Thus the history of LAST to 1980. It has been going on like that ever since, and simply because in that time the book still has not been finished, delivered or published, to go on detailing the saga would be pointless.

From the above it is possible to discern a wave pattern with a period of about two or three years.

The first phase is a sudden burst of activity from Mr Ellison: tables of contents are released, a new publisher is named, a glitzy advance is paid, publication dates are announced, consultant editors are flown out to Los Angeles at Mr Ellison’s expense, Mr Ellison promises that writing the introductions will take no more than two or three weeks. Then there is a period of apparent retrenchment: more stories are acquired from new writers, old stories are rewritten, somewhere in the background another contributor or two drops dead. The third phase arrives insidiously: nothing much happens, Mr Ellison no longer tells everybody he is working on the introductions, the publisher waits, the contributors wait, the manuscripts sit in a box.

Then, out of the blue, another burst of activity …

The ten-year history detailed above was drawn from the public record, or from sources that were easy to find. It is therefore documented, and can be checked by anyone who cares to do so.

The undocumented record is wider still; there can be few people who go to American conventions who have not heard Mr Ellison renew his claims and promises. For instance, three months after the worldcon in Boston, Mr Ellison took part in a three-way telephone link-up that was broadcast at another science fiction convention. In this conversation with Fritz Leiber and Arthur C. Clarke, Mr Ellison again repeated his claims:

“I’m getting ready for the final push [on LAST]. It’s going to press. Berkley/Putnam is doing it. They’re taking a year to publish it in three volumes. …That’s it then, that rock’s off my back forever.”

[Transcript in ‘Science Fiction Review’ 40, Fall 1981.]

Again the unambiguous assertions: the book is going to press, it’s off his back forever (and never mind what he had said in public only three months earlier).

Any professional writer will know that when a book is “going to press” it has already been in the publisher’s hands for some weeks or months. The implication is clear: the manuscript must have been delivered.

And that same writer will want to believe it, and will put aside the memory of the earlier qualification: “I’m getting ready for the final push.”

Since 1980, of course, the book has still not been published, nor has it even been announced. As always, the exact situation is difficult to determine, but the book appears now to be under contract to Houghton Mifflin.

Mr Ellison has been widely criticized over his tardiness. Most of this is in private (he would probably be appalled to know what people say about LAST when they know he can’t hear them … fear of reprisal from Harlan Ellison is a very real phenomenon, as some of the following letters will confirm), but some, inevitably, gets into print.

One such was by the American writer and critic, Gregory Feeley [published in ‘Thrust’, Spring/Summer 1984].

This made a point I had not seen before: that many of the longer stories in the first two Ellison anthologies had been expanded into novels, and that LAST contained a large number of long stories, many of which would seem likely candidates for the same expansion. Feeley pointed out that the writers of these–with one or two exceptions–were effectively barred from developing their work so long as Mr Ellison was sitting on them.

I realized while I was researching that to be one of Mr Ellison’s friends is something to be avoided. Mr Ellison does not hesitate to recruit his friends to mouth his words for him.

In October 1983 yet another letter went around to LAST contributors, this one purportedly written by the science fiction writer Ed Bryant.

Writing on Mr Ellison’s headed notepaper, Ed Bryant uses his first paragraph to go out of his way to establish his credentials as someone “not wont to hyperbole” or “unwarranted enthusiasm in regard to matters such as TLDV.”

From the first moments, then, the weary LAST contributor is presented with another hypocritical performance. Why on Earth should Ed Bryant begin a letter with such a disclaimer?

Could it be explained by the fact that he is using Mr Ellison’s headed notepaper paper in Mr Ellison’s typewriter on Mr Ellison’s desk in Mr Ellison’s office, no doubt with Mr Ellison standing right behind him? If he had been at his own typewriter, in his own office, would he have launched into this degrading “Honest Ed” routine? Whatever the truth, all the signs are instantly up: truth is going to be a rare commodity, yet again.

Inevitably, familiar matters are raised:

Yes, Mr Ellison paid Honest Ed’s air fare out to Los Angeles.

Yes, Mr Ellison is busy writing the introductions.

Yes, there’s a new publisher (this one Houghton Mifflin).

Yes, there’s a major promotional budget.

Yes, there’s a new publication date (Spring 1984).

Yes, Mr Ellison has been busy litigating “out of his own pocket” on the contributors’ behalf, this time against a bankrupt British publisher.

Yes, the previous publisher reneged on the deal, and the fact that Mr Ellison left them is nothing to do with the book not being delivered on time.

Yes, what Mr Ellison says about paying lots of money is EVER SO TRUE.

Yes, Mr Ellison has had health problems.

Yes, it is a letter disgracefully wont to hyperbole and unwarranted enthusiasm in regard to matters such as TLDV.

One cannot help feeling sorry for Ed Bryant, a pleasant man, and hope he was at least well paid.

