Dangerous Visions - by Harlan Ellison

Book Synopsis

WITH A NEW FOREWORD BY PATTON OSWALT

Dubbed "the most significant and controversial SF book" of its generation, Harlan Ellison's groundbreaking collection launched an entire subgenre: New Wave science fiction. With contributions from legendary authors and multiple Hugo and Nebula Awards, Dangerous Visions returns to print in a stunning new edition perfect for new and returning fans alike.

A landmark short story collection that put the more character-based New Wave science fiction on the map, Dangerous Visions won several prestigious awards and was nominated for many others. This now-classic anthology includes thirty-three stories by thirty-two award-winning authors, over half of whom have won multiple Hugo and Nebula Awards. Contributing authors include: Robert Silverberg, Frederik Pohl, Brian W. Aldiss, Philip K. Dick, Larry Niven, Fritz Leiber, Poul Anderson, Theodore Sturgeon, J.G. Ballard, Samuel R. Delany, and Ellison himself.

As relevant now as it was when first published, Dangerous Visions is a phenomenal collection that deserves a place on every bookshelf.

Review Quotes

"A furiously prolific and cantankerous writer [who] looked at storytelling as a 'holy chore, ' which he pursued zealously for more than sixty years. His output includes more than 1,700 short stories and articles, at least 100 books, and dozens of screenplays and television scripts...ranked with eminent science fiction writers like Ray Bradbury and Isaac Asimov."

-- "New York Times"

"An original and valuable writer...A twentieth-century Lewis Carroll."

-- "Los Angeles Times"

"Categories are too small--even the catch-all category of science fiction--to describe Harlan Ellison. Lyric poet, satirist, explorer of odd psychological corners, moralist, one-line comedian, purveyor of pure horror and of black comedy; he is all these and more."

-- "Washington Post"

"Feisty, furious, yet extraordinarily kind and generous; Harlan Ellison was one of a kind."

-- "Leonard Maltin"

"Harlan was not just a great fantasist and/or science fiction writer; he was a great writer, period. When he was at the top of his form, from the late 60s through the 70s and well into the 80s, there was no finer short-story writer in all of English literature."

-- "George R. R. Martin"

"Harlan Ellison was, after all, one of the most interesting humans on Earth. He was one of the greatest and most influential science fiction writers alive. He marched with Martin Luther King Jr. in Selma, lectured to college kids, visited with death row inmates, and once mailed a dead gopher to a publisher. Ellison brought a literary sensibility to sci-fi at a time when the entire establishment was allergic to any notion of art. To say he was one-of-a-kind would be trite, and he would likely hate that. What he was, was a legend."

-- "NPR"

"Harlan Ellison--terrific prose, razor-sharp intellect, pulp gut punches and invention when needed, terse poetics...An original."

-- "Guillermo del Toro"

"He doesn't write like anybody else. What emerges is a surprising, eclectic, almost protean series of visions, often disturbing, always strongly felt."

-- "Michael Crichton"

"In his stories of fantasy and horror, he strikes closest to all those things that horrify and amuse us (sometimes both at the same time) in our present lives...Most of all, we sense outrage and anger--as with the best Ellison stories, we sense personal involvement, and have a feeling that Ellison is not so much telling the tale as he is jabbing it viciously out of its hiding place. It is the feeling that we are walking over a lot of jagged glass in thin shoes, or running across a minefield in the company of a lunatic."

-- "Stephen King"

"Saul Bellow, Philip Roth, Norman Mailer, stand aside. Harlan Ellison is now a better short-story writer than you will ever be again during the rest of your lives."

-- "Ray Bradbury"

"The incredible Harlan Ellison writes as if an inner fuse is about to blow before he can get all the words on his pages."

-- "Anne McCaffrey"

"The spellbinding quality of a great nonstop talker, with a cultural warehouse for a mind."

-- "New York Review of Books"

"The words--there is an attention to the words. There is an attention to the sound of the words. You're reading them in your head, and they sing."

-- "Neil Gaiman"

"There's a real power to the way he uses the language and how he draws pictures in your mind."

-- "Ron Moore"

"You see Ellison's unswerving social conscience throughout his fiction and critical essays...forcefully and eloquently--and at some length--lamenting the failure of the Equal Rights Amendment and railing against the scourge of misogynistic 'knife-kill' films."

-- "RogerEbert.com"

"You should buy this book immediately, because this is a book that knows perfectly that you are seething inside."

-- "Algis Budrys, winner of the Pilgrim Award for Lifetime Achievement in Speculative Fiction"