July 1969, and features a new Introduction from Ellison in which he does some advance marketing for the follow-on anthology Again, Dangerous Visions.

For some time, I have adopted what I like to think of as a more forgiving attitude towards reviewing sci-fi content from the 1960s. Many of the creators of that content lacked the prose competencies that were to become more prevalent in later decades, so I am reluctant to niggle over pulp-style word-spinnings in material from the 1960s. At the same time, I feel a duty to warn readers as to whether a book is worth their time or not. If the reader is obliged to deal with characters who rasp, hiss, boom, snarl, or deliver any form of dialogue whatsoever accompanied by a verb, then they should be warned..........

So I will try to balance these aims in my critiques of the stories present in 'Dangerous Visions #3'.

My capsule reviews of the contents:

If All Men Were Brothers, Would You Let One Marry Your Sister ?, by Theodore Sturgeon: square-jawed troubleshooter Charli Bux visits the mysterious colony world of Vexvelt, where he finds an idyllic society in which gorgeous women happily provide him with Free Love. But Vexvelt has a very strange and disturbing secret to its happiness..........

This story vies with Keith Laumer's (below) for worst in the anthology. To pad the story to novelette length, Sturgeon loads it with long stretches of inane dialogue, and sociological pontificating that is contrived even by the standards of 1967. 

What Happened to Auguste Clarot ?,  by Larry Eisenberg: humorous goings-on in 19th century France. What this story is doing in a sci-fi anthology is anyone's guess. Maybe Ellison just wanted to show he could be Eccentric.

Ersatz, by Henry Slesar: Ellison's Introduction to this short-short story is a remarkable display of self-indulgence. Fortunately, Slesar's story, about privation in a post-apocalyptic America, is effective.

Go, Go, Said the Bird, by Sonya Dorman: post-apocalyptic hard times mean hungry, hangry people. Its 'shock value' has receded with time, but in 1967, this was strong stuff.

The Happy Breed, by John T. Sladek: in 1987, there is no pain, no want, and no worry for the narcotized population of the world. A satirical piece by Sladek.

Encounter with a Hick, by Jonathan Brand: a parable about the creation of the world, related in a kind of 60s hipster argot that comes across as painfully contrived. This was the third, and last, story ever published by author Brand.  

From the Government Printing Office, by Kris Neville: childhood education in a dystopian future. A bit too oblique to be effective.

Land of the Great Horses, by R. A. Lafferty: aliens bring the Gypsies home. Unremarkable tale from Lafferty.

The Recognition, by J. G. Ballard: a down-at-heels circus arrives in an English town and with it, revelations about human nature. I suspect that most readers will recognize the allegorical thrust of this tale well in advance of the ending. However, in terms of being a well-written piece, with carefully crafted prose, it's head and shoulders above all of the other entries in this volume.

Judas, by John Brunner: variation on the 'What if a Computer was God ?' theme. The dialogue passages which constitute the majority of the story's prose have a stilted, almost amateurish, quality.

Test to Destruction, by Keith Laumer: on a near-future Earth, a freedom fighter battles the malevolent dictator Kolso; some aliens look on with interest. This story is embarrassingly bad, with a prose style that was more at home in 1957 than 1967. Laumer's effort to add New Wave trappings, in the form of alien 'dialogue' passages that contain ALL CAPS and italicized font, just make things worse..........

Carcinoma Angels, by Norman Spinrad:  Harrison Wintergreen is the man who has everything.....so why not a cure for cancer ? The emphasis in this tale is on ironic humor.

Auto-da-Fe, by Roger Zelazny: bullfighting, reimagined. One of the better stories in this volume.

Aye, and Gomorrah...., by Samuel R. Delany: in the future, neutered 'spacers' have a combative relationship with the 'frelks' who are their groupies. I suppose modern-day reviewers would say that this story was ahead of its time in addressing the complexities of Gender and Self-Identity. I just know the story is a dud.......... talky and inane. 

Summing up, it's the stories by Slesar, Dorman, Ballard, and Zelazny that imbue this third volume of Dangerous Visions with value. The other entries suffer too much from trying too hard to present as 'speculative fiction'; in so doing, they have discarded meaningful plotting, dialogue, and exposition in order to deliver transgressive experiences. As such, while they may have succeeded in upsetting bourgeoise sensibilities in '67, inevitably their novelty has dissipated with the passage of time.