A poignant glimpse of what it’s like to be one of Mr Ellison’s long-suffering contributors appeared in ‘Science Fiction Review’ 46, Spring 1983. In an article called “How Not to Write Science Fiction”, Richard Wilson wrote:

“Another way not to write is to sell a story to Harlan Ellison and wait for it to be published in [LAST]. You sit and wait with visions of rave reviews, foreign and other subsidiary sales, a movie or television option, fame and money, money, money. You wait and wait. The story was at one time only a gleam in my eye, a fragment no one was interested in until Harlan saw 17,000 words of it. He liked it and demanded more. It grew and grew and in 1969 it was 40,000 or 47,000 words long, depending on who was counting, and Harlan bought it. I heard the book will be out real soon now. It’s only 13 years later, so I really shouldn’t complain. You don’t hear me complaining, do you?”

Mr Wilson died in 1987, without seeing his story published.

As the years slip by the macabre roster of dying contributors gets ever longer, and seems to acquire a ghastly relevance. (See *Note 6*.) It is of course fortuitous, but only an inexcusably delayed book as this is prone to so many reminders of human mortality. A scurrilous but amusing article in ‘Patchin Review’, by the pseudonymous “Jane Doe”, did not shrink from the delicacy of this topic and made much wicked play with the mortality rate among LAST contributors.

She published a tabulated list of the contributors’ known ages, noting which ones had died since selling to Mr Ellison, and estimating how many (on past record) were likely to die in the coming years. According to Doe, more than 50,000 words of LAST were written by writers now deceased, and that by 1991 a total of 210,000 words will be by writers then aged 60 or over. (Several of the writers who were alive in 1981, when this article appeared, have in fact died since.) Beneath the dark mischief of this article lay the serious if obvious question: how much longer will this go on?

It is now the winter of 1993/94.

Most of the books mentioned here as historical markers have come and gone; the films are now seen only on video, or as TV re-runs.

When LAST was announced Watergate and Irangate had not happened. The USA was still embroiled in the Vietnam war, and men were walking on the moon. Half the world was communist, or communist-dominated. The Berlin Wall stood, Yugoslavia was one country, the Ayatollah Khomeini was in obscure exile in Paris. No one would have credited that a second-rate Hollywood actor and a former research chemist would for a time become the two most powerful leaders in the West.

Satellite TV and home video recorders did not exist. CD records did not exist. Home computers were used only by enthusiasts. A pocket calculator or a digital watch cost several hundred dollars.

Kim Philby, Brook Benton, Raymond Carver, the Shah of Iran, Robert A. Heinlein, Art Blakey, Mao Zedung, Graham Greene, Indira and Rajiv Gandhi, Joel McCrea, Leonid Brezhnev and John Lennon were still alive.

Salman Rushdie had not yet published any novels.

No one had heard of Aids.

A baby born when Mr Ellison first started acquiring stories is now an adult.

Harlan Ellison, who was a young man when all this began, will be 60 in 1994.

The first published reference to LAST that I have been able to trace is in the Introduction to the second paperback volume of ‘Again, Dangerous Visions’. Mr Ellison said then:

“[LAST] will be published, God willing, approximately six months after this book.”

This Introduction was dated 6 May 1971, and ‘Again, Dangerous Visions’ appeared in 1972. Was God willing, six months later? He was not.

In this same article Mr Ellison revealed that he already had stories on hand from a total of 19 named writers (plus a “gaggle” of others), and added that stories had been promised from 12 other writers (“and a few more”). There are therefore at least 31 writers who have been waiting more than 20 years to see their stories in print, although to my knowledge some of those stories were written and sold to Mr Ellison in the 1960s.

(See *Note 1*.)

1971 was the year in which ‘The Lathe of Heaven’, ‘Tau Zero’, ‘A Time of Changes’ and ‘A Soldier Erect’ were published. Richard Nixon was in his first term as President of the USA. Charles Manson went to prison. A first-class postage stamp in Britain cost 3p. Harlan Ellison was 37.

Of the writers named in this article, many have subsequently died.

(See *Note 6*.)

23 June 1972

Announcement in ‘Locus’ 115:

“New American Library has purchased paperback rights for $60,000 to all three Dangerous Visions books. They will publish ‘Again, Dangerous Visions’ late in 1973 in a boxed two-volume set and will publish ‘Dangerous Visions’ in a one-volume edition after Berkley’s license to publish it has expired in 1974. The paperback of ‘The Last Dangerous Visions’ will be published by NAL sometime after the hardcover has been released.”

Announcements in ‘Locus’ do not come out of the air, and this one will probably have come from Mr Ellison himself. Although it does not actually say so, the clear implication from this is that LAST has been completed.

One could reasonably infer that LAST will be published soon after the other arrangements described, perhaps in 1974 or 1975.

18 August 1973

Announcement in ‘Locus’ 147:

“According to Harlan Ellison, LAST will be completed by September 15 and will be turned into the publisher.”

This one is at least unambiguously attributed. (Presumably Mr Ellison himself didn’t write this; his grammar is better.)

13 September 1973

Letter from Harlan Ellison in ‘The Alien Critic’, No. 7, November 1973:

“…here is a current (as of 13th September 1973) table of contents for [LAST], with word-lengths appended. The manuscript of the anthology is now in a file box, ready to go to New York, with the manuscripts standing on end. The box is three feet long, and it is jammed. Please bear in mind, as you read this Table of Contents, that this is not the order the stories will appear in the book, that the book is closed AND I DAMMIT TO HELL DON’T WANT TO SEE SUBMISSIONS FROM ANYONE EVER AGAIN IN THIS LIFE! and that I’m waiting on rewrites from [3 named writers], but that beyond those three, the book is complete. Save for the 60,000 words of introductions that I have yet to write, or the 50,000 words of Afterwords that are written but haven’t been included in the total wordage indicated on the list.

