Finally got around to the next in my series of reviews of fiction which has won both Hugo and Nebula, here.

He’s had a pacemaker fitted.

Am a bit, er, surprised by some of these. I actually changed the one for “blogs” because it was too explicit even for behind an lj-cut…

I’m pleased and gratified to see that a whole lot of people have added me to their f-lists over the last few months. If I don’t know you in real life, please do drop an introductory note here as a comment, perhaps letting me know where you are, what you do, and why you are reading me.

18) The Warden’s Niece, by Gillian Avery

The Warden’s Niece is no relation to The Warden, though of course they share a common background in the nineteenth century (this book set in 1875 and written in 1957). Eleven-year-old Maria runs away from school to her great-uncle who is the Warden of an Oxford college. She gets put in with the three sons of the neighbouring house, and their eccentric temporary tutor Mr Copplestone (who would certainly be played by Stephen Fry in the movie version). She also develops her own little research programme, solves a historical mystery, and thus gets her Bildung. It’s a lovely little book. My favourite scene is where she manages to talk her way into the Bodleian Library, in a combination of drive to find the answers to the historical mystery that has been puzzling her, and carrying out the terms of a dare from one of the boys next door. But I am a sucker for the Bodleian anyway.

17) The Warden, by Anthony Trollope

Picked this up on a whim from a four-for-a-pound box in Wiltshire yesterday. I remember watching the BBC adaptation with Donald Pleasance years ago. Actually a rather good book, which I found myself reflecting on rather a lot as I drove across England and Belgium today.

I was particularly intrigued by trying to work out what Trollope was really trying to say. While we are made to feel very sympathetic to Mr Huntley, the eponymous warden, the fact is that he is getting a substantial amount of money for doing almost nothing; and the argument that the old men of the almshouse would be incapable of spending the money wisely, if it was theirs, seems pretty patronising – is Harding’s expenditure of it, on music and soft furnishing, so much more moral? And the ending of the story, where all goes to rack and ruin – well, this is actually the fault of the bishop, for not getting the confused legal situation sorted out, rather than the fault of the zealous Dr Bold for raising the question.

Having said that, I rather liked some of the very conscious ironies that Trollope puts in the book: Dr Bold, after all, is himself the beneficiary of unearned income, which is what allows him to bring the case in the first place. I relished even more the brief descriptions of British policy on Ireland, particularly since The Warden is set in 1855, precisely because I just read my father’s book on the same period. Where my father declined to attribute anything other than the usual kneejerk bigotry as being behind the outrageously anti-Catholic policies of the British government of the day, Trollope (writing at the time, rather than a century later) is much more vicious:

Sir Abraham Haphazard was deeply engaged in preparing a bill for the mortification of papists, to be called the “Convent Custody Bill,” the purport of which was to enable any Protestant clergyman over fifty years of age to search any nun whom he suspected of being in possession of treasonable papers or Jesuitical symbols… The bill had all its desired effect. Of course it never passed into law; but it so completely divided the ranks of the Irish members, who had bound themselves together to force on the ministry a bill for [Irish economic development, though rather a silly policy].

So some at least of this is meant as simple satire. And yet his entire chapter – “Tom Towers, Dr Anticant, and Mr Sentiment” – about the baneful and pernicious influence of the media seems pretty heartfelt (and also helps explain why this author appealed so much to John Major). I will just have to read more and see what I think.

16) Year’s Best SF 11, ed. David Hartwell and Kathryn Cramer

So, why is it that the Hugo and Nebula systems cannot produce shortlists of the quality of this selection? There was only one story out of 31 here that failed to really engage my interest (OK, some of them were very short) and two that I thought were really good and would not have come across otherwise. I liked very much R Garcia y Robertson’s “Oxygen Rising”, about future war, peacekeeping and sex, and Ken MacLeod’s “A Case of Consilience” struck me as one of the great sf and religion stories (OK, it references many of the others, but that if anything is a strength). Anyway, if the Dozois annual collection is even half as good as this, my money has been weell spent.

15) [Doctor Who] The Empire of Glass, by Andy Lane

This is one of the Virgin Missing Adventures of Doctor Who which is downloadable from the BBC website. Set in Venice and London in 1609, it gives the author a chance to bring together Galileo, Shakespeare, Christopher Marlowe (not dead after all, it turns out) and the First Doctor, Steven and Vicki. The BBC presentation makes it easy to cut between chapters of the book and the author’s notes, which makes reading the book rather like watching a DVD for the first time with the production team’s commentary turned on. It’s rather good fun, with decent treatment of Steven and several rather satisfying nods to continuity, though I don’t think we find out exactly what happens to Cardinal Bellarmine.

End of the holiday. This is my first effort at a photographic comparison of the village now and a century ago:

Hill St now

Hill St then

Main St now

Main St then

Scarva St now

Scarva St then

My latest watched Doctor Who DVD, this being the last of the first Jon Pertwee season. I liked it. Alex Wilcock has already said pretty much all I would want to say about it. I would just add a few more details:

The Doctor’s own role is not especially glorious in this story. Rather than concentrate on the dangers of the drilling project, he prefers to try and escape via TARDIS. When the Brigadier accuses him of having wasted time “gallivanting”, the Doctor takes deep offence, but the Brigadier is absolutely right. Had the Doctor stuck around on our world instead, he could have simply badgered Stahlman to take his glove off, which would have resulted in his being instantly discredited. We the viewers know about the intimate connection between the drilling and the Primords; the penny never really drops for the characters.

It’s a shame that they didn’t give Liz Shaw a decent farewell scene. I suppose that is part of the problem of a season with only four stories and the last one seven parts. There was too much plot to fit in, perhaps. On the second DVD, Caroline John comes across in the interviews as a very pleasant and intelligent person, much more so than the last companion-playing actress who I saw interviewed, who came across as pretty brainless. But it’s nice that the last shot of the series, and of the season, is of her laughing at the Doctor and Brigadier squabbling.

The story of John Woods/John Levene and his acting career is a rather nice one too, which I hadn’t heard before.

More on alternate universes in another post. But in summary: a good set of DVDs.

Get well soon.

I think I’m getting to grips with this insertion of maps business…

Growing up in Northern Ireland I was very very interested in astronomy, and the Planetarium in Armagh was a regular treat for me (and perhaps also the rest of the family). My father even cited my interest in one of his papers (“The Permeability of the United Kingdom-Irish Border: A Preliminary Reconnaissance”, published in 1982). At the age of 16 I achieved my first serious hack points outside the immediate educational environment when I served for two years as secretary of the Irish Astronomical Association (from 1983 to 1985). I actually wanted to be an astronomer when I grew up, until I spent the summer of 1988 at the Royal Greenwich Observatory (then in its last few months at Herstmonceux Castle in Sussex) and realised that this was not the life for me.

So there was an element of risk in bringing the family to Armagh; would the source of my youthful idealism stand up to mature re-examination? The Planetarium, I knew, had been completely renovated over the last few years and only re-opened last month.

But in fact I need not have worried. This may be local pride, but I think it is still a better and more engaging exhibition than the planetarium in Brussels (which I visited with F a few months back, and he wasn’t awfully impressed). As well as the standard space memorabilia there is a neat 3-D view of Martian cliffs, and two short 3-D films which I’ll have to go and see next time. There was even something for U – a big strip of lights going to the ceiling representing the different layers of the atmosphere, which she was able to turn on and off using switches which were just about at three-year-old level.

The main show in the dome has been completely changed, and for the better, by putting all the chairs facing the same way, and projecting the images from the walls to the dome rather than (as in the old days, and as in most planetariums still) having the audience sitting in circles around the big projector in the middle, mostly having to crane their necks to see parts of the show. The main show was pretty good, and I think well adjusted for people of F’s age (seven) and above.

They prefaced the main show with a brief historical look at the Planetarium, presumably in part to help justify the taxpayers’ money spent on the refurbishment. As a former activist, I was very intereted to see what had been put in and what left out. Rightly, tribute was paid to the vision of the astronomer who had set it up; rightly, the brief tenure of a famous TV astronomer as director-designate (he resigned before it was opened in 1966) was not mentioned; and also, warm tribute was paid to a subsequent director, whose tenure had not (as I remembered) always been easy. (Though I noticed that he had also in fact written and produced the main show.)

We then went outside to explore the scale model of the solar system (though of course you can do that at home) and checked out the Observatory (founded in 1790) at the top of the hill. Here too there was nostalgia (I worked there in the winter of 1985-86, showing people Halley’s Comet through the Grubb telescope) and innovation – a “human orrery” exhibit showing you how to pace out the paths of the planets inside Saturn’s orbit, plus also Halley’s and Encke’s Comets, and Ceres the largest asteroid. Again, U enjoyed this one too and decided to follow the nice circular paths.

So, jolly good fun, and a risk worth taking. We’ll go back next year.

The Newry Canal is the oldest in the British Isles, having been opened in 1742. We had a brief stroll at Scarva after lunch on Sunday with children and visitors, enjoying landscape and wildlife.

(trying out the new client software; not totally satisfied but it’s worth exploring further)

Horse, Ja., F, and U (with elf)

Swan family

Ducks

On the towpath: Ju, baby E, Ja, U, A and F

Prodded by an observation from , I make the following provisional and contentious list of Hugo winning fiction which is clearly fantasy rather than sf:

1959: “That Hell-Bound Train”, Robert Bloch (short story)
1964: “The Dragon Masters”, Jack Vance (short story)
1967: “The Last Castle” by Jack Vance (novelette)
1971: “Ill Met in Lankhmar” by Fritz Leiber (novella)
1974: “The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas”, Ursula K. Le Guin (short story)
1978: “Jeffty Is Five”, Harlan Ellison (short story)
1981: “Grotto of the Dancing Deer”, Clifford D Simak (short story)
1982: “Unicorn Variations” by Roger Zelazny (novelette)
1987: “Gilgamesh in the Outback” by Robert Silverberg (novella)
1990: “Boobs” by Suzy McKee Charnas (short story)
1991: “Bears Discover Fire” by Terry Bisson (short story)
1994: “Death on the Nile” by Connie Willis (short story)
1997: “Blood of the Dragon” by George R. R. Martin (novella)
2001: Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire by J.K. Rowling (novel)
2002: “Hell Is the Absence of God” by Ted Chiang (novelette)
2002: American Gods by Neil Gaiman (novel)
2003: Coraline by Neil Gaiman (novella)
2004: “A Study in Emerald” by Neil Gaiman (short story)
2004: Paladin of Souls by Lois McMaster Bujold (novel)
2005: “The Faery Handbag” by Kelly Link (novelette)
2005: Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell by Susanna Clarke (novel)

So is right to say that four of the last five Hugos for Best Novel – and none previously – have gone to fantasy novels; and taking all the categories into account, more Hugo awards have gone to works of fantasy rather than sf in the last six years than in the previous twenty.

Does it matter?

