The Last Dangerous Visions: Disappointing

The Last Dangerous Visions edited by Harlan Ellison & J. Michael Straczynski

Short story collections by their nature are hit and miss. The classic, almost unavoidable go-to review is calling a collection a “mixed bag” or noting only “some of the stories hit.” Honestly, I wish I could go that far with The Last Dangerous Visions, edited by Harlan Ellison (kind of) and J. Michael Straczynski (kind of), but the disappointing reality is that most of these stories rather than some “didn’t hit” for me, and of the 32 pieces I could only name five or six I’d call good to excellent, with a pretty steep drop-off from that handful.

If you’ve been around a while, you’re familiar with Ellison the author and the controversial figure, with the first two Dangerous Visions volumes and their impact on the genre, and with at least some of the long, tortured story of why the always-planned final one is only appearing decades later and years after Ellison’s death. If you haven’t been around and all of that means nothing to you, I’m not going to go into it here as Straczynski does it far better, far more personally, and far more movingly than I could in the quite lengthy essay entitled “Ellison Exegesis” that opens the anthology. After the explanation, which involves a lot of painful revelations, we get the 32 stories, most originally chosen by Ellison, and a few commissioned by Straczynski. Woven throughout are several “Intermezzos” by D.M. Rowles, artwork by Tim Kirk, and introductions and author bios for each story, both written by Straczynski in the tradition of Ellison’s original two volumes.

I’m not going to belabor the issues I had with specific stories. Suffice to say a number of them felt flat stylistically, predictable in terms of plot, weak in terms of character depth, and some just seemed as if they’d aged out since the time they were selected. The two most common opening words in my end notes were “meh” and “predictable”, and a few stories I simply summed up with “just not good.” Overall, I just was all too rarely startled by language, surprised by plotting, or moved by characters and what they experienced. It’s hard therefore for me to recommend the collection save for completists. On the other hand, if you want to take it out of the library (always a great option for anthologies I think), these are the stories that struck me as standouts in the collection (in order of appearance, not quality).

“Intermezzo: Broken, Beautiful Body on Beach” by D.M. Rowles: my favorite by far of the Intermezzos, Rowles makes nice use of structure, repetition, and poetic language in this quite brief story of discovering “a beautiful body … lying very still, soaking the sand around it.”

“War Stories” by Ed Bryant: This is strong across the board: plot, structure, and style. One of the longer stories, it’s also one of the most interesting and compelling and more than earns its length

“The Final Pogrom” by Dan Simmons: One of the darkest tales in the collection and the one with the most chilling opening line despite, or more precisely, because of, its matter of factness: “The IBM, Honeywell ,and other advanced computers were immensely useful in the final roundup of the Jews.” The plotting suffers a bit toward the end, but despite being commissioned by Ellison decades ago, it remains a sadly relevant story.

“First Sight” by Adrian Tchaikovsky: a mostly excellent story of a First Contact gone horribly wrong though I’d say marred a bit by writing past its ending to serve up too much of a can-see-it-coming Twilight Zone close.

“Binary System” by Kayo Hartenbaum: a lovely, thoughtful story centered on a “lightship keeper” asking some big questions in a small, quiet voice

“Dark Threshold” by P.C. Hodgell: lyrical and poetic, involving a young girl, a missing cat, and a strange locked door in the house, it reminded me of a classic Ray Bradbury story, though not in any derivative sense. Hodgell has shown herself to be more than capable of writing beautiful “Hodgell” stories over the years.

Other stories in this collection are by Stephen Robinett, Max Brooks, Richard E. Peck, Stephen Dedman, Cecil Castellucci, Steve Herbst, A.E. Van Vogt, John Morressy, Jonathan Fast, Robert Wissner, Steven Utley, David Brin, Ward Moore, James S.A. Corey, Howard Fast, Robert Sheckley, Mildred Downey Broxon, and Cory Doctorow.