“I think you’ll all like this book. And thank _God_ this bloody ten-year-millstone has been removed from my aching neck!”

Mr Ellison goes on to list 68 authors and stories (plus the three promised rewrites), and estimates a total word-length of 445,250. That, plus the 110,000 words of introductions and afterwords he refers to in his letter, makes a book well in excess of half a million words. (See *Note 3*.)

Mr Ellison also reveals that the book will contain 75 full-page illustrations by Tim Kirk.

This letter is a significant document in the tortuous history of LAST, because for many people it was the first revelation of the sheer length of the projected book. I’ll have more to say about the length of the project later, but it’s instructive to try to imagine exactly what we are talking about.

‘War and Peace’, in its English translation, is about 600,000 words in length. Vikram Seth’s novel ‘A Suitable Boy’ (1993), which at 1,350 well-packed pages is the longest novel written in English since Samuel Richardson’s ‘Clarissa’, is probably bigger than that. Stephen Donaldson’s ‘The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever’ (initial trilogy only) totals about 510,000 words. John Brunner’s ‘Stand on Zanzibar’, one of the longest science fiction novels ever published, was about 215,000 words long.

But LAST is already so big (at least in prospect) that questions of scale have to be seriously considered. At 550,000 words it’s the length of approximately seven normal-length novels, or two and a half copies of ‘Stand on Zanzibar’ bound together.

The rest of the letter is interesting, too. Taken together with the announcement in ‘Locus’ (“…completed and turned in by September 15”), and itself dated 13 September, it sounds plausible, even to sceptics.

We’re told the manuscript is “ready to go”, that no more submissions will be read, and so on.

But a shadow of doubt does remain, partly because of those three unreliable authors who are having to rewrite their stories (one of whom, interestingly, was one of those announced two years earlier in ‘Again, Dangerous Visions’ as being definite–see *Note 2*), and partly because of the small matter of the 60,000 words Mr Ellison himself is yet to write.

Things don’t seem so certain after all. Working flat out, a fast writer could conceivably produce 60,000 words of publishable text in a week or so, but this letter was written only two days before the deadline!

It’s also worth pointing out that this letter was clearly intended as a public announcement, not as a private letter. Richard Geis’s ‘The Alien Critic’ (later ‘SF Review’) was a fanzine with a large circulation, and Mr Ellison must have known and intended that it would be read by many people, including the writers whose work he was sitting on. (At one point he says “you’ll all like this book”, and there is a general impression of an announcement being made.)

So why was Mr Ellison announcing in public that the book was complete, when not only was it self-evidently incomplete, it could not have been completed in the time remaining?

In 1973 President Nixon began his second term of office, and the Watergate scandal broke. The Arab oil embargo was imposed. The movies ‘Last Tango in Paris’, ‘Godspell’ and ‘Soylent Green’ were released.

Harlan Ellison was 39.

February 1974

Letter from Harlan Ellison in ‘The Alien Critic’, No. 8, February 1974:

“Since I haven’t given out the complete table of contents to anyone else, I wanted to keep you up to the moment with additions. Though the book is closed, I could not pass up the following. Please add to the list you have.”

Mr Ellison then lists seven more stories, and summarizes the whole book in the following way:

“Total stories: 78. Total authors: 75. Total words: 491,375, with Preface, Forewords, Afterwords, Introduction, etc., yet to be added.”

Assuming that the non-fiction matter still amounted to 110,000 words, the book has now reached over 600,000 words in prospect: equivalent to seven
and a half normal-length novels. (See *Note 4*.)

Again, this is a psychologically interesting letter. For instance, there is no attempt to rationalize this letter with the previous one, in which finality and imminent delivery were so strongly featured, and no mention of what happened about that deadline, five months earlier. There is again a clear intention that anyone reading the letter should believe that the book is emphatically finished (“complete” table of contents, “the book is closed”, etc.), yet at the same time Mr Ellison has neatly provided himself with a delaying tactic against expectations: his foot is generously still in the door, and it will stay there long enough for a few more stories to squeeze their way in.

Was LAST delivered to the publisher in February 1974? It was not.

14 June 1974

Letter from Harlan Ellison to Christopher Priest:

“Dear Mr Priest:

“The hour grows late, time grows short, and I’m chagrined that I was never able to buy the free moments to write you before this. [LAST] is closed, and I’m in the process of readying the massive final volume of the trilogy for Harper & Row. In taking stock of the important writers who haven’t been represented in the previous volumes, your name looms very large. The past few years and your work during those years have placed you among the handful of serious writers of imaginative fiction who can simply be called sui generis. I cannot express in so brief a letter my admiration for ‘Indoctrinaire’, ‘Darkening Island’ and–most memorable of all, probably because I just finished reading it and marveling at it–‘The Inverted World’.