13) The Independent Irish Party 1850-9, by J.H. Whyte

This was the first of my father’s four books, published in 1958 when he was 30, as adapted from a postgraduate thesis. It tells the story of the short-lived group of MPs for Ireland in the 1850s campaigning for increased rights for agricultural tenants and equal rights for Catholics. It’s an interesting study of a relatively minor piece of history. I understand there’s been precisely one other book published on the subject in the last fifty years…

The “Independent Opposition” won almost half of the Irish seats in the 1852 general election, largely because of two gratuitously anti-Catholic moves by British politicians in the months before the vote – the outgoing Whig government of Lord John Russell passed the Ecclesiastical Titles Bill, and then Lord Derby’s caretaker Tory government made a proclamation that sparked anti-Catholic rioting in Stockport immediately before the election. It’s extraordinary that the Famine per se, only recently past, doesn’t seem to have been a political factor that played in 1852 (the first election since 1847). The death of O’Connell in 1847 and the dismal failure of the 1848 rebellion seem to have been bigger factors, though if anything they militated against the consolidation of any nationalist movement. (And despite some wishful thinking and a very few exceptions this movement does seem to have been pretty much restricted to Munster, Leinster and Connacht.)

It failed, in my father’s analysis, mainly because of a lack of leadership. Two of its most interesting characters, John Sadleir and William Keogh, defected to the new Liberal government almost as soon as the votes had been counted. Any one of several other potential leaders could have built it into a more long-lasting movement, but one by one they fell by the wayside – Frederick Lucas (the founder of The Tablet) died suddenly at the age of 43, George Henry Moore was kicked out of parliament for electoral malpractice, and Charles Gavan Duffy gave up in despair and emigrated to Australia (where he became Prime Minister of Victoria). The odds were stacked against any party whose policy was concerted opposition rather than the personal advancement of its own members, and the failure of the 1850s movement makes the success of Parnell a generation later all the more remarkable.

Edited to add See post on Trollope.

12) Salonica: City of Ghosts – Christians, Muslims and Jews 1430-1950, by Mark Mazower

This book was recommended to me last time I was in the city, and subsequently by (, not so much use for you as it starts some time after the 11th century). It is very good – an excellent story of the city through waves of depopulation and resettlement: the Greeks leave when the Ottomans take over in 1460, the Jews come in from Spain and Portugal in the 1490s, the city becomes one of the centres of the Ottoman empire and (I guess) the largest Jewish city in the world, and then is captured by the Greek kingdom in 1912, the Turks are kicked out in 1923, the Jews deported and almost all killed in 1943, and that’s it.

Mazower has written two other very good books, one on the Balkans and one on Europe as a whole. Like the others, this one is great on the grand sweeping strategies and the public personalities of the city. I would have liked a bit more of the human side of things, which he also does well. Three individual stories which he did present well, and which will linger in my mind, were the looting and destruction of the Incantadas (a glorious ancient monument) by the French in the early nineteenth century, the tango craze of the 1920s, and the deportation of the Jews in 1943.

Mazower is of course reconstructing a history which has been wilfully forgotten by the Greek state, which prefers to stick to a narrative of continuous Hellenism for the whole of the last millennium. The real story is of course more complex, and in the last couple of pages Mazower argues for his history particularly eloquently:

As small states integrate themselves in a wider world, and even the largest learn how much they need their neighbours’ help to tackle the problems that face them all, the stringently-patrolled and narrow-minded conception of history which they once nurtured and which gave them a kind of justification starts to look less plausible and less necessary. Other futures may require other pasts.

I think he proves his point well.

11) October the First is Too Late, by Fred Hoyle

One of the famous astronomer’s sf novels, a very short book (170 pages) featuring a contemporary 1966 world where suddenly large chunks of the Earth are sent back to different times – western and central Europe to 1917, the Balkans to classical times, other parts to who knows where. Our narrator is a musician, his friend a brilliant mathematician. Hoyle works in a lot of his own personal obsessions – mountains, classical music.

I can’t help feeling that Brian Aldiss used a number of ideas from this book, especially in The Eighty-Minute Hour and Frankenstein Unbound – and the whole tone seems very Aldissian to me, much more so than the earlier The Black Cloud. Do we know how much Hoyle followed the genre, as well as contributing to it himself?

9) Inside the Tardis: The Worlds of Doctor Who, by James Chapman
10) Doctor Who, by Kim Newman

Two books which both claim to go beyond the usual cataloguing of stories and look at the cultural and literary context of Doctor Who. Both take us up to the end of 2005 (Chapman includes “The Christmas Invasion”, Newman does not) but start very vigorously from the very beginning in 1963. Both authors declare early on that they are fans and tell us which is the first story they remember watching (“The Dalek Invasion of Earth” for Newman, “The Time Warrior” for Chapman who must obviously therefore be nearer my age).

Newman’s book is more gossipy and opinionated (, for instance, gets an entire footnote to himself, in a comment about a completely different programme) and has lots and lots of illustrations, no doubt contributing to the £12.99 price tag for a paperback with lots of white space on its 118 pages. Newman holds that the series entered terminal decline with the arrival of K9 and so devotes much more time to the first half of the original run. He does succeed rather better than Chapman in linking what was going on in Doctor Who to what else was going on in televised sf at the time, but basically this is a rather thin effort.

Chapman’s book is the same price, for 200 dense pages of text and numerous appendices and other apparatus. I thought it was much the better of the two. He goes through each Doctor and each season in chronological order, with reference to the BBC’s archives of internal correspondence (where they are available), pointing out the show’s connections with other TV drama and with the written sf of the day. He has evoked in me more enthusiasm for the middle Pertwee seasons than I thought possible (though I must finish watching “Inferno” first), and also makes me want to try both “The Celestial Toymaker” and “The Mind Robber”.

However I would have liked more. In the front matter, Chapman asks, “The Doctor may have conquered Daleks, Cybermen and Ice Warriors, but would he survive an encounter with Foucault, Derrida or Deleuze?” We don’t really find out the answer to that very interesting question. I was also disappointed that there is no decent review of the existing literature on Doctor Who; there’s a bibliography, but this is just a listing with no guidance as to what is worth reading (Chapman makes more effort to describe the much more ephemeral websites). Perhaps there is nothing else at all, other than Tulloch and Alvarado’s The Unfolding Text? But I find that difficult to believe. Also there were some irritating proofing errors – “reign” instead of “rein” a couple of times, references to “Ursula Le Guinn” and the surprising news that Alan Moore wrote The Dark Night Returns.

Anyway, I’l look out for more along these lines; recommendations very welcome.

7) Doctor Who Short Trips [2]: Companions, ed. Jacqueline Rayner
8) Doctor Who Short Trips [3]: A Universe of Terrors, ed. John Binns

Two impulse purchases of short stories set in the Doctor Who universe (of the first eight Doctors, ie up at and including the 1996 movie) by various hands. I bought the first one because I am myself fascinated by the companions (though I read very little fanfic); I bought the second purely because it has a story in it by .

As with most themed collections, not every story is good and not every story fits in to the overall theme. But they are very attractively presented, and while I don’t think they would convert non-fans to the cause, they will be entertaining reading for the fan.

The Companions volume is the more interesting, though also more variable. The spread of companions across the seventeen stories is interesting – two about Barbara Wright (and others where she features in the background), and another two about Adric. Most take the story of the companions after their time with the Doctor – most effectively, I think, the very first, “The Tip of the Mind” by Peter Anghelides, where the Third Doctor visits Zoe and of course is not recognised, the narrator being one of Zoe’s work colleagues on her space station. I also liked the very last story, “The Long Night” by Allison Lawson, one of the Barbara Wright stories, although of course 23 November 1963 was a Saturday which made some of the details a bit unlikely. (But why did nobody proof-read Gary Russell’s story, and put in a few more commas?)

Bringing elements of the horror genre into Doctor Who has been done before, if not always successfully. I didn’t think that A Universe of Terrors stuck very strongly to its mandate, but I am a Doctor Who fan rather than a horror fan so didn’t mind. ‘s story is a case in point – I loved her evocation of the Bodleian Library, which I suspect is one of our shared enthusiasms, but the story itself is sfnal rather than horrific. Two rather interesting tales featuring the First Doctor and Susan here, by Lance Parkin and Trevor Baxendale; some others that rather missed the mark. (And, for some reason, a set of limericks retelling the entire history of the Seventh Doctor; not especially horrific, unless, I suppose, you are one of those who regard that period as the nadir of the programme.)

I have another of these on the shelf – #6, Past Tense – and will probably end up buying the full set.

6) Stations of the Tide, by Michael Swanwick

Only three Nebula winners left to read now, Rite of Passage by Alexei Panshin, A Time of Changes by Robert Silverberg and The Terminal Experiment by Robert J Sawyer.

I found the surface narrative engaging enough – though I did wonder why the protagonist (“the bureaucrat”) is never actually named. There’s obviously lots going on below the surface too. But this was up against Bujold’s Barrayar for both Nebula and Hugo; and my vote (as was the Hugo voters’) is for Bujold.

5) Ghost World, by Daniel Clowes

Catching up now on the books I have read in the last week (a mere half dozen, with several others started if not finished). Another character study from Clowes; I love his drawing style, and his individual moments, but he doesn’t always put them together to great effect, and this is an example: two teenage girls, leaving school, bitch about their neighbours and each other to no real conclusion. He almost writes himself in as a character but doesn’t follow through. The one element of tension – Will Rebecca go away for university, or not? – seems to fizzle out. Apparently this was made into a film; the mind boggles.

warned me to allow enough time to get from the middle of Liverpool to the Belfast ferry, and she was right. I only discovered which stop to get off at by asking locals at the train station (none of the maps say “alight here for ferry” or anything helpful like that). Once I reached Hamilton Square, there was no trace of transport to get to the ferry terminal – the bus stops running before 7 pm, although even on a normal night the ferry doesn’t sail until 10 and boarding doesn’t start until 8.

Luckily I identified familiar accents from a couple who were also waiting for a taxi, and shared with them to the terminal. They had only planned to fly back from Liverpool rather than London, so had not travelled as far as me. And anyway, as it turned out, the boat was not sailing until a quarter to midnight anyway – it was already going to be half ten rather than ten o’clock because of the tides, but the sudden onrush of passengers meant they needed – and took – some extra time to get things ready.

I ended up talking to a gynaecologist while we were waiting; we watched the beautiful sunset light linger and evntually fade on the towers of the Liver Building. He too had come from London having missed a later flight from Heathrow than mine, and was bewailing the fact that he had booked too late to get a berth, at 1030 that morning. (I was pretty sure I had a berth, and hadn’t booked it until noon, but kept quite about that.)

Once we got on I realised that I had been assigned a cabin with three made-up berths, and one still folded away, entirely to myself. But by this point I had lost the gynaecologist, and didn’t feel I had the energy or chutzpah to recruit extra cabin-mates from the huddled masses. There was a four-course dinner included in the price of the ticket, but I had eaten in Liverpool, and went straight to bed.

Breakfast was decent if early (before 7) with views of the Ulster landscape (Scrabo Tower the most obvious landmark). We docked at 8, but disembarkation seemed to take ages. I also realised that the wait for taxis at the terminal was going to be pretty lengthy, and walked about a mile inland – this still only got me as far as the Duncrue industrial estate, but I was able to get a cab pretty quickly from there. And so home.

I was very fortunate, I suspect. Emily Flynn Vencat interviewed me for this Newsweek piece on the Heathrow express yesterday; fortunately for me, my story was not dramatic enough for her to use. My travel costs have been covered by my employers, since it was a work trip; I am fortunate enough to be able to afford other incidental expenses, mainly food. I didn’t miss any crucial life events, like a wedding, a funeral, a job interview, or a critical negotiation; missing a day of holiday with my family is aggravating and annoying, but not devastating. Lots of people will have been hit far worse than I have.

And if they’re serious about no books on planes, I am revising my travel plans for the next few months… (On which point, see George R.R. Martin.)

