If any anthology of short stories written by multiple authors qualifies as a classic, it is Harlan Ellison's 1967 Dangerous Visions, a collection of 33 previously unpublished, highly swingin' 60s original, high dangerous to the status quo tales from what has since become widely known as New Wave Science Fiction with such authors as Philip K. Dick, J.G. Ballard, Samuel R. Delany, Theodore Sturgeon, and Brian W. Aldiss.
The updated 2011 SF Masterworks edition is the one to read since it not only includes Harlan Ellison's original Introduction but Harlan's more recent 2002 Introduction, a Forward by Michael Moorcock and an introductory essay by Adam Roberts.
I so wish I could share a write-up on every single story within this collection but since I'm writing a book review not a book, I'll contain myself and offer a few words on five of my favorites:
THE DAY AFTER THE DAY THE MARTIANS CAME by Frederik Pohl
Mr. Mandala runs his Florida motel near Cape Kennedy and must deal with all those damn reporters and newshounds crowding his motel lobby prior to racing off to catch the latest scoop on the Martians brought back by American astronauts. He yells at Ernest, his colored bellmen (author’s language), to clear out the back room so more cots can be set up. Ernest raises his voice above the crowd and lets Mr. Mandala know there simply isn’t a square inch of empty space and, besides which, there are no more cots. Mr. Mandala shouts: “You’re arguing with me, Ernest. I told you to quit arguing with me.”
Meanwhile the newsmen (all men, no women since this is the mid-1960s) are sitting around tables playing poker and exchanging Martian jokes, jokes usually featuring degraded sex and Martian stupidity. An official from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration comes on the TV and says that from an initial examination of the Martians it appears they are vertebrate, warm-blooded and make sounds that are some sort of language.
Mr. Mandala asks everyone to hold down their voices since it is early morning and some people in his motel are still sleeping. The newsmen ignore him and keep on telling Martian jokes, throwing in even more references to Catholics, Irish and women while one of the intellectual types, a pipe smoker, says he heard those Martians really stink.
Mr. Mandala judges all this Martian stuff as sheer nonsense and wonders why people are interested and even care about creatures who craw on long, weak limbs, gasp heavily in Earth gravity and stare out at TV cameras with their long, dull Martian eyes. Frustrated at all the hullabaloo in his usually quiet motel, he lashes out once again at Ernest, insisting he come out and do some more clean up.
Mr. Mandala then steps outside to clear his head. Shortly thereafter the newsmen pile into their cars and head off to Cape Kennedy for the next official briefing. Mr. Mandala goes back in, grabs a couple of cold bottles of Coke and makes his way to the back to find Ernest. The two men kick back and relax. Mr. Mandala admits it has been a rough night for both of them and tells Ernest that he thinks six months from now nobody will remember anything about those Martian and how their coming to our planet will not make a nickel’s worth of difference. Ernest replies mildly that he hates to disagree but “I don’t think so. Going to make a difference to some people. Going to make a damn big difference to me.”
In the tale's Afterword, Frederik Pohl states it is his conviction that a story speak for itself. But he does relay how he had a most revealing conversation with a Alabama minister in the weeks after he wrote the story, a minister who said he encourages his congregation to read science fiction for two reasons: 1) they might worry about green-skinned Martians instead of black-skinned Americans, and 2) that all men are brothers in a universe where there are probably other creatures out there who are not human.
SHALL THE DUST PRAISE THEE? by Damon Knight
"The Day of Wrath arrived. The sky pealed with trumpets, agonized, summoning. Everywhere the dry rocks rose, groaning, and fell back in rubble. Then the sky split, and in the dazzle appeared a throne of white fire, in a rainbow that burned green." So begins this short parable-like tale where the Lord God Jehovah returns to Earth with his host of angels. Proclamations are made. The Earth shakes. But what the Lord God Jehovah and his angels discover in England on the wall of a chamber buried in a deep pit serves as the ultimate surprise.
In the tale's Afterward, Damon Knight recounts how his agent returned this story to him with loathing and said it might be possible to sell such a story to one and only one publication: Moscow's Atheist Journal. Damon acknowledges the question asked in the story is a frivolous one, at least for him, since he doesn't believe in Jehovah; however, for someone who does believe in such a God, the question raised in the story is an important one.