“Though money is gone on the book, I’m prepared to pay as best I can out-of-pocket to have a new, unpublished anywhere Priest story, an important story for a milestone book. It was always my intention to write and ask you to do one for me. But time … and circumstance….

“It would be a terrible omission were there not to be a story by you in this landmark trilogy, now being taught in over 200 colleges and universities. Please! If you can do something, or have something available … any length, but extra-special, challenging, something you wouldn’t be ashamed to have logged in the book of posterity … please send it along posthaste.

“I’ll hold open the book for you until I hear one way or the other. But please keep this invitation to yourself; as far as the rest of the world is concerned, the book is closed.

“With high expectation”

(signed) Harlan Ellison

With this letter began my brief personal involvement with Mr Ellison and his unpublished book.

Although I would normally keep professional correspondence confidential I have included this letter for a number of reasons, not the least of which is that it reveals that four months after the letter to Richard Geis the anthology was still far from finished. If the door then had been jammed open with a foot, now it was locked and bolted, but one manuscript–mine–could still be slipped through the gap at the bottom.

Or so it would seem. In fact, the letter feels phony (as it did on the day it was received); it has the weird unreality of a computerized form letter from a mail order company. This unworthy suspicion was unexpectedly confirmed a couple of weeks later when another British writer confided to me that he had received an almost identically worded letter at the same time. (What he actually said was: “If you were to put my letter against yours and hold them up to the light, the only difference would be the titles of our books.”) I suspect this was one of many letters sent out in the same period, trawling through the lists of writers Mr Ellison had not previously approached. (See *Note 5* for a list of some of the others!)

But assume for a moment that the letter is sincerely intended. An editor approaches a writer and offers to buy a story. What could be wrong with that?

Well, the use of flattery is excessive, and manipulative in intent. Sui generis, indeed! He says that I loom large as one writer who wasn’t in earlier volumes. To speak of me looming at that time is nonsensical. When the first Dangerous Visions was published I had written and sold only a handful of fairly inept stories, published in Britain. He couldn’t possibly have known of me or my work. In 1971, when he completed the second book, the only work of mine that had appeared in the USA was my first novel ‘Indoctrinaire’ (which vanished almost without trace), and my first short story ‘The Run’, published in the Judith Merril anthology ‘England Swings SF’ (again, a volume of commendable obscurity).

And while seeming to flatter me he is actually using his letter as a chance to promote himself. Note the use of the words “milestone” and “landmark” to describe his own book. Of course, he is trying to sell someone on the idea of writing for him, but the way he brings in this self-congratulation is actually fairly repugnant. He says that someone writing for him should produce something “extra-special”, something that can be “logged in the book of posterity”. Most writers try to write something “extra-special” every time, and don’t need flattery as a goad.

As for posterity: assuming that a writer cares a fig for posterity, why does Mr Ellison presume that only by writing for him will posterity’s book be logged?

The reference to payment “out-of-pocket” is a disingenuous ploy, because it implies a favour. Even in 1974, struggling endlessly with a feeling of failure and a perpetual shortage of cash, I wanted no favours done me. A sale should be entered into professionally. Furthermore, most anthologies are paid for out of the editor’s “pocket”, because the usual arrangement is for the publisher to pay the editor an advance, out of which the contributors will then be paid. What Mr Ellison meant, but didn’t say, was that he had over-spent his advance but was willing to over-spend a little more. He couldn’t resist dropping this into the letter, thinking it would be an extra inducement, a heightening of my presumed importance to him.

And where does Mr Ellison think the recipient of this letter has been living? Already by 1974 the non-completion of LAST had become an open joke in fannish and professional circles. (It is perhaps difficult to realize, a quarter of a century later, that even from Mr Ellison’s first announcement many people suspected he would never deliver the book.)

A letter like this is an intimate appeal. It cynically exploits vanity, goodwill and a desire for success. The writer of the letter asserts his sincerity, good taste and admiration, and pleads for confidentiality so that other writers might not grow jealous.

But because the appeal is actually written for self-serving purposes, the recipient would have to be pretty insensitive not to notice the insincerity dripping from it. He gets a queasy feeling in his stomach, but cannot easily phrase a refusal: it’s nice to be asked to write something, no matter by whom. Flattery gets under your defences, however hypocritical it is. You want to avoid hassles, but you’re cornered. Prevarication or excuses will only bring a more concentrated appeal, and so, feeling cornered, you agree reluctantly to send something along. The letter has manipulated you in exactly the way it was intended.

[I prevaricated and made excuses, and duly received a more concentrated appeal. In August 1974 I reluctantly broke off from the novel I was writing, wrote a short story called ‘An Infinite Summer’, and sent it to Mr Ellison.

[A long silence followed. After four months without any reaction at all from Mr Ellison, I instructed my agent to get the story back from him.

[I have never regretted this, even though I was subjected to a stream of abuse and threats from Mr Ellison. This was peculiarly unpleasant, but I had one consolation he could do nothing about. I had promptly resold the story for real money, and by the time Mr Ellison was calling me names it was already in print. It was subsequently republished in a “best of the year” anthology, and since then has been regularly reprinted in books and magazines all over the world. Two decades after I wrote it, ‘An Infinite Summer’ is still being resold, and brings me a small but regular income.