Thanks, everyone for your previous emails. I decided that the thing to do (since I’m going back to Belfast rather than Belgium) was to strike out over land and sea. I am accordingly now in the easyInternetcafe [sic] beside the Virgin store in Liverpool, and will sail for Belfast from Birkenhead at 2230 (though they want me on board by 2030). So three hours to catch up on stuff, mainly editing a report for work.

They did eventually let us through to baggage reclaim to get our checked bags, but did not allow us to take books or newspapers with us. So that was an hour or so spent waiting by the belts with nothing to do but try the Sudoku from last night’s Newcastle Evening Chronicle.

They still weren’t giving us straight answers about when flights might be expected to resume, other than to advise us to travel another day (and full marks to BA for making this reasonably clear via the PA system; unfortunately I was travelling with BMI). I decided that there was no way I was entrusting myself to the air, and with some help from colleagues worked out the boat solution.

(To my shame, I had absolutely no idea how long it would take to travel from Euston to Liverpool, and was not certain if I could make it for Birkenhead at half eight if leaving London at lunchtime. For future reference, it is only a three hour journey.)

So here I am, folks. Must do some actual work now but will update when necessary.

I had a really bad night’s sleep last night, in a garret room in a London hotel. I had to get up at 0500 to catch a plane, and never sleep well if I know I have to wake up early.

But last night was unusually bad, even for such circumstances. Perhaps it was a premonition.

At the time of writing I have been at Heathrow for two hours, and I doubt very much if I will leave before noon.

I got here to find very long queues for check-in, and then was instructed that all baggage must be stowed – no hand baggage allowed in the cabins – so had to queue again to send my clothes and books (and mobile phone, too) down the conveyor belt.

I was allowed to hang onto books if they could be carried loose. So I have Kim Newman on Doctor Who, and Mark Mazower on Thessalonica. I suspect I will finish both before I get home.

The security alert is now over, but the staff who turned up to work at the airport as normal at 0430 didn’t get to their posts until an hour ago, so everything is way behind. My 0655 flight to Belfast has been cancelled. But of course my bags are checked in, and I can’t get on another flight until I get them back; and I won’t get them back for at least another hour.

Obviously it is massively inconvenient; but planes being blown up in mid-air is far more inconvenient, and I am struck by the good humour and lack of impatience from the crowds here – there must be literally thousands of people in the main concourse at Terminal One. I am astonished by the number of people already waiting patiently in queues. Myself, I’m going to take a few minutes off, catching up with my email (which I haven’t really looked at since Monday evening) and LJ.

See you later.

THE SUMMING UP

The letters included here reveal something that cannot be emphasized forcefully enough. No one who has read Deadloss, not a single person, in the fannish world or the professional, has stepped forward to defend Mr Ellison.

True, a few correspondents did attack me. They said I was settling a personal score, or breaking ranks with a fellow professional, or deliberately misinterpreting Mr Ellison’s mercurial personality … but the funny thing was that they attacked me while making snide comments about him out of the corners of their mouths. I would publish these letters if I could, but in every case the writer begged me not to, even anonymously.

As far as I can tell (and I believe I did a reasonable job of seeking response from Mr Ellison’s friends) he has no defenders. Everyone is sick to death of this non-existent book, and all that surrounds it.

Mr Ellison has no supporters. His constituency is nil.

The response taught me something I did not know; at the same time I appear to have informed others of things they did not know.

What I learned is that as recently as 1984 Mr Ellison was still acquiring stories for LAST; there are reports I can’t verify that he has been buying stories since then.

In its turn, ‘Deadloss’ appears to have revealed, at least to a substantial section of American fandom, that the reality of LAST is not the same as its myth.

In particular, it seems that Mr Ellison has managed to portray himself and his contributors as being united in their commitment to the project, arms locked together, heads down against the foe. For instance, until ‘Deadloss’ pointed out the opposite it was widely believed that no writer had ever withdrawn a story.

Perhaps those people in American fandom who by acquiescence have given Mr Ellison tacit support will now be less gullible.

Until I started writing this essay I did not actually think very often about Mr Ellison and his anthology. After all, Mr Ellison is just one writer whose work I never read among so many others whose work I do … and LAST is just one book that doesn’t exist among so many others that do!

Writing the essay made me remember what I used to think about Mr Ellison and his anthology before I became inadvertently involved. In those days, most of what I knew about him was all the ridiculous literary/macho stuff found in the front of his books–those introductions that he became famous for. They interested me because they seemed defensive in some way, as if trying to cover up some imagined shortcoming. His posture on the ‘Dangerous Visions’ anthologies seemed to be much the same. He kept reminding us how long they were … just as his progress reports about LAST almost invariably include an awe-struck remark or two about size.

Unfortunately, promises of immense length do not legitimize what he has been doing for all these years. For all the bragging and sycophancy that has gone on, and all the threats that have been uttered, there is still nothing there.

To spell it out: ‘The Last Dangerous Visions’ does not exist. Good or bad, it does not exist. Long or short, it does not exist.

Bluff all he may, it will never exist until Mr Ellison finishes his work.

The only tangible evidence of LAST in existence is the story about it I have told here. It is ironical that this essay is in fact the only testament. Already, more people in the world have read these words than have read the manuscripts that make up the anthology, even when you count all the people flown out to Los Angeles to do so.

And this story, fascinating though it is for many people, is none the less a degrading one. It is a saga of bragging and sycophancy and threats.

Any morals to be drawn from all this? Two perhaps. That the short is as worthwhile as the long … and that just as there is virtue in completing that which has been begun, so there is courage in knowing when to abandon that which cannot be finished.

THE REMEDY

You are one of the many remaining contributors to LAST. Ever since you sold your story to Harlan Ellison you have been holding on, waiting for the book to appear. In spite of your own private doubts (as well perhaps as extra doubts raised by THE LAST DEADLOSS VISIONS), you still hope and believe the book will actually appear with your story included.

However, the story was written several years ago, and although it was amongst your best work at the time, you have grown away from it and are now less than completely satisfied with it. You feel that if it doesn’t appear in LAST within the next few months you’d like to have it back so you can revise and resell it.

You have always held back from asking Harlan Ellison to return the manuscript for fear of repercussions.

On the whole you have come to the conclusion it is better to lie low and get on with your work than to keep thinking about this ancient dilemma.

But you can’t stop remembering how strongly you feel about the whole business. You wish he would either publish the book, or return your story. If only there was something you could do …

There is.

Here is a plan in 8 easy stages:

Step 1: ESTABLISH THE FACTS

Brief yourself on all pertinent minor details concerning your story. For instance, establish the date on which you and Mr Ellison made first contact about contributing to his anthology. If Mr Ellison made any promises or guarantees then or later, make a note of what they were. Find out the date on which you actually submitted the story, and the date he responded. Other relevant dates would be those when he sent you the contract, or progress reports about completion, or made payments on account, or gave you estimated publication dates.

The point of this research is that when Mr Ellison raises these matters he is sometimes imaginative with his interpretation of facts. Ready yourself, so that you cannot be thrown off course by pettifogging side issues.

Step 2: DO YOU KNOW ANYONE ELSE IN THE BOOK?

THE LAST DEADLOSS VISIONS contains many names of writers who have at one time or another been involved with Mr Ellison’s anthology. You might be friendly with some of them. You might be in contact with others, through Internet, or through membership of a writers’ organization like SFWA. Make contact, specifically on this subject. Compare notes, compare facts, compare promises. Most of all, compare feelings and opinions.

Tell people about THE LAST DEADLOSS VISIONS if they haven’t read it.

Step 3: SET UP A SELF-HELP GROUP

By making contact with other contributors you are already halfway to this. How self-help groups organize themselves is entirely up to the members, but you should identify yourselves under a particular name so that there is a sense of cohesion. (A conference within Internet would be ideal.) When your self-help group members make up approximately one half of the surviving contributors to LAST, and there is a consensus of broad opinion, you are ready for the next step.

The purpose of this group is not to act on its own, but to coordinate a series of actions that will be taken by individuals.

NB: Group action is not recommended. Group action would be ineffective on Harlan Ellison: he would ignore such an ultimatum by simply refusing to recognize a newly formed body. However, he cannot ignore personal letters from individuals.

Make sure he receives these personal letters all on the same day (or given the vagaries of the U.S. Postal Service, within a week of each other).

You must put this in writing. Do not try to do this over the phone. (A fax message would be OK, though.)

Step 4: AGREE A DATE

The date to be agreed is the one on which all members of the self-help group will write and mail their individual letters to Harlan Ellison.

It is crucial to the success of this Remedy that a large number of people write to Mr Ellison at the same time.

For obvious reasons, avoid any date close to public holidays, worldcons, etc. Give the man a chance to read his mail, and consider his position.

Step 5: AGREE THE WORDING

It is crucial that the letter you send to Harlan Ellison should cover the same ground as everyone else’s, without seeming like a form letter. Mr Ellison is not a fool, and even if he doesn’t get wind of this Remedy in advance, it won’t take him long to work out what’s going on. You will want to be on speaking terms with him after all this is history, so respect his intelligence. Therefore, write him the sort of letter you would normally write him.

However, it is also crucial to the Remedy that no matter how each individual phrases it, all the letters that Mr Ellison receives on this momentous day should contain the same message.

The message I suggest is as follows. The wording should be as firm as possible.

You should say:

That you have run out of patience, and you no longer believe what he says about projected delivery and publication dates.

That you have come to the conclusion the only way your story will be published is if you take personal control of it again.

That you are therefore setting the following achievable conditions:

a. That within 3 months of date of your letter he sends you unambiguous proof that the whole and final manuscript of ‘The Last Dangerous Visions’ has been sent in to the publisher, and that your story was included.

b. That within 4 months of date of your letter you will receive a letter on the headed notepaper of the publisher and signed by the Vice-President in charge of Publishing which confirms that:
the whole manuscript of ‘The Last Dangerous Visions’ has been received from Harlan Ellison;
it has been accepted for publication;
your story is included;
and a (specified) publication date has been set.

You then say that unless these conditions are fulfilled exactly, all rights to your story will automatically revert to you on the first stated deadline (3 months from the date on the letter). If the first condition is fulfilled but the second is not, then rights will revert on the second stated deadline (4 months from the date on the letter). In either case you will consider yourself to be free to revise the story in any way you feel necessary, and to sell it to another market.

This reversion will be absolute and is non-negotiable, now or later.

(You could optionally add that if he feels the conditions are impossible to meet he could let you know straight away, whereupon the story will revert to you at once.)

Step 6: WRITE THE LETTER AND MAIL IT

This must be done. If you procrastinate, or decide to wait to see what results other writers might get first, then the Remedy will fail.

If your resolve starts to weaken, talk to your self-help group. Get people you know and respect to confirm personally that they too will be sending their letters on the agreed date.

Step 7: WHAT HAPPENS NEXT?

There are four possible outcomes, and here is what to do in each case:

i. Harlan Ellison replies, and accepts your conditions

This is the best outcome. Write back at once and say how pleased you are, but remind him that the conditions are real and non-negotiable, and that you have no intention of shifting. The whole manuscript must be delivered by the first stated deadline, you must be given the letter from the publisher by the second stated deadline.

If either of the conditions is subsequently breached, especially the first, pull the plug on Mr Ellison at once … as in (iv) below.