WHAT HAPPENED TO AUGUSTE CLAROT? by Larry Eisenberg
As Harlan Ellison said, Larry Eisenberg should be put away for submitting such a story to him for inclusion in a collection of science fiction. And he himself as editor should be put away for accepting such a story to be part of his Dangerous Visions. Furthermore, as Harlan goes on to say, any reader who makes it to the end of What Happened to Auguste Clarot? should likewise be put away. Since I made it to the end of the story, even reading Eisenberg's Afterward, should I, in fact, be put away? If anybody cares to read this story and offer a suggestion, please feel free.
CARCINOMA ANGELS by Norman Spinrad
As a kid, Harrison Wintergreen made a potful of money by collecting baseball cards. In high school he became expert at test-taking and won seven college scholarships. Once in college, he was big man on campus - all the beautiful girls loved him but he soon became bored with school and decided to become rich by first writing a string of sex novels, then trading in sports cars, then wheeling and dealing in Las Vegas and finally investing in hot properties. By the age of twenty-five Harrison was not only rich but filthy rich.
As a kind of 1960s version of Bill Gates, Harrison first engaged in all sorts of charity around the globe then expanded his worldwide influence by inventing timesaving gadgets and writing best selling novels. Thus our all-American wiz kid did it all and was counted as among the greatest men alive. But, then, horror of horrors, at age forty, Harrison Wintergreen was informed he had an incurable case of cancer.
Receiving the news you have the big C is never good news but back in the 1960s being diagnosed with cancer was a death sentence. Lung cancer was among the biggest culprits where men and women who smoked cigarettes dropped like flies. Carcinoma is a cancer that starts in tissue cells that line the inner or outer surfaces of the body and once those cancer cells get going - watch out! They multiple, turn fierce and can soon overwhelm any healthy cells putting up a fight.
As an absolute last resort, Harrison Wintergreen takes powerful drugs, including illegal hallucinogens to enter his own body and do battle with those death dealing cancer cells directly. Curiously, back in 1967 in high school, a teacher told the story of someone taking LSD and entering his own body. I took this story as truth at the time. I wonder if that teacher read or heard of this Norman Spinrad tale. Hmmm. . . perhaps such LSD induced internal travel was a common cultural myth at the time.
The decade of the 60s was the heyday for California Hell's Angels motorcycle gang, the ultimate symbol of defiance to the safety of middle class America. Norman Spinrad's linking Hell's Angels to cancer cells was a stroke of literary genius. Once the hallucinogens kick in and he is in his body, Harrison faces off against his deadly adversary: "Black the cycle. Black the riding leathers. Black, dull black, the face of the rider save for two glowing blood-red eyes. And emblazoned across the front and back of the black motorcycle jacket in shining scarlet studs the legend: "Carcinoma Angels.""
It's a battle to the end. To find out if Harrison lives or dies, you will have to read for yourself.
THE PROWLER IN THE CITY AT THE EDGE OF THE WORLD by Harlan Ellison
Here are a few snips (with my modest edits) from an overview of Harlan's tale via Wiki:
"Jack the Ripper appears inexplicably in a sterile futuristic metropolis, where anyone is free to do what they want however arcane or immoral.
Jack proceeds to kill. Jack is surprised to discover that there are other mental presences or personalities coexisting within his own mind, commenting on the brutality of his acts as if they were spectators at a theatrical performance or aesthetes critiquing a work of art in a museum.
Although recognizably human in form, the future City's denizens have powers of matter manipulation, time travel, and telepathy. They can both read and manipulate Jack the Ripper's mind.
They proceed for their own malign amusement to mentally expose him to his own subconscious lusts, desires, and petty hatreds; prior to their interference he had suppressed his awareness of these urges."
Here are a few snips (with my modest edits) from an overview of Harlan's tale via Wiki:
"Jack the Ripper appears inexplicably in a sterile futuristic metropolis, where anyone is free to do what they want however arcane or immoral.
Jack proceeds to kill. Jack is surprised to discover that there are other mental presences or personalities coexisting within his own mind, commenting on the brutality of his acts as if they were spectators at a theatrical performance or aesthetes critiquing a work of art in a museum.
Although recognizably human in form, the future City's denizens have powers of matter manipulation, time travel, and telepathy. They can both read and manipulate Jack the Ripper's mind.
They proceed for their own malign amusement to mentally expose him to his own subconscious lusts, desires, and petty hatreds; prior to their interference he had suppressed his awareness of these urges."
Literary bad boy Harlan Ellison (1934 - 2018) was expelled from Ohio State University for punching a professor who slammed his writing. Thereafter, any time Harlan had a work published over his long career, he sent a copy to the professor.
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