[If I had left the story with Mr Ellison it would today be sitting in a cardboard box somewhere in his house. No one would be reading it. Because it escaped this fate, ‘An Infinite Summer’s’ sojourn in Mr Ellison’s hands is irrelevant to this essay. What is relevant, though, is the fact that if I hadn’t whipped it away from him when I did my story would be in that joyless box with well over a hundred other stories, most of them written several years before mine.

[No one is reading them, most people don’t even know they exist … but this essay is about them.]

19 February 1976

Announcement in Locus 185:

“For those who keep asking, Ellison’s anthology [LAST] still hasn’t been turned in to Harper & Row and is still unscheduled.”

7 July 1976

Interview with Christopher Fowler, in ‘Vector’ 75, July 1976:

(Ellison): “[LAST] is done, is closed … I’m finished up writing the introductions now. It goes into Harper & Row–it will not be published by Doubleday. I pulled it away from them two years ago, three years ago. It’s being published by Harper & Row. It will be in a two volume, boxed set, and it will sell for approximately $26. It has over 100 stories … it is over a million and a quarter words. That is the equivalent of 13 or 14 full-length novels. It’s longer than ‘War and Peace’, and it’s about three times as long as ‘Gone With the Wind’. … It goes in September 1st [1976]. … It’ll be on sale in America in the Spring of 1977. I think after ten, eleven, twelve years of this project, this book will be the final road-marker of a project that is now clearly indicative of where the field has been and is over ten years.”

One of the features of being in Mr Ellison’s company is that he frequently makes verbal claims about having finished and delivered LAST. These claims are invariably made in such an emphatic way, supported by plausible-seeming detail, that it’s impossible to challenge them except by having to call Mr Ellison a liar.

These repeated claims have become part of the ritual, in which others seem content to connive. Few people are prepared to stand up to Mr Ellison in person, and no one believes the claims (or even knows anyone else who believes them) so they vanish into the air. But every so often there’s a tape recorder running, the words get transcribed and are eventually enshrined in print. This is one such case.

As Mr Ellison never publicly retracted or corrected this, we can take it that he was not misquoted.

So here is the latest untrue claim that the book is finished and about to be delivered. A million and a quarter words: 1,250,000 words. Using my own yardstick of “average” length, that’s actually equivalent to nearly 16 novels. In pages? If the “average” novel runs to 250 pages in hardback, LAST would work out at more than 3,000 pages. (The London Telephone Directory, printed on A4 paper in three columns of tiny type, contains over 3,000 pages.)

This “road-marker” that indicates where the “field” has been for the last ten years is clear to read. The “field” has been in a box in Mr Ellison’s house.

Incautiously, Mr Ellison adds a publication date. We all remember that Spring of 1977, just over a decade and a half ago, when ‘The Last Dangerous Visions’ was at last published, don’t we?

1977 was the year President Jimmy Carter took office. New York experienced its first “brown-out”. The space shuttle flew for the first time. Harlan Ellison was 43.

14 December 1977

Letter from Harlan Ellison, circulated to all LAST contributors:

This is far too long (and too tediously self-serving) to be reproduced in full, but here are salient extracts:

“We are now forthcoming from Harper & Row.” [A new contract is enclosed, with alterations.] “The most significant [alteration] is a guarantee that the book will be published before Christmas 1978. Over the outraged howls of Harper & Row I have made it a 13-month guarantee. I did that to restore faith with those of you … who have waited literally years to see the work in print, and despite delay after delay–justified or not–have stuck with me. As this will be a 3-volume boxed set, over 600,000 words, it will take Harper & Row a good nine months to send the book(s) through production. I know I’m cutting it close with you, but I felt I had to do it if I was to summon up the gall to ask you to re-sign with TLDV. It is incumbent on me to advise you once again that the stories have, in fact, reverted to you. Long since. You can refuse to sign, keep the advance payment you received, and sell the story elsewhere. Or you can trust me just one more time and stay with the project.”

[Mr Ellison explains he and the publishers have retained Victoria Schochet as an outside consultant editor to complete the book. Ms Schochet is a well-known and highly respected New York editor.]

“[Victoria Schochet] came out here to Los Angeles from New York for ten days, to work on this deal exclusively. Her assistance has permitted me to plunge through to the final edge of the project, and because of her help the manuscript is now ready to go. I have some writing to do, but I’ll have that done in January and the book will be sent to Harper & Row by February 1st for immediate pre-production layouts.”

[Mr Ellison encloses a note from Victoria Schochet; see below.]

“Over the next few months I’ll stay in touch to let you know what stage the production of the book has reached. Harper & Row will be renegotiating the NAL paperback contract, which will mean more money almost immediately, and there will be, of course, continuing royalties, unto the 10th generation. With DV and A,DV having sold millions and millions of copies in hard and soft, translations and UK reprints, all you need do to reassure yourself that you’re investing in an annuity, is to query anyone who appeared in the first two books.”