The second deadline is harder to exercise, because a third party is involved. However, if the first deadline has been met but the second has passed, write to the publisher and ask the relevant questions. The reply will tell you what you have to do. See (iv) below, if necessary.

If you give way at this point, all the good work will be undone and the wretched situation will continue indefinitely.

ii. Harlan Ellison replies, but rejects your conditions

This is the worst outcome, and the hardest to deal with.

You will not need reminding that Mr Ellison is an effective demagogue, and that he writes emotional and provocative letters, and goes in for histrionic phonecalls. He will interpret the letter you sent him as having called into question his professionalism, his personal reliability and his integrity. He will also see it as a betrayal of past friendship or favours. Most editors, faced with a discontented contributor, would reply calmly and practically, but Mr Ellison will not. He is capable of almost anything: wheedling, bullying, flattery, self-pity, even threats.

The best advice is this: having come so far you should stick to your guns. To be discouraged now will mean a return to the status quo.

Reply (in your own words) to say this:

You have made up your mind, and will not be wheedled, bullied, etc. You have allowed him a generous and adequate time in which to complete the book. You point out that the more time he spends trying to persuade you to change your mind, the less time he will have in which to complete his editorial work. You remind him of his deadline dates, and your absolute determination to exercise them.

Wait for the first date, then pull the plug on him. See (iv) below.

iii. Harlan Ellison makes a counter-proposal

Another tough one. It is up to you to judge whether the counter-proposal is a real and reasonable one, or is just a delaying tactic. If you decide it is the latter, see (ii) above.

On the other hand, it might just be reasonable. Say that you first have to consult the other writers in your self-help group, and you’ll contact him again. Tell him that until you do, the original deadlines remain in place.

If you and other members of your self-help group agree that his counter-proposal is not only genuine but reasonable, then agree to his terms. Again, write to him as individuals, not as a group. You should, though, maintain the unyielding attitude that this really is his last chance, and that if you accept his counter-proposal and he misses the revised deadline the rights to your story will revert, and you will pull the plug. See (iv) below.

If you reject his counter-proposal, remind him of his deadline then stand by to pull the plug.

iv. Harlan Ellison does not reply

Pull the plug.

On the first stated deadline day (or as soon as possible after) send a registered letter to Mr Ellison. Do not delay this. Do not think you should “give him a few more days”. A deadline is a deadline.

Your letter should say that as the deadline has expired he is no longer permitted to use your story, and that you are now going to sell it elsewhere. Remind him that this is non-negotiable. Make no excuses, and give no ground. Be polite.

Send a copy of this letter to your agent, and to the publisher of ‘The Last Dangerous Visions’, and mark Mr Ellison’s letter with the information that these copies have been sent.

Step 8: IS THAT IT?

Yes.

Copyright (c) 1987-1994 Christopher Priest. All rights reserved.

1. ‘Again, Dangerous Visions’, Introduction. The writers named in this as contributors (or said to have promised stories) are:

Russell Bates
Doris Pitkin Buck
Octavia Butler
A. Bertram Chandler
John Christopher
Avram Davidson
Chan Davis
Gordon Dickson
George Alec Effinger
Howard Fast
Franklin Fisher
Ron Goulart
Wyman Guin
James Gunn
Graham Hall
Frank Herbert
Steve Herbst
John Jakes
Daniel Keyes
Anne McCaffrey
Vonda McIntyre
Michael Moorcock
Charles Platt
Mack Reynolds
Fred Saberhagen
Thomas Scortia
Robert Sheckley
Clifford Simak
James Sutherland
Richard Wilson
Laurence Yep

2. Wyman Guin–announced in ‘Again, Dangerous Visions’ in 1971 as one of the authors with a story already purchased–was said in 1973 to be rewriting his story.

3. The 68 authors announced as contributors by Harlan Ellison in 1973 were as follows. Names marked with ## do not appear in the list for 1979, and presumably withdrew their stories:

Russell Bates
Alfred Bester
Michael Bishop
Anthony Boucher
S. Kye Boult (pseud. for William E. Cochrane; see Note 5, below)
Hamilton/Brackett
Mildred Downey Broxon
Edward Bryant
Frank Bryning
Doris Pitkin Buck
Octavia Butler
Grant Carrington
Delbert Casada
A. Bertram Chandler
Graham Charnock
John Christopher
Gerard Conway
Arthur Byron Cover
Jack M. Dann
Avram Davidson
Chan Davis
Hank Davis
Gordon R. Dickson
Stan Dryer
Gordon Eklund
George Alec Effinger
Howard Fast
Leslie A. Fiedler
Franklin Fisher
Jacques Goudchaux ##
Ron Goulart
Joseph Green
James E. Gunn
Joe W. Haldeman
Graham Hall
Frank Herbert
Steve Herbst
Leonard Isaacs
John Jakes
Susan C. Lette
Robert Lilly
Janet May
Anne McCaffrey
Vonda N. McIntyre
Michael Moorcock
Ward Moore
John Morressy
Edgar Pangborn
Doris Piserchia
Charles Platt
Jerry Pournelle
Joseph F. Pumilia
Mack Reynolds
Fred Saberhagen
Thomas N. Scortia ##
Robert Sheckley
Clifford D. Simak
James Sutherland
The Firesign Theatre
Robert Thom
Robert Thurston
Lisa Tuttle
A.E. van Vogt
Daniel Walther
Richard Wilson
David Wise
Robert Wissner
Laurence Yep

Rewrites were in progress by:

Gardner Dozois
Wyman Guin
Charles L. Harness

4. The additional authors listed by Harlan Ellison in February 1974 were:

Michael G. Coney
Charles L. Harness
Harry Harrison
Richard E. Peck
Cordwainer Smith
Wallace West
Robert Wissner

[Note that Mr Ellison’s count of authors is at this stage 75. As 68 had been previously announced, and 7 more are listed here, we can presume that at this date Gardner Dozois and Wyman Guin had not yet delivered their rewritten stories.]

5. The authors listed in ‘Locus’ 222, June 1979, were as follows. Those marked with ** were added since 1974 (when the book was announced as being “closed”). Gardner Dozois and Wyman Guin do not appear, and presumably had not delivered their rewritten stories at this date. They might have done since:

Russell Bates
Alfred Bester
Michael Bishop
Nelson S. Bond **
Anthony Boucher
Hamilton/Brackett
Mildred Downey Broxon
Edward Bryant
Frank Bryning
Doris Pitkin Buck
Algis Budrys **
Octavia Butler
Orson Scott Card **
Grant Carrington
Delbert Casada
A. Bertram Chandler
Graham Charnock
John Christopher
W. E. Cochrane (see ‘S. Kye Boult’ in Note 3, above)
Michael G. Coney
Gerard Conway
Arthur Byron Cover
Philippe Curval **
Jack M. Dann
Avram Davidson
Chan Davis
Hank Davis
Gordon R. Dickson
Stan Dryer
G.C. Edmondson **
George Alec Effinger
Gordon Eklund
Howard Fast
Jonathan Fast **
Leslie A. Fiedler
Franklin Fisher
Felix C. Gotschalk **
Ron Goulart
Joseph Green
James E. Gunn
Joe W. Haldeman
Graham Hall
Charles L. Harness
Harry Harrison
Frank Herbert
Steve Herbst
Pat C. Hodgell **
Leonard Isaacs
John Jakes
Langdon Jones **
Raul Judson **
Daniel Keyes **
William Kotzwinkle **
Susan C. Lette
Robert Lilly
Janet May
Anne McCaffrey
Vonda M. McIntyre
Michael Moorcock
Raylyn Moore **
Ward Moore
John Morressy
Edgar Pangborn
Richard E. Peck
Doris Piserchia
Charles Platt
P.J. Plauger **
Jerry Pournelle
Joseph Pumilia
Tom Reamy **
Mack Reynolds
D.M. Rowles **
Fred Saberhagen
Bob Shaw **
Robert Sheckley
Clifford D. Simak
Cordwainer Smith
Bruce Sterling **
Craig Strete **
James Sutherland
The Firesign Theatre
Robert Thom
Robert Thurston
Wilson Tucker **
Lisa Tuttle
Steven Utley **
John Varley **
A.E. van Vogt
Daniel Walther
Ian Watson **
M. W. Wellman **
Wallace West
Jack Williamson **
Richard Wilson
David Wise
Robert Wissner
Laurence Yep
Pamela Zoline **

6. The following writers, said at one time or another to be contributors, are all known or thought to have died:

Alfred Bester
Anthony Boucher
Leigh Brackett
Frank Bryning
Doris Pitkin Buck
Bertram Chandler
Avram Davidson
Wyman Guin
Graham Hall
Edmond Hamilton
Charles L. Harness
Frank Herbert
Leonard Isaacs
Ward Moore
Edgar Pangborn
Tom Reamy
Mack Reynolds
Thomas Scortia
Clifford D. Simak
Cordwainer Smith
Robert Thom
Manly Wade Wellman
Wallace West
Richard Wilson

Michael Bishop:

I hope you’re still alive when you receive this. I don’t think it’s likely that Ellison has hired a gunman, but if you’re dead when you get this, or soon after, that will establish how little I’ve learned about Ellison over the years.

Brian Aldiss:

Talk about getting a bomb through the post from Harlan … your yellow book, ‘Deadloss’, has a similar shattering effect. I dropped work immediately to read it.

The most unpleasant aspect of the whole matter of LAST is that various people, including yourself, think that you put yourself in danger by discussing this matter. I’m very divided about Harlan. He can be magnificently generous and caring and kind; he can be tremendously amusing; but on the other hand he is trailed by a sinister shadow which every so often overwhelms him. What was prankish becomes threatening.

To my mind, the seeds of destruction of LAST can be seen (if only by hindsight) in the first anthology (DV), where the stories are swamped by all the florid editorializing surrounding them. The habit of talking everything up brings disaster in its wake. Really, the whole business of LAST is tragic–and I mean not least for Harlan. LAST has been talked up to the point where it is impossible to let go without losing face.

[‘Deadloss’] is argued with an almost Swiftian restraint and I admired it.

R.I. Barycz:

… A most instructive two quids’ worth of restraint under provocation at long distance. What makes it sad is that, by his own lights of perfection, Harlan Ellison saw and still sees nothing amiss in his actions. I’m sure there was many a pulp hack of the Thirties who could tell a more terrible tale of a MS accepted but sat upon by an editor not keen to pay for it on publication; but that was then and this is now, and there are no excuses.

Laurence M. Janifer:

As a writer who’s been involved with Harlan off&on since The Earliest Days when he came whooping into NY–and one who was never asked, probably for good reason, to contribute to any Dangerous V. at all–I want to thank you for ‘The Last Deadloss Visions’. It’s a lovely job and all it lacks is an obit list, though most of its readers can probably write that up for themselves from the various lists of authors with stories in LAST. Perhaps future editions, additions, and so on will carry the obits, updated as more and more writers die. And, as suggested in the Steady State, younger authors come along to fill the spaces.

Harlan is the original yes-but, a phenomenon about whom it is impossible to say anything not thoroughly mixed.

Barry Malzberg:

I’m very glad to have ‘Deadloss’ in hand; thank you. It is precise, cold, reasoned and utterly professional, as was your expressed intention.

