Dangerous Visions

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1. GaryBlutoSep 2026
   I've mostly been reading short SF stories recently, most of them from Dangerous Visions.

   Here's a few of the ones I've read and enjoyed:

   “The Jigsaw Man” by Larry Niven

   “The Night That All Time Broke Out” by Brian W. Aldiss

   “A Toy for Juliette” by Robert Bloch (although I was surprisingly not a fan of Harlan's continuation)

   “The Man Who Went to the Moon — Twice” by Howard Rodman

   “Flies” by Robert Silverberg

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2. jacquesmNov 2023
   To save you some scripting:

     Alan Moore - dystopian graphic novel V for Vendetta (serialized 1982–1989)
     Alejandro Jodorowsky Jean Giraud (Moebius) - graphic novel The Incal (1980–1988)
     Anna Kavan - Ice (1967).
     Anne McCaffrey - The Ship Who Sang (1969)
     Arkady and Boris Strugatsky - Пикник на обочине (1972; Piknik na obochine; translated as A Roadside Picnic)
     Barry N. Malzberg - Beyond Apollo (1972)
     Brian Aldiss - Barefoot in the Head (1969)
     Brian Aldiss - Greybeard (1964).
     Chester Anderson - The Butterfly Kid (1967)
     Christopher Priest - Inverted World (1974)
     Cordwainer Smith - Norstrilia (1975, in complete form).
     David Bowie - The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars (1972)
     Frank Herbert - Dune (1965)
     Frank Miller - graphic novel Rōnin (1983–1984)
     Gary Panter - comic Jimbo (serialized 1977–present)
     Gary Panter - comic strip Dal Tokyo (1983–2007)
     Gene Wolfe - The Fifth Head of Cerberus (1972)
     Harlan Ellison’s (ed.) Dangerous Visions (1967)
     Jack Kirby - Fourth World comics (1971–1974).
     Jack Kirby - pre-Fourth World sci-fi comics (1964–1970)
     James Tiptree Jr. - Up the Walls of the World (1978)
     Jane Gaskell - A Sweet, Sweet Summer (1969)
     J.G. Ballard - Crash (1973)
     J.G. Ballard - High-Rise (1975)
     J.G. Ballard - The Atrocity Exhibition (written 1967, published 1970)
     J.G. Ballard - The Burning World (1964)
     J.G. Ballard - The Crystal World (1966)
     Joanna Russ - We Who Are About To… (serialized 1976; in book form, 1977)
     John Brunner - Stand on Zanzibar  (1968).
     John Brunner - The Sheep Look Up (1972)
     John Crowley - Engine Summer (1979)
     John Crowley - The Deep (1975).
     John Sladek - Roderick at Random (1983)
     John Sladek’s - The Müller-Fokker Effect (1970)
     John Varley - The Ophiuchi Hotline (1977)
     John Wagner, Alan Grant, and Carlos Ezquerra - Judge Dredd adventures Block Mania (serialized 10/31/1981 to 12/26/81) and The Apocalypse War (1/2/82 to 6/26/82).
     Josephine Saxton - The Hieros Gamos of Sam and An Smith (1969)
     Katsuhiro Otomo - manga series Akira (1982–1990)
     Kurt Vonnegut - Slaughterhouse-Five, or The Children's Crusade: A Duty-Dance with Death (1969)
     Michael Moorcock - The English Assassin (1972)
     M. John Harrison - The Pastel City (1971)
     Moebius-s Le Garage Hermétique (The Airtight Garage, 1976–1979)
     Octavia E. Butler-s Kindred (1979)
     Octavia E. Butler - Wild Seed (1980)
     Philip K. Dick - A Maze of Death (1970)
     Philip K. Dick - A Scanner Darkly (1977)
     Philip K. Dick - Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (1968)
     Philip K. Dick - Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said (1974).
     Philip K. Dick - Martian Time-Slip (1964)
     Philip K. Dick - Now Wait for Last Year (1966)
     Philip K. Dick - The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch (1965)
     Philip K. Dick - The Unteleported Man (1966)
     Philip K. Dick - Ubik (1969).
     Philip K. Dick - VALIS (1981)
     Richard Brautigan - In Watermelon Sugar (1968).
     Robert Heinlein - Friday (1982).
     Robert Silverberg - Dying Inside (1972)
     Roger Zelazny - Lord of Light (1967)
     Russell Hoban - Riddley Walker (1980)
     Samuel R. Delany - Babel-17 (1966).
     Samuel R. Delany - Dhalgren (1975)
     Samuel R. Delany - Nova (1968)
     Samuel R. Delany - The Einstein Intersection (1967)
     Samuel R. Delany - Trouble on Triton: An Ambiguous Heterotopia (1976)
     Stanislaw Lem - Ze wspomnien Ijona Tichego Kongres futurologiczny (The Futurological Congress, 1971)
     Thomas M. Disch - Camp Concentration (1968)
     Thomas Pynchon - Gravity’s Rainbow (1973)
     Ursula K. Le Guin - Rocannon's World (1966)
     Ursula K. Le Guin - The Dispossessed (1974).
     Ursula K. LeGuin - The Lathe of Heaven (1971)
     Ursula K. Le Guin - The Left Hand of Darkness (1969)
     Vladimir Nabokov - Ada, or Ardor (1969)
     Vonda N. McIntyre - Dreamsnake (1978)
     Walker Percy - Love in the Ruins (1971)
     William Burroughs - Nova Express (1964)