(signed) Harlan Ellison

Here is the handwritten personal testimony from Victoria Schochet, enclosed with Mr Ellison’s letter:

“Please do be assured that this enormous project is in the final stages of completion. I say Please because it would truly be a tragedy to lose any of the pieces in the volume. Having spent the last week reading through all 600,000 words of it, I promise you that no claim for its significance, scope, and excellence could possibly be extravagant. I have never had the honor of working on as fine a project. I know it’s been a long time coming for us all, but the waiting will have been worth it.

“The manuscript is now all together, in order, finished. All that remains is to integrate your (immediate) responses and it’s off to the publisher. The book will be a 3-volume, large-sized (D), about 650 pages each. The illustrations are equal to the stories — the set will be a beautiful, mind-boggling product. Harper & Row recognizes the importance of TLDV and is preparing to support its publication in force.

“The editors and publisher thank you for your patience and understanding and have faith that you’ll be well pleased with the rewards.”

(signed) Victoria Schochet

Thrust out of your mind the distracting hindsight knowledge that LAST did not actually appear in December 1978, and try to put yourself in the place of the writers who received this in 1977. It’s a fine and convincing performance: open, frank, plausible, attested to by an independent witness.

You would be a distrustful churl indeed to question this full-frontal assault on your mind and heart, with its confession of fault, willingness to let old stories be released, optimism about the future … and its promises of untold wealth.

The integrity of Victoria Schochet is not in question. An intriguing element in all this, though, is that Mr Ellison makes heavy weather of her fine reputation, and underlines the fact that she did not write her letter under duress. (At one point in his letter he says: “Vicky’s credentials speak for themselves; and not even thumbscrews could get her to write those words if she didn’t mean them.” Why should he make such a meal of this? Why on earth should he think that anyone would suspect otherwise?)

What went wrong after these letters were sent? After all, here we have unambiguous statements concerning the book’s completion. Mr Ellison says, “the manuscript is now ready to go.” Victoria Schochet says, “The manuscript is now all together, in order, finished.” If these statements are true, why was the book not published 15 years ago?

It wouldn’t be anything to do with the single betraying flaw, would it? Mr Ellison says, “I have some writing to do.”

Meanwhile, what’s all this about “continuing royalties”?

“Continuing” implies there is a process that started in the past and will continue uninterrupted into the future. Is Mr Ellison suggesting that the writers have been receiving “royalties” even before the book is published? (A royalty is a payment made to a writer based on retail sales of a book.) Using the word “royalties” is an interesting semantic stratagem, because it implies that the book has somehow come into existence before it is published!

The reality of LAST payments to contributors is that anything paid is in the nature of a payment on account until publication. The source of this will be the original advance, contributions from Mr Ellison’s “pocket”, and, most important of all, surpluses created by the payment of larger advances whenever the projected book is moved to a new publisher. The passage of time and price inflation allow replacement publishers to pay an advance which is sufficiently larger than the one immediately before. This enables the old publisher to be paid back, and the surplus distributed as “royalties” (see below).

Insofar as I have been able to trace actual payments of these “royalties”, I understand one distribution was made (“out of pocket”) in August 1973, and another was made in early 1984. More might have been paid since then. (My argument is with Mr Ellison’s terminology–which creates misunderstandings–not with his honesty.)

By the way, did you notice how in 18 months the estimated word-count dropped mysteriously from 1,250,000 to 600,000 words?

29 January 1979

Letter from Ellison to contributors. (“SUBJECT: Impending Publication”):

“As the enclosed letter will inform you, there has been a major change in the status of [LAST] and, as a result, a major improvement in your position in the book.

“G.P. Putnam’s Sons will be doing the book in a three-volume boxed set. They are advancing us $50,000. After repayment of the monies owed to Harper & Row and New American Library, I will be dispersing most of the remaining thousands directly to you, as an additional advance payment for your work in the book.

“The entire month of February will be spent completing the prefatory material and the introductions; delivery is scheduled for 15 March and publication–if all goes as expected–will be Christmas of this year.

“It is a year later than my last communique with you indicated, and God knows most of you have waited far longer to see your work in print than I had any right to expect; but I think you’ll agree this is a most salutary development.

“This is the third publisher to contract for [LAST]. We started with Doubleday a long time ago, then moved the book to Harper & Row, and now Putnam. A number of you have been (properly) annoyed at what seemed to be unnecessary delays in getting the book out. I’ve always tried to be candid with you about these delays; and with only a few exceptions you’ve all understood that I take my custodial responsibilities for your work very seriously. It is precisely that sense of responsibility that brings us to this point. Please understand: I’ve seen too many rotten examples of anthologists who’ve conned you into doing original stories that went into books that instantly vanished from view. And you never saw another cent of royalties.

“Everyone who has ever published a story in one of the Dangerous Visions books can attest to the large and regular royalties that keep on coming, year after year. I feel it is the most basic element of my obligation to you, to keep on making money for you. A story in a DV book has life, it will be an annuity. So as caretaker, I have to go with my instincts about marketing. Thus far I’ve been correct.”

[Two rambling paragraphs follow, in which Mr Ellison explains why he keeps changing publishers.]

“Well, last year Vicky Schochet came out here from New York to help me finalize the book. She read it from front to back, and was more enthusiastic than I can say. Now she’s the editor at Berkley/Putnam who has arranged for the buy-out with H&R. She wants to do the book, she knows how good the book is, and she has fired up Putnam’s so _they_ want to do the book.