I have long felt that the only real weapon freelance writers–isolated, lonely, vulnerable, unorganized–have is information, if it is not the truth that will set us free (actually, it is my latterday understanding that the truth entraps us) it is knowledge. Therefore, I am happy to add the following material to what is already on hand: ‘Still-Life’ which appeared in ‘Again, Dangerous Visions’, was sold on 11 August 1969 for $120.00 (2 cents a word for 6,000 words) and was published in April 1972. Including pro-rata royalties subsequently paid, the story has earned $519.00. The last royalty payment–for $33.00–appeared on 20 November 1982 and despite the fact that ‘Again, Dangerous Visions’ was republished by Berkley in a large paperback trade edition in 1983, there have been no subsequent payments.

[Barry Malzberg’s information about payments seems to support Michael Bishop’s earlier letter. If any writers can confirm they have been receiving what Mr Ellison calls an annuity from their stories, I’d be pleased to incorporate what they say in future editions of this. CP]

Greg Feeley:

You acknowledge a willingness to see “the facts that embarrass [Ellison] collected in one place”. I was consequently surprised that your chronology did not pay any more attention to Ellison’s frequent announcements of never-to-appear novels and other books, but it occurs to me that the British editions may not include his revealingly optimistic listings of ‘forthcoming’ works. A quick romp through this Ellisonian apocrypha may prove edifying.

‘Partners in Wonder’ (Walker, 1971) lists twenty-one books by or edited by Ellison, plus ten noted as ‘forthcoming’. Only the first four have ever appeared. The others include LAST, ‘The Sound of a Scythe’, ‘The Prince of Sleep’, ‘The Harlan Ellison Hornbook’*, ‘Dial 9 to Get Out’, and ‘Demon With a Glass Hand’.

[*NOTE: The Harlan Ellison Hornbook appeared in 1990. CP]

Of the four books that did ultimately appear, one of them, ‘The Other Glass Teat’, is mentioned on the dust-jacket as having already come out. In fact, ‘The Other Glass Teat’, although scheduled to appear soon after ‘The Glass Teat’ in 1970, was published only in 1975, with an introduction that claims that the book was essentially suppressed by the Vice President of the United States, a charge that would have made national headlines in that post-Watergate climate had anyone else credited it.

‘The Sound of a Scythe’ is identified as a revision of Ellison’s ‘The Man with Nine Lives’ (1960), and was eventually sold to Pyramid as part of a uniform edition of his works in the mid-Seventies. In the October 1968 issue of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Ed Ferman describes Ellison as “completing two novels, ‘Demon With a Glass Hand’ and ‘Dial 9 to Get Out’.” Addressing the 1972 World Fantasy Convention in Los Angeles, Ellison described ‘The Prince of Sleep’ as being based on ‘The Region Between’ (novella, 1970). In 1972 this novel was announced as forthcoming from Ballantine. In the July 1977 Special Harlan Ellison Issue of F&SF, a full-page advertisement from Dell “salutes Harlan Ellison” and announces ‘The Prince of Sleep’, “his first new novel in over fifteen years, a major work of fantasy for 1978”. In the early 1980s the ‘New York Times’ mentioned that Ellison had sold several books to Houghton Mifflin (presumably at the same time as LAST), including a new novel called ‘Shrikes’ and, yes, ‘The Prince of Sleep’. ‘The Harlan Ellison Hornbook’ was to be another collection of underground press columns.

That is the annotation for the “forthcoming” books listed in one Ellison title of the early 1970s. Would anyone sit still for a thorough listing of these ghostly titles? Most of these non-books continued to be listed as forthcoming in Ellison’s front matter throughout the 1970s, with new ones added, until Ellison finally stopped listing ‘forthcoming’ titles around 1980.

What this rather wearying compilation shows is how very badly Ellison wants to write novels, as he once did early in his career. Even without counting the scuttled ‘Dark Forces’ (or a short novel involving elves and the Brooklyn Bridge, mentioned in an interview I don’t have to hand, which Ellison said Ace would be publishing in an illustrated edition), the list includes seven novels, all but one known to have been sold to publishers, some repeatedly.

When you collate these announcements with the claims for LAST, the appalling dimensions of Ellison’s last fifteen years begin to emerge. During this period, Ellison has also been late on delivering story collections, non-fiction collections, columns for a number of periodicals, introductions to other people’s novels, and one other original anthology, ‘Medea: Harlan’s World’ (which did appear, seven years late, in 1985).

The fact of the matter is that, aside from his short stories, Harlan Ellison has since the early 1970s given priority to his various television and film projects, and when one of these gets a go-ahead, earlier commitments are deferred.

Ellison gives eloquent if inadvertent testimony to this in the January 1988 issue of ‘F&SF’, where he defends the irregular appearance of his film column by noting that “although suchlike as Charles Platt and Christopher Priest may bend themselves into hyperbolic pretzels proving I’ll never complete LAST, that and other matters of import command most of my attention most of the time”. Yet just four pages later Ellison is alluding to the “June-to-September hell in which I lived while writing ‘Cutter’s World’ for Corman and NBC”.

In an article in the November 1987 ‘Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine’, Ellison says, “From December 1977 through December 1978 I wrote nothing very much … apart from the two hundred and thirty-five pages of screenplay entitled ‘I, Robot'”.

Robert Silverberg’s memoir of Harlan Ellison’s hungry days of trying to break into the professional SF world of the early 1950s (published in the special Ellison issue of ‘F&SF’) remains, for all its affection, a striking portrayal of the young Ellison, constantly claiming to have made professional sales he had only imagined.

Your assertion that Ellison’s integrity “is not at issue” is true insofar as he does not intend to injure those writers and publishers who have trusted him; but what Silverberg calls “a hunger for literary success so powerful that it dissolves the fine but vital distinction between fact and fantasy” must by now be so clear to Ellison that his insistence upon making these assurances finally renders him–like the self-aware alcoholic who begins to drink although he must drive home on icy roads–as responsible for what he wreaks as if he had intended it.

Eddy C. Bertin:

‘Deadloss’ is everything I had hoped it to be: informative and rational-minded; as such an interesting piece of SF history. It also makes for absorbing reading, only a pity that it is such a sad story, else it would be highly amusing.

Taral Wayne:

Thanks to you I’ve been given a whole new perspective on LDV–a whole new issue to get steamed up over, and a few nasty laughs at Ellison’s expense. I’ve no doubt your intentions were more honourable than inspiring the likes of me with malicious fun. When I put ‘Deadloss’ down, however, I found that reading your fanzine hadn’t been the usual disposable experience that fanzines are. I didn’t just put it down. I had ideas.

You and those who wrote in reply pitied the harm done to the writers, to the readers, and to Ellison himself. I think you left hints that harm was done to the field itself, but much was left unsaid. Ever unsubtle, I’ll say it.

Ellison boasted that the stories for LDV were top-notch, cutting-edge, and, well, dangerous. You estimate he may have as many as a hundred and forty-five of them in his box–a hundred and forty-five stories that Ellison has denied the field for so long that even if they were to appear in publication tomorrow they would be old news, hardly dangerous. Taking Ellison at his word about those stories, the damage he’s done to the very cause he espoused must be immense. Imagine that no LDV exists, nor any of the stories written for it. Imagine instead that a hundred and forty-five of the stories that have been published since 1972 vanish from view, sucked by Ellison’s persuasion into the black hole under his desk. A hundred and forty-five stories would nicely fill [the following story collections]:

‘Blooded on Arachne’ by Michael Bishop
‘Particle Theory’ by Ed Bryant
‘Burning Chrome’ by William Gibson
‘Nine Hundred Grandmothers’ by R.A. Lafferty
‘A Song for Lya’ by George R.R. Martin
‘The Wind’s Twelve Quarters’ by Ursula Le Guin
‘Still I Persist in Wondering’ by Edgar Pangborn
‘San Diego Lightfoot Sue’ by Tom Reamy
‘The 57th Franz Kafka’ by Rudy Rucker
‘Ten Thousand Light Years From Home’ by James Tiptree Jr
‘The Persistence of Vision’ by John Varley
‘The Island of Doctor Death and Other Stories and Other Stories’ by Gene Wolfe
and, appropriately, ‘Deathbird Stories’ by Harlan Ellison

This list is a pound of flesh. Torn out of the body of SF it would leave a large, bleeding hole, and just such a hole may exist without our awareness of it.

Steven Bryan Bieler:

I’ve just this moment finished ‘Deadloss’. I could not put it down.

Though I had seen the notices in ‘Locus’ and elsewhere regarding LAST’s pending publication, they appeared over many years and gave me time to forget them. To see all the evidence together, to read it all at once, is startling, to say the least. One man has tied up the work of so many writers and the attention of so many more readers–and he has done it by doing nothing!

In rereading my first letter, I see I was incorrect in my statement that Houghton Mifflin intended to publish LAST in early 1985. The three volumes were to be published over six or eight months, beginning in late 1984. I actually believed that my story could appear in a matter of weeks!

Of the many things that struck me about ‘Deadloss’, I was especially taken with Mr Youd’s information, regarding Harlan’s promise to Houghton Mifflin in April 1984 that the book would be delivered to the publisher within 70 days. Harlan and I met for the first time near the end of that period; a little over a month later he bought my story. So perhaps I am responsible for that particular delay for game?

Well, Harlan is not an angry god, nor am I a sinner in his hands; having argued with him over the phone, he reminds me more of my parents. I appreciate, and treasure, the kindness he showed me in 1984. But holding my contribution all this time is a clear violation of our contract. (Incidentally, I have yet to receive a renewal contract, nor have I had any contact with Harlan since November 1984.) Your zine has shocked me out of my apathy. I still like my little story and I want people to read it, so with the new year I will write to Harlan and withdraw it from the book. I will keep you informed of developments, if there are any.

An enterprising publisher might be interested in an anthology of stories withdrawn from LAST. According to ‘Deadloss’, Ian Watson, Michael Bishop, Jacques Goodchaux, Thomas N. Scortia and yourself have all withdrawn stories. That’s a good start on an interesting book.

When I had completed the first draft of the preceding essay I sent it to a number of professional writers, all involved at one time or another with ‘Dangerous Visions’, and solicited their views. I mentally divided these writers into three groups of roughly equal size: those I thought were loyal to Mr Ellison and broadly supported his work on the anthology, those I knew were hostile to him or had suffered at his hands, and those whose attitude I simply did not know.

I offered all of them the same: I would publish anything they might write without interference.

The only responses I got were from the latter two groups. None of the people loyal to Harlan Ellison sent me anything I could print. Some of them simply ignored my request, others warned me sepulchrally of the danger in which they perceived I was putting myself, while the rest, most interestingly of all, egged me on to greater efforts by telling their own horror stories about working with Mr Ellison, then forbade me from quoting them or paraphrasing them or even hinting that they might have been in touch with me on this terrifying subject.

(I have always honoured these silences, and continue to do so now. The silence of Mr Ellison’s lambs is a key factor in the story.)

Graham Charnock:

It was good to be around in nineteensixtyoomph, contributing, however casually, to a body of literature one felt was certainly dangerous and visionary. I mean of course, what went on in and around the ‘New Worlds’/Moorcock/Platt/Harrison/Sallis/Hall axis. I even gave up my day job, not to become a writer, nothing so positive, but simply because it was contrary to the spirit, yes the dangerousness, of what was in the air at the time.

(I was an advertising executive and deadlines for quarter-pages in the ‘Sutton Advertiser’ were definitely contra-indicated.) So I became a waiter in a summer holiday hotel in Norfolk (good for jacket blurbs–next step was to become a lumberjack, or sail around the Horn, or become a gun-runner).