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3. angersockAug 2014
   Go back and read "Repent, Harlequin" or The Forever War or or Make room! Make room! or "Solution Unsatisfactory" tell me that all sci-fi from that age is all up and up. Go read the Dangerous Visions anthologies compiled by Ellison.

   I think you'd be a bit surprised by how "optimistic" a time that was--for all the rocketships, there was also a large state security apparatus, huge civil unrest, and great existential threat from the Russians.

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4. angersockOct 2012
   My reading suggests that we assume this technology is developed and ready to go. I too could see, once we pull out the singularity dust, a future where extensive body modification is possible, where my vision is trivially fixed to have larger spectral response and my skin is a flashing display of whimsy. But, that still supposes quite a bit.

   Moreover, I'll take your breathing underwater example to point something else out, as well as the muscle/bone-density one.

   We have that technology--some sort of Self-Contained Underwater Breathing Apparatus; a SCUBA, if you will. Similarly, we have ways of increasing muscle mass using steroids and other additives.

   And you know what? This is largely the domain of the rich, or of those who have money and time to spend on frivolities. So much of the singularity tech that I see bandied about seems to fall very much in that camp (see also: http://archive.picturesforsadchildren.com/93/ ).

   I'd much rather see better distribution and use of existing technology than wait for The Future--especially when it's presented as Everything's Possible With Science!

   (Speculative fiction has done a decent job of picking apart some of threads of these sorts of futures...I'd suggest reading some of the Dangerous Visions anthology or more recently Paolo Bacigalupi if you'd like a properly melancholy commentary on the future with Science! There's this annoying problem of the many billions in poverty that somehow always gets waved away.)

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5. gwernMay 2025
   > Amazon.com: You have a new series known collectively as Edgeworks, where you are well into reprinting no less than 31 titles in 20 dual volumes. What makes them any different or special from the original editions, other than availability?

   The given answer is mostly bullshit. The real answer seems to be that Ellison's undiagnosed & untreated bipolar disorder had given him both severe depression (so he couldn't write anything new & salable, even if he was not yet bedridden) and worsened his compulsive shopping habit, so his finances were in freefall. Ellison had made a lot of money over the years... and spent it all. Over the next decade even his _Babylon 5_ sinecure from his friend JMS would run out and he'd approach rock bottom (culminating in a firearm suicide attempt):

   "Impulse spending sprees are as textbook bipolar as the manic episodes that lead to them, and Harlan’s growing inability to make good decisions began to decimate his savings. Despite a precipitous drop in income in the years after _Babylon 5_, Harlan kept making high-priced impulse purchases of comics, artwork, and collectibles. Susan would tell him, repeatedly, “We don’t have the money.” But the cash went out anyway, leading to panic when the bills came in, often paid with loans from friends, followed by the same reckless spending and crippled decision-making when the financial dust cleared. “He can’t control himself”, Susan said. “I’ve had to hide the credit cards.”"

   See JMS's "Ellison Exegesis" in _Last Dangerous Visions_ last year (which points out that 1997 would see the last original volume from Ellison ever, so 1998 is at the top of the slippery slope where his life really began falling apart from bipolar).

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6. chasilJul 2024
   Dangerous Visions, the anthology edited by Harlan Ellison, contains something similar, if a bit more graphic.
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