“The way it should be done.

“With major advertising. With special packaging. With heavy promotion. And with a $50,000 advance payment.

“That’s the story. I tell you all this, of course, to get you to hang in there for one more month. By March 15th the book will be in Vicky’s hands and she’ll circularize you confirming same. But before that time, we’ll have an advance check of fifty grand. I’ll pay back the advance we got from Harper, the money New American Library gave us, and the vast bulk of what’s left will be divided into pro rata shares and sent off to you. Within a month you’ll have a big schlug of money to cement your staying with the project so we can do it right.

“I’ve run out of ways to beg you to stay with me; you’ve long since run out of patience with me. TLDV has become one of the big myth-objects of our time. Like Atlantis or Reagan’s intellect. But that very word-of-mouth advertising, that bated breath attitude on the part of the audience, serves you all in the extreme. When Putnam’s releases TLDV for the Christmas season, it has a guaranteed trade sale waiting.

“And we’re talking a very expensive package here. Three books, approximately 700,000 words, over 115 stories. And huge profits for all of you. The attached letter from Berkley will buttress all the foregoing. Be patient for another month and enjoy a second advance payment as a mark of good faith, as well as my way of saying thankyou for your patience up till now.”

(signed) Harlan Ellison

This letter, like the one in 1977, was accompanied by one from a publisher. The writer this time was Rena Wolner, Vice President and Publisher at Berkley Publishing Corporation:

“To the contributors to The Last Dangerous Visions.

“Welcome to Berkley! Thanks to the involvement of Victoria Schochet, our new senior editor for science fiction, Berkley is now negotiating to take over the publishing of [LAST]. I would like to take this opportunity to tell you just how proud and excited we are to be the publisher of this final volume in the remarkable Dangerous Visions series.

“I would like to tell you something of our publishing plans for the project. We intend to bring out a hardcover edition, under our Berkley/Putnam imprint, on our winter 1979-1980 list. We recognize that publication of [LAST] will be an event of great importance in the science fiction field, one which has been awaited for some time. Although it is too early to be specific, I want to assure you that we are planning to promote the project with all due fanfare, and see that it receives the meticulous production attention and post-publication notice that it deserves. (This will involve publicity releases, posters, adequate review copies, and the like.) And of course we will be bringing out the paperback editions later in 1980, and have grand plans for selling and promoting the books again at that time.

“I hope that you are as pleased to have [LAST] published by Berkley as we here are to have it on our list, We know that the project will be a tremendous success for all of us.”

(signed) Rena Wolner

This was another convincing performance, one which must have seemed plausible on that wintry day in 1979.

There is hardly any reference to Mr Ellison’s broken promises in the past, except by implication. By concentrating on the change of publisher Mr Ellison also manages to imply that the further delay was caused by this, not by him. In a confident manner, Mr Ellison gives every impression of being back in control: publication is “impending”, etc.

You will have noted Mr Ellison’s ingenuous reference to anthologies that “instantly vanished from view”. This could not have been said accidentally (because if so it is insensitive to the point of crassness) so what on Earth could he have meant? No other book in modern publishing has “vanished” so publicly and over such a long period of time as LAST. Was he using verbal legerdemain, trying to persuade his writers that although they probably think the book has vanished, in fact it has not?

Mr Ellison of course contradicts himself on this. The amusing joke about Atlantis and Reagan’s intellect is trying to make a virtue of the book’s long period of non-appearance.

Later in 1979, Margaret Thatcher became Prime Minister of the UK. In 1980, around the time the paperback was expected, Ronald Reagan was elected President of the USA. ‘Star Trek – the Motion Picture’ was released in Britain. Harlan Ellison was 46.

June 1979. Report in Locus 222:

‘Locus’ published a list of the contents of LAST, presumably obtained from Mr Ellison. The book was said “to be published next year by Putnam”. A total of 113 stories were listed, amounting to just under 645,000 words.

(See *Note 5*.)

“Next year” was of course 1980, and of course the book was not published then.

August 1980. An eye-witness account:

During a visit to New York I went to a party where Harlan Ellison was present. (This is one of the very few occasions when I have been in the same room with him, although we have never actually been introduced.) A large number of writers, including myself and Mr Ellison, were sitting around chatting about this and that. Suddenly one of the others said, “How are you getting on with TLDV, Harlan?”

“I just delivered it!” he cried. “I handed it in this afternoon! It’s over!”

Amid squeals of delighted scepticism, raspberry noises and general hilarity, Mr Ellison managed to look hurt and indignant.

“Listen, you guys,” he said. “This time I really did.”

He launched into some complicated story about how he had had to get a cab to take him and the oversize box to the airport.

“It’s OK, Harlan,” somebody said. “We understand. But you don’t have to bullshit us. We won’t tell the fans.”

Mr Ellison look chastened, but relaxed a little. He then explained that although he hadn’t, you know, actually delivered the manuscript, the delay was a mere technicality. As soon as he got back to Los Angeles he would be setting aside a whole month to write the introductions, and …

Everyone cheered up. The status quo had been restored.