That lasted three weeks, because Harlan accepted my story for LDV. He wanted rewrites and, under-producer that I am, it meant I needed time and clear horizons to do them.

It was nice being edited by Harlan, because for better or worse it was positive editing, the story went backwards and forwards about three times whilst one naff section was tightened up. In truth what this amounted to was the beefing up of a certain soft-edged exchange between hero and heroine by substituting macho sex and violence (he hits her) for angst-ridden soul-searching. It was Hollywood, it was Harlan Ellison, it surely wasn’t me, but it worked in the context. Even my mother joined in, sending notes: “Harlan’s right. This woman’s been hurt and abused all her life–she just wouldn’t say that …” Today I still tend to see editors as mother-figures wiping the snot from your nose, correcting your diction, making sure your shirt covers your arse….

However, it was a good feeling: something had been worked up, had grown, been praised eventually. Furthermore I was joining what I saw as a select group of peers (how many contributors to LDV nowthem, of course, not any faceless readership, not even for Harlan. That’s how movements, schools, call them what you will, grow, isn’t it…? A constant and quick exchange of ideas, themes, etc–you are influenced, or just plain steal, but you feed it back into the network. That was the process, of course, that ‘New Worlds’ then exemplified more than any other medium before or since in the sf field.

What happened to LDV in this respect is history, of course, but I suppose it represents my main sadness over the enterprise. Harlan took the cream (I modestly exclude myself from any inference in this metaphor–I was merely coat-tailing) and let it go stale. Perhaps one can take it further: he took the cream and goddamn ate it himself. Substitute blood for cream and vampiric analogies spring to mind … I’ll stop this before it gets too fanciful.

I’m sorry I never got the chance to read and feed off the work of my peers when it would have been an enriching experience, when it would have meant something.

Why didn’t I withdraw my story and try to sell it elsewhere? Entropy rules OK. Things cool down.

Two years pass and maybe the markets are still there and maybe the story still glows a little in your heart, but Harlan’s had it so long and it can’t be much longer now …

Five years pass and the reason you wrote the story is as historical as the story itself: the people you wrote it for don’t particularly need it any more. You don’t go to the bar to buy someone a drink and return with it five years later.

Ten years pass and … poot. Frankie Goes To Hollywood are at number one this week … that’ll keep me going until the next sensation.

When LDV does appear I understand it may be in a box. Make it of good solid oak with finest brass fittings …

Ian Watson

I like Ellison’s writing (see my review in ‘Foundation’ 24). I like his public stances. But I don’t like his behaviour as editor of LAST, least of all his conduct when you eventually withdraw a story: the bluster, the arm-twisting (often by proxy), the sense that you’re on a shit-list. I escaped comparatively unscathed–but an author friend of mine was treated vilely.

No one should have to put up with treatment such as this from a fellow writer. Ultimately this wipes out one’s sense of the moral integrity of Ellison’s other work. And that’s a big shame. Ellison should realize this, and that he isn’t defending his reputation by soldiering on with LAST using untruths and bullying and braggadocio. He’s just damaging it.

Harry Harrison:

I look at this entire matter with a sigh of regret. I’m sorry that Harlan has let the anthology get away from him in the manner it has; sorry that you had to bring him up short. Since you are both friends of mine let me intervene on the side of the angels. Harlan, old chum, the facts that Chris has put on the record look like facts to me. His conclusions are his own, so let me stick to the facts, as the good sergeant used to say. The stories are gray with age, any value they might have had for the authors has long since been diminished to the vanishing point. I think we would all heave a sigh of relief–I know I would–if you simply returned the stories and called the whole thing a day. No one will consider this a failure on your part in any way. You know I have gone along with you all through the years–out of friendship and no other reason. You asked me not to pull back the story–and I didn’t. I wouldn’t have taken that for 5 minutes from a commercial editor. I’m still not pulling the story back. But I am asking you, please, to close the books and drop the entire matter.

With all sincerity–Harry Harrison.

C.S. Youd (John Christopher):

I believe I am one of the very early contributors to LDV, and I would confirm, in general, your account of the happenings of the last twelve years.

[There follows a documented synopsis of a protracted correspondence with Mr Ellison concerning interim payments in 1983-1984. This has been cut with Mr Youd’s consent. In April 1984 Houghton Mifflin wrote to Mr Youd saying that Mr Ellison had promised delivery of LDV within seventy days.

[Mr Youd also points out that several writers, himself included, accepted an initial lower rate because the money, according to Mr Ellison, had run out. Mr Ellison apparently said in 1971 that things would be equalized when the main money rolled in. When a renewal contract was offered to Mr Youd in 1977, he deleted a clause referring to this, since he felt it contradicted the promise of equalization.]

I feel that part of the problem is psychological. Harlan has so identified himself with the various Dangerous Visions that maybe he can’t bear to turn in LAST. (A sort of psychical death.)

Michael Bishop:

First of all, your assessment of the TLDV situation strikes me as being spot-on and fair. Ellison would probably construe my saying so as an attempt at self-justification, however, because after I withdrew ‘Dogs’ Lives’ (in the Fall of ’83), he accused me of just about every conceivable personal failing from paranoia (he may have been right about that one) to betrayal to money-grubbing to self-righteous hypocrisy and concluded this page-and-a-half attack by saying that he wished to have “no further congress” with me. It’s a long and complicated story, which I really don’t want to try to summarize here, but one simple fact that remains with me is that Ellison purchased ‘Dogs’ Lives’ from me in the spring of 1974 for $100 and that is all the money I realized from the story until this past November when, after pulling it from TLDV, I sold it to ‘The Missouri Review’ for a special SF issue.

Moreover, I was unable to use ‘Dogs’ Lives’ in either of my two hardcover story collections, ‘Blooded on Arachne’ and ‘One Winter in Eden’, even though, by rights, it deserved a place in one or the other.

For almost ten years I stuck by Ellison, believing that, yes, finally, the anthology/anthologies itself/themselves would be coming out and that I would soon be receiving one of the auxiliary payments that Ellison periodically promised for hanging in there, usually upon the shifting of the project from one publishing house to another. But TLDV has still not appeared, and I never made a dime above the original $100 (approximately two cents a word) that Ellison sent me in 1974. Until I pulled the story and got it into print a rapid six months after doing so, that is. I intend, further, to reprint it in an anthology of my own that, interesting to note, will also contain your would-be original for TLDV, ‘An Infinite Summer’.

At this time, there is really nothing more I wish to say about the subject except that I hope TLDV does indeed appear soon, for Ellison’s sake and the sake of those who have had the requisite trust in him to resist the impulse to withdraw. I hope that he and they all profit enormously. Meanwhile, I have no regret whatever about pulling my own story–although I do regret that the messy circumstances attending its withdrawal ended what had been a cordial, albeit pretty intermittent, relationship between us. I admire much of Ellison’s work, and I derived a great deal of pleasure from the first two Dangerous Visions anthologies.

Bob Shaw:

I know it has all dragged on forever, but my feelings are a bit like those of a compulsive gambler caught in a losing streak–I have invested so much time in LDV that I can’t bring myself to pull out now, admirable though that course might be.

[I understand Bob Shaw did subsequently withdraw his story. CP]

George R.R. Martin:

The 1978 volume of my own ‘New Voices/Campbell Awards’ anthology series will probably be published some time in 1985, so I don’t think I’m the person to make pronouncements, stern or otherwise, about the lateness of TLDV. I know all too vividly how easily and how badly these things can get out of hand. Still, there’s no doubt in my mind that the lengthy delay of TLDV has been a tragedy–a tragedy for readers like myself who have been looking forward to the book, a tragedy for the field that badly needs a shot of the sort of literary adrenaline the previous DV volumes have supplied, a particular tragedy for the writers involved, and especially a tragedy for Harlan himself. I can only hope that, somehow or other, this tragedy will turn out to have a happy ending. Despite everything, you know, I’d still like to read the book, and so would a lot of other people.

Charles Platt:

When ‘Again, Dangerous Visions’ grew too large, my story was one of the first to be held over to the projected ‘Last Dangerous Visions’. “I had to keep some really dynamite stuff for the last book,” was the way he justified it to me. “But don’t worry, publication is scheduled for 1972.” This mixture of hard-sell, flattery, and seemingly factual promises was to become wearyingly familiar over the next fifteen years. His style reminded me of a used-car salesman, the difference being that in his case he never actually delivered any merchandise.

Years passed, my uneasy friendship with Ellison continued, and the big cardboard box of LDV manuscripts remained undisturbed (so far as I could tell) except for a biannual ritual in which his secretary checked through them and issued grovelling form-letters and contract renewals to the contributors. I began to see the project as a source of amusement, but Ellison’s sense of humour didn’t stretch that far. I once visited him with my friend Graham Hall, another ‘Last Dangerous Visions’ contributor, who made the mistake of openly poking fun at the project. Ellison’s face turned grim, and he summoned us into his study, like a school principal disciplining two wayward children. “You probably don’t realize how much extra money you’re going to make after LDV appears,” he lectured Graham. He located the royalty payment records for a story of comparable length that had appeared in the first ‘Dangerous Visions’ almost ten years previously. In a staccato voice, like that of an auctioneer, he rattled off a string of payments for miscellaneous subsidiary rights, mostly in the $10 to $30 range. “That’s a total of nearly _two hundred dollars_,” he finished up. “Not bad, eh, for a 3,000-word story?”

“Wow,” Graham said dutifully, too embarrassed to mock Ellison’s largesse any further.

The dialogue may not be verbatim, and I may have the total wrong by $50 either way, but the essence of the account is factually correct, being transcribed from a diary that I kept at the time. Needless to say, not even $200 of royalties ever materialized for Graham Hall. He died a few years later, while his manuscript remains now where it was then: in the big cardboard box with all the others. Personally, I doubt they will ever earn royalties for anyone.

Around the time when Richard Curtis became Ellison’s literary agent and remarked that he was going to make Ellison’s name “synonymous with honesty”, Edward Bryant visited Sherman Oaks, ostensibly to assist Ellison in preparing the book for publication. A few days later, all ‘Last Dangerous Visions’ contributors, including myself, received a letter signed by Bryant, testifying that he had actually seen Ellison working on the book, writing story introductions. Bryant has a reputation for integrity that some would say exceeds that of Harlan Ellison, and it looked to me as if Ellison had purchased that reputation for the price of a plane ticket between Denver and Los Angeles. My suspicions increased when Bryant returned home after spending just a week or so in Sherman Oaks. Preparation of the book, of course, was still unfinished, but the letter had been issued to placate the contributors, as if that had been Ellison’s only real concern. Yet even the letter seemed bogus; it had the same used-car salesman cadences I had come to know so well, and I doubted that Bryant had actually written it. When I asked him this a few days later he refused to answer the question, and wearily begged me to forget about the whole thing.

The current version of the contract with Ellison for my ‘Last Dangerous Visions’ story wisely sets no publication date. Thus, he has no further need to write every couple of years, crying “mea culpa”, itemizing the traumas of his life, and begging my indulgence “just once more”, in the hope that I will allow my work to languish still longer in anticipation of its eventual appearance. At this point I don’t really care. The story was written almost twenty years ago, expressly for his editorial tastes, and would seem out of place if I withdrew it and sold it somewhere else. Thus I see it, in a way, as part of the albatross Ellison has created and hung around his own neck.

There are other contributors, however, who presumably still imagine that their work will see print, and have made greater sacrifices than mine by allowing their stories to reside in Ellisonian limbo. At the very least, these contributors should be told the facts.

[To explain an apparent duplication: Charles Platt wrote this letter to me after he had read a version of the essay which did not include my account of the Ed Bryant letter. However, I felt our two accounts dovetail, so both remain in this version. CP]

Why Does LAST Remain Unpublished?

Why Have So Many Promises Been Broken?

Will LAST Ever be Published?

How Will It End?

Over the next few pages these questions will be addressed directly, and some answers will be proposed.

Anthologies have failed before. They have been started and not completed. They have been published late. They have been unsatisfactory to the publisher when delivered: over-long, or unsuitable in some other way. They have not lived up to expectations.

In the generality of things no blame attaches, only disappointment, and then only from a few in the know. One book that does not after all get published is neither here nor there; no one loses face, no one is too surprised or alarmed. The publishing of books is an uncertain business, and many projects fail.

‘The Last Dangerous Visions’ appears to be different, though, because of the interest that has been aroused in it. That interest has been created by Mr Ellison himself.

From the outset he has boasted about the brilliance of the stories, has made exaggerated claims about the importance of the project, has pointed to the reputation of his first anthology, has periodically raised hopes and expectations of seeing the book in print.

Interestingly, none of this has come from the writers themselves: certainly, the ones I have spoken to have been extremely modest about their work, and in many cases have been noticeably defensive about it, because they feel that what they sold to Mr Ellison no longer represents their best work.

Unlike other books in progress, insider knowledge of LAST is not confined to a few writers, a handful of people in the publisher’s office, the editor. LAST is known around the world. There can hardly be a science fiction fan anywhere in the world who not only does not know about it, but who has not got an opinion about it. In this wider circle of insider expectation the book has become something of a sick joke, synonymous with a project that has never been completed and likely never will be.

All this cynicism, this defensiveness, all these anticipations, arise from one source alone.

Only Harlan Ellison still seems to believe that the book is viable, only he keeps bringing up the subject. He single-handedly stokes the fires of expectation.

Why can he not let the book go?

The problem seems, quite simply, to be one of fears about credibility.

So much has been put at stake: personal integrity, professional reliability, the regard of peers, the importance of not seeming to be a quitter … all these have become part of the book’s rationale. Too much boasting has been done in public, too many grand statements have been made, too many promises about annuities.

Behind this facade of bluster and strutting must lie a deep sense of insecurity.

Mr Ellison is the author of his own problems. We expect of him only what he has made us expect, and if he thinks the non-appearance of the book will represent indignity and failure, then so will we.

Any hint of disbelief in the project (e.g., when a writer tries to withdraw his story) is greeted with such a display of bad temper, wheedling, renewed promises, emotional blackmail, accusations, threats, and so on, that few will challenge him. Writers living both in the UK and in the USA have been on the receiving end of this kind of thing, but few will talk about it. (See Pre-Publication Letters.)

One of the immediate consequences of crossing Mr Ellison is a broad and enduring distaste for the whole subject, part of which is clearly the wish not to renew the trouble. Fear of reprisal: this has been mentioned before, but it is surprisingly common. What should be a matter for free comment is rarely discussed, because people don’t like being vilified.

The forcefulness of Mr Ellison’s personality is obviously not in doubt, and there is no question but that should he channel his energies he probably could make the anthology succeed.

Then why has he not? Why has ‘The Last Dangerous Visions’ not so far been published?

At a very basic level, the problem of LAST is a classic example of someone biting off more than he can chew.

Yet it’s easy to see how it happened:

A few stories held over from ‘Again, Dangerous Visions’, a perfectionist desire to crown a project with something even bigger and better. Past efforts have been successful, feedback is coming in from readers. The idea of the book is sound: a publisher leaps at it and puts up some money. Writers are approached, stories are written. The book gets bigger, the stories look good, but time is starting to pass. The publisher calls up to see how it’s coming along. Meanwhile, five of the stories are being rewritten, three young and hitherto unknown writers are nominated for prizes (and the book won’t be complete without stories from them), and there is the small matter of all those stories that were promised last year and haven’t been delivered yet …

The first publisher gets tired of waiting, but a second is only too eager to step in. More money is paid. The book goes on getting bigger, and time is still passing. A visit to France introduces a welcome touch of the exotic to the contents page, but raises an unwelcome thought: what about German writers, Swedish writers, Australian writers …? Meanwhile, in the time it takes to go to France and back, five more young American writers have emerged who should be included. Letters go off. Then…the inspiration! The book must contain every writer of note who wasn’t in either of the first two anthologies. After a hurried search through the SFWA Directory, more sycophantic letters are sent, more stories are promised, more stories are delivered. The book is getting bigger and bigger, and now represents a major investment of time and energy. Meanwhile, there are television scripts to write and lawsuits to pursue. The publisher changes again, writers begin to get restless. The fans are gossiping, speculating … some coveted writers refuse to take part, others try to withdraw their stories, hassles are developing all around. Afterwords need to be rewritten, and introductory articles already written have drifted out of date. Contributors start to die; things don’t look so good.

The larger the book grows the more unmanageable it becomes, not only physically but also creatively.

All books represent an idea, but now the idea of LAST extends over a huge period of time, with dozens of different writers working at different stages of their careers; young writers whose work was snapped up at workshops, old writers teased out of retirement. Even to try to think about it gives you a headache. And what about all those sui generis writers who won’t have anything to do with the book? Doesn’t their very absence imply something might be wrong?

Then another attempt to impose order: reassuring letters go out, but a large number of the contributors respond by asking if they can change the ending of their story, or suggesting that they send in something more recent instead, something a bit longer but more up to date. Meanwhile, word comes in that two more contributors have inconsiderately died.

The book is out of control.

Like a man who has to keep running to save himself from falling, Mr Ellison moves the book on and on, shouting to keep his spirits high.

This is undoubtedly what has happened, and what is still going on. It does not necessarily indicate what will happen in the future, but it does explain what went on in the past.

It’s difficult not to feel some sympathy for the problem.

No one, not even Mr Ellison’s worst detractor, has ever suggested that his motives were not the highest. He undoubtedly intended to produce a worthwhile book, and probably still believes that that is possible. But Mr Ellison has become the victim of scale and the scale of his own ambition. It was too much. It is a book that is no longer possible.

The record is plain: one promise after another has been broken.

LAST has been falsely announced more often than any other book in history. Many of these false predictions have been highly specific, almost incontestably so. The claims are so specific, so exact, so apparently binding, that people have been gulled by them again and again.

If Mr Ellison were ever confronted with this record, he would doubtless have a string of excuses to hand, most of them entirely plausible. Each promise would be documented with a note of its breach, a deft explanation of someone else’s failure or betrayal, his own human error, an unwelcome attack of one of his famous incapacitating chronic ailments. Individually, each excuse might well be valid.

But taken as a whole, he has been crying wolf about this book since 1971.

Why? What is the real reason?

Theories are easy; the previous section contained one that was not hard to envisage. But the phenomenon of the multiple false claims about this unfinished book is extremely interesting. Clearly, things are more complicated than they seem, and any attempt to explain them must be equally as complex. The problem has to be approached indirectly.

Harlan Ellison is famous. It’s likely that he is not as famous as he thinks, but for a writer whose work consists almost entirely of short stories he has done remarkably well. He has won awards, he has been anthologized all over the world, he goes on TV chat shows, he has been guest of honour at numerous science fiction conventions, he has fans and allies and friends. His writing is taken seriously in American universities, he has done unpublicized work to encourage young writers, his views and his presence are widely respected.

But all writers, famous or otherwise, have one thing in common. They see themselves as individuals, and that only by individual qualities will they prevail. The two qualities most prized by writers are ability and integrity. They stand or fall by these.

Mr Ellison’s past ability with his anthologies has been demonstrated, and is not in doubt. He has nothing to prove.

Nor is his integrity in doubt … yet here we approach the answer.

The appeal Mr Ellison makes is to his integrity. By his public announcements, his lurid claims on convention platforms, his answers to interviewers, his specific naming of dates and details, he is throwing down a challenge.

He is saying, in effect, “I, Harlan Ellison, say this is so. If you question what I say, you are not questioning the fact but casting suspicion on my integrity and professional reputation.”

It is a curiously effective way of suppressing criticism, because his integrity is not an issue with anyone else.

His fame, his record, his word … all these are accepted. It is Mr Ellison himself who makes integrity an issue; if he did not, no one else would be bothered about it.

The position of any anthology editor is one of trust: he is first trusted by the publisher, then by the writers who send him stories, and finally by the readers who buy the book. Trust is implicit in this kind of work, and anthologies would not be possible without it.

Why then does Mr Ellison bring it in as an issue?

Why are doubters given such short shrift? Why are writers who withdraw their work treated as if they have betrayed a cause? Why are the periodic promises to his surviving contributors couched so emotionally? (In his circular letters Mr Ellison uses phrases like “your trust may be better placed this time”, “appeal for solidarity”, “imploring”, “I’ve always tried to be candid with you”, “hang in there for one more month”, “I’ve run out of ways to beg you to stay with me”, and so on.)

These appeals are obviously sincere, but they are equally obviously calculated … and the effect is manipulative.

Mr Ellison sincerely believes in what he is doing, sincerely believes that he is worthy of trust … but at the same time he does not shrink from using that trust as a weapon of challenge. Few will take up the challenge, because it is not at issue.

Only the reckless respond, try to get their stories back or point out that this is the umpteenth time the anthology has been promised … and the fury of a man who feels his integrity impugned is turned full upon their hapless heads.

It is always possible that everything will happen just as Mr Ellison has always claimed.

The Herculean labours will come to an end, the manuscript will be delivered, the publisher will accept it, the book will come out. It will be a two- or three-volume boxed set of handsome hardcovers in a fine edition, superbly designed and illustrated. It will of course be expensive (obviously much more than the $26 mooted several years ago), but a reasonably priced paperback will follow. The book will be an instant collector’s item, it will stay in print for years, universities will compete to be the first to put it on the syllabus … and a group of slightly elderly writers will at last start receiving their annuities.

Can it happen?

When I first drafted this long essay in 1984 I found it difficult to suppress the nervy feeling that everything I was writing would be rendered invalid in an instant, if LAST suddenly appeared in the shops. It turns out I need not have worried: the intervening years have seen, if anything, a decline in the likelihood.

Even so, again, now in 1993, I cannot easily suppress the same feeling. So plausible is Mr Ellison’s vehement belief in himself that even an unbeliever like myself is periodically beguiled.

Only when I think about the numbers do I feel certain.

The last published list of contents that I have been able to trace was in 1979, when there were 113 stories with a total length of 645,000 words. But that was nearly a decade and a half ago. How many stories have been added or withdrawn since, and what is the word count now?

On past performance it seems unlikely that the list has remained unchanged.

Between 1974 and 1979 (a period when the book was “closed”) the number of stories increased from 78 to 113. Those 35 new stories represented a percentage increase of about 45%, or a straight-line increase of about 9% a year.

Have more been added since? If so, how many? In 1982 I was told by one of the contributors that the number had risen to 180, but this is of course hearsay. Discounting this and being conservative: let’s assume that in the last fourteen years Mr Ellison has not actively sought new stories.

Even so, irresistible new writers must have come to his attention. A glance at any Hugo or Nebula nomination list from the last ten years will reveal there are dozens of top-class writers not on his 1979 list.

If we assume that Mr Ellison’s rate of acquisition has slowed in recent years, but that he has even so gone on buying stories, what would be a realistic estimate? That he has acquired, say, just four new stories a year?

That would produce a further 56 stories, bringing the total to 169. (Using the same basis, this means a percentage increase of about 50%, or a straight-line increase of about 3.5%. Both these figures are drastically lower than before.)

The average length of each individual story in 1979 was about 5,700 words, but we know that several of these are very long indeed–Richard Wilson’s is 47,000 words–and that even Mr Ellison must by now be trimming his sail to suit the wind.

To stay on the conservative side, let’s assume the average length of the new stories is 4,000 words.

The total length of the book then increases to 869,000 words. (That’s the known 645,000 plus 56 stories x 4,000.) I suspect that this huge amount of wordage is none the less an underestimate.

The one thing we know for sure about the Dangerous Visions books is that they do not confine themselves to short stories.

There are the introductions to each story (written by Mr Ellison), the afterwords (written by the authors), and an overall introduction (Ellison).

On past form the introductions run to at least 2,000 words each, and the afterwords average out at about 1,000 words, and these have to be added to the overall total.

If we assume (against all likelihood) that the overall introduction is a minimalist 5,000 words, and that there is only one (and not one each for the separate volumes in the boxed set), we arrive at a grand total:

Introduction 5,000
Stories 869,000
Author introductions 338,000
Afterwords 169,000
_________
Total 1,381,000
=========

The closest estimate to this Mr Ellison has ever made is the one he gave to Christopher Fowler in 1976.

(If you prefer to believe that the 1979 contents list remains the final one, the same basis of calculation produces a total of 989,000 words.)

And while we’re at it, let’s not forget Tim Kirk’s 75 full-page illustrations. Assuming there is one for each story, more must have been executed since: presumably there are now 169 of these, also to be included. 169 pages of a book take up roughly the same amount of space as 45,000 words of text, so these too should be added to the nominal total.

It seems likely that Mr Ellison, a writer who normally only produces short stories, cannot properly conceive what a book of this length actually means in physical terms.

If the publishers chose the normal large format of a hardcover, and used 8pt or 9pt type, they would still have to produce a total volume at least 4,000 pages long, perhaps closer to 5,000 pages.

(My small-type, war-economy 1941 edition of ‘War and Peace’, with which Mr Ellison compares his own book, has a mere 1,352 pages.)

Physically producing a book of this length would be a nightmare.

Length aside, remember that the text will consist of 169 (or 113) different manuscripts, each produced on a different typewriter or word processor, and each having its own ideas about spelling, punctuation, paragraph layout. The first thing any publisher would have to do is send the book away to be copy-edited; one publisher’s editor I spoke to estimated that copy-editing alone could take up to four months, all of which will obviously have to be paid for.

Typesetting would take at least as long again … and never mind the overheads which are accruing while all this is going on. Then there are the costs of purchasing the paper, making the plates, binding, warehousing, distribution …

Is such a book practicable these days? How much would the book cost to print? How many copies would have to be printed to get the cover-price down to $26? (Actually, millions and millions, which happens to be the numbers Mr Ellison unconvincingly claims the earlier books have sold.) Would the market exist to support such a print run?

Being sensible, and assuming a print-run of the same sort of size as a bestselling novel, the book would still have to be noticeably more expensive than the average hardcover. To pluck a figure out of the air: say $75.00 for the 3-volume set.

The book would obviously sell well, even at that sort of price. But well enough?

Rich collectors would snap it up, of course, and those 200 universities would scramble for copies. Perhaps 1,000 copies could be counted on as certain sales … maybe twice that if you feel generous.

But Mr Ellison’s sights are clearly set higher than this: he imagines it will become a bestseller.

The book, in fact, must become a bestseller. There is no other way it could conceivably be published.

You start to sense the divine lunacy of the project at this point. Science fiction has become a bestselling category in recent years; surely LAST, one of the most heralded, talked-about books in years, surely this would slide into the bestsellers list with regal assurance?

Maybe it will.

The publisher does have other ways of saving money.

The print-run can be increased by doing a deal with a book club; this would bring down the unit cost of the book a little. Mr Ellison has always stoutly maintained that cheap editions will not be allowed; but suppose he were over-ruled … how many copies would a book-club want? How would they release it? As a “choice” or an “alternate” for that month? Surely it would make an ideal premium title, the sort that is offered for a few dollars as an inducement to new members …

Will it end up being practically given away?

Another option open to the publisher is to make co-production deals with other English language publishers. An American paperback house, say, or a British publisher.

Would the typography required for a massive hardcover be suitable for reproduction in paperback? Might it not have to be re-set?

And what about Britain? The only British deal Mr Ellison has ever mentioned was with Millington Books, back in 1976. But Millington went out of business years ago, and no other British publisher has announced it since.

Another possibility would be for someone to bring out the book using electronic media, such as CD-ROM. Even Mr Ellison’s vastly over-sized text would fit comfortably on a 650Mb compact disc. Indeed, this is so close to an answer that one can all too easily imagine hearing from him in the near future about the upcoming CD-ROM edition. (“I’ve pulled it back from those tardy book publishers. There’s this outfit in Santa Monica who can manufacture CDs for under $1 a disc. There’s room for hundreds more stories, and I’m reading manuscripts right now. I just have the introductions to write, and–“)

But before anyone succumbs to waves of relief, take a calm look at two significant facts:

Firstly, the current state of CD-ROM technology is not final. It is still in development. Although many great and wonderful things are promised for CD-ROM, the technology is expensive to buy, optimally requires a computer using at least a 486DX chip to drive it properly, and might yet turn out to be the Betamax format of the future. There is already a valid use for texts stored in CD-ROM, but the format is not yet a replacement for books. The CD-ROM revolution has begun, but people are advancing on the presidential palace slowly.

Secondly, where is the weak link in LAST? Where have we realized, time and time again, the delays are arising? The common link is Mr Ellison’s apparent inability to finish his editorial work.

The odds are stacked against the book.

After more than 20 years of promises, Mr Ellison still appears not to have finished the necessary work.

The idea has gone out of control: too many stories are too old, too many contributors have died, too many good or recent writers are missing.

The book is far too long, and virtually impossible to publish with any realistic hope of a financial return.

But none of this reckons with Mr Ellison himself. He continues to insist that the book will appear. He WILL finish the work, he WILL deliver it. Not only WILL it be published, it WILL be a major success. A “roadmarker”, a “milestone”, a “landmark”, an “annuity” for its writers.

This insistence is all that his writers have.

They have to set aside his quarter-century of non-completion. Set aside the string of broken promises. Set aside all their objective experience of practical publishing. Set aside the fact that they will be represented by work they wrote years ago. Set aside any fears they might have about the book’s market potential.

In short, they have to set aside every justifiable doubt and worry they have entertained for years.

Against all this, Mr Ellison offers only his unchallengeable integrity, and expects of others the same faith he has in himself.

How will it end?

We have to imagine what seems to Mr Ellison to be the unimaginable.

The book is never actually completed. Alternatively, it is completed and delivered in a form that turns out to be unpublishable. What then?

Three possibilities present themselves.

The Steady State Theory

The book will never be finished, it will never be published. ‘The Last Dangerous Visions’ will continue forever, an institution, a legend in its own right. It has after all been running for at least 22 years, so what is there to stop it now? The promises of impending publication will be repeated from time to time, publication dates will be regularly announced, the publisher will be changed at regular intervals, the advances will go up to keep pace with inflation.

More and more stories will be purchased, and these will replace the trickle of withdrawals: stability will probably be attained somewhere around the 200 mark. Young writers will replace the older ones, as they die.

In the end, everyone will write for LAST, and everyone will die.

The White Dwarf Theory

Someone will present Mr Ellison with a face-saver.

Above all he is in a dilemma: he has put his integrity at stake, but everything is tied up in a project which even he must acknowledge is hopeless.

But given that he at last delivers something to a publisher, control of the book’s destiny will pass out of his hands, at least temporarily. The publishers will do the sums, and after an appropriate pause could propose a solution to the dilemma.

They could offer to bring out a shortened version of the book. A “trial” first volume, say, to test the market … or perhaps even a ‘Best of Last Dangerous Visions’.

In spite of Mr Ellison’s assertion that the book must be published whole or not at all, this might be a way out for all concerned. The book could be published economically, several of the writers would see their work in print, the others would have their stories returned, the book would probably sell well, and so on.

And Mr Ellison would come out of it in fine style. In public he could protest his best endeavours, tell his funny stories about treacherous publishers and shifty fans and moving large boxes about the country, receive his standing ovation …

The Big Bang Theory

Finally, the book could be abandoned.

Harlan Ellison could abandon it at any time; his writers could make him abandon it if they really wanted him to.

Frankly, it seems improbable that Mr Ellison would ever abandon the book of his own free will. His dilemma is too entrenched, he has too often vested his integrity in completion. But he could do it easily, it’s an achievable end.

It would not take long to write and photocopy a polite note of apology, attach it to each story, slip it in an envelope and mail it back to each of the writers.

It would be done, finished forever.

No one would mind, no one would complain, no one would accuse him of failure. On the contrary, I suspect most people would admire his pragmatism, and support him publicly.

But there are problems, not the least of which, of course, is the outstanding advance paid by the most recent publisher. Something would have to be done about that. But Mr Ellison is a popular writer with a large following, and he could surely supply an acceptable replacement title for the publisher.

Another problem for Mr Ellison would be having to come to terms with the momentum of the past: the vehement claims, and so on. This is almost certainly the major impediment to voluntary abandonment. He would interpret it in terms of failure, a defeat for integrity. But the opposite is the case: a dignified withdrawal from this impossible muddle would redound to his favour. His stature would increase, and he would receive much sympathy and respect.

The other kind of abandonment is also a possibility: his writers could force his hand. If they can’t imagine how, the POSTSCRIPT to this provides an answer.

It seems a negative conclusion to reach, that the work of 22 years should now be set aside, but when all is said and done what’s the alternative?

By all objective criteria the project is out of control, and Harlan Ellison is in an untenable position. But any discussion of bringing LAST to an end inevitably has to take account of Mr Ellison himself: some writers have had unpleasant personal experiences (see Pre-Publication Letters).

Harlan Ellison is possibly unaware of the way his mercurial personality influences those around him, and how the darker side of that personality can intimidate and suppress comment. Knowing I have been intending to write this, and conceding that factual accuracy would be paramount throughout, colleagues have even so warned me against it. They speak of abuse, verbal violence, career threats … even litigation. Such is the fear of Mr Ellison when his temper is tested! Yet aside from detailed attention to the record, there is little in this that hasn’t been said by other people over the years.

Why does it matter?

A lot of creative energy has been expended, and a lot of time has been wasted. Much of that energy and time has been Mr Ellison’s, but by no means all. Hundreds of thousands of words have been written for him. Uncountable letters have gone to and fro. Hopes have been raised, dashed, raised again, dashed again. Writers have been cajoled, flattered, traduced, bullied and misled.

Writers have wanted to see their work in print; they have had to wait. They have wanted to use their work in their own story collections; they have had to wait. They have wanted to turn their stories into novels; they have had to wait. They have tried to withdraw their stories; they have had to wait.

It is an inexcusable mess, inflicted by one writer who should know better on more than a hundred other writers who feel themselves helpless to act.

It surely speaks for itself why it matters.