A few days later, at the worldcon in Boston, I heard part of a long and colourful speech Mr Ellison gave about his life and works. During this, a question from the floor raised the same subject.

While the laughter rang out, Mr Ellison lowered his head in mock modesty. As the laughter died he raised a clenched fist and shook it in triumph.

“I was in New York last week,” he declared. “And I handed it in! IT’S DONE!”

The whole place erupted with cheers. Mr Ellison trotted happily to and fro across the stage. People stood up: it became a standing ovation.

Then I noticed that some of the people who had been at the same party as me, and who had heard the reluctant truth from Mr Ellison’s own lips, were also clapping and cheering …

I left the auditorium, bemused by all this. As I went through the doors I heard Mr Ellison begin his entertaining story about getting his oversized box into the cab.

In 1967 Harlan Ellison published ‘Dangerous Visions’, a long anthology of short stories and novellas by contemporary science fiction writers. The book is a child of its time: the editorial concept was to encourage and allow writers to deal with certain themes then considered “taboo” by the mainstream of publishing, especially science fiction publishing.

The book owed its source primarily to the great social changes then taking place in the United States–caused by the Civil Rights movement, the Vietnam war, drugs, rock music, student unrest, and so on–and to a lesser extent to the “New Wave” science fiction then being written (predominantly in Great Britain) and the apparent breakthroughs being achieved by ‘New Worlds’ and a few other outlets. The fact that Mr Ellison’s perception of the “New Wave” seems to have been based on effects rather than causes is neither here nor there: the book was a major success, and had an undeniable influence on the way science fiction was latterly written and published, at least in the United States.

A follow-up anthology, ‘Again, Dangerous Visions’, appeared in 1972. By this time the need to flout “taboos” was less urgent. ‘Again, Dangerous Visions’ is longer than the first volume and contains more stories, but in spite of commercial success has not been as influential. The second book introduced a novelty that was to have a bearing on the third: no writer who had appeared in ‘Dangerous Visions’ was invited to contribute to the follow-up. The three volumes are therefore intended to be of a piece, presumably representing a cross-section of work from this period of science fiction’s development.

What follows is a brief account of the early years in the life of the third book, from the time it was announced (1971) until the end of the 1970s. This is the most “public” period in the book’s existence: it was widely seen as a live and exciting project, and many people eagerly anticipated its publication.

During this period, though, certain events took place that by repetition quickly established themselves as constants. An annotated description of this period will show how the pattern took shape.

[Throughout I use a shortened form of the book’s title: “LAST”. The abbreviation commonly used by Mr Ellison and many science fiction commentators is “TLDV” (some of the letter writers use it) but in my view this harmless abbreviation has become part of the iconography of the unfinished book. The familiarity of the term has come to imply acceptance of, and therefore a kind of tacit approval of, what has been going on.

[I prefer my own disjunctive abbreviation. Apart from anything else it implies non-acceptance of, and tacit disapproval of, whatever it is that has been going on.]

This is the full text of THE LAST DEADLOSS VISIONS, an essay I wrote in 1987 and published at my own expense in a fanzine called Deadloss. It was an attempt to bring journalistic techniques to a subject that from the point of view of anyone outside the sf world might seem an odd one for enquiry: the non-publication of a book.

Of course, the book was Harlan Ellison’s anthology ‘The Last Dangerous Visions’, a title surrounded from the beginning by so much hype, exaggeration and persistent invisibility that it has been a subject of interest to a generation (literally) of sf writers and fans. I approached the subject as an investigative journalist might, the intention being to find out whatever truth there was, and then report it. However, THE LAST DEADLOSS VISIONS is not “objective” in the way that much excellent American journalism is objective, but is from a different tradition. It is a polemical pamphlet, written to express a point of view and to persuade others of that view.

A pamphlet is not “balanced”. For instance, the subject has no chance to defend himself, and indeed is quoted only so that he may condemn himself with his own words. Pamphlets are usually written by members of minorities who feel that there is a body of thought which has already had more than its share of air-time. In this case it can be easily shown that Harlan Ellison has had a great deal to say about ‘The Last Dangerous Visions’, and has said it publicly for almost a quarter of a century. By 1987 a pamphlet expressing the other view was long overdue.

However, with objectivity and balance out of the window, it might seem that the only thing left is personal attack. Mr Ellison and his followers are quick to point this out. In fact, calling it a feud is just about the only comfort Mr Ellison can take, because then he can try to ignore what people are saying about him.

This essay is not one side of a feud: my sole contact with Harlan Ellison is described later. I know few things about him (other than the fact that we are both professional writers working in or around the sf world) and I have read very little of his work. My interest in him was first aroused by his defensive braggadocio about ‘The Last Dangerous Visions’, which made me wonder what was going on and what he was trying to hide. After I had done some research I realized what a terrific story it was. In brief, I still feel uninterested in Mr Ellison himself, but the story is fascinating.

My general argument in the following essay is that Mr Ellison has spun a web of contradictions around the book. I argue that if he would face up to them, and not continually spin more, then there is a chance for him to escape. In other words, I depict him as a victim of his own actions, or inactions. This makes it sound as if I see what has happened as inadvertent. I’m sure there’s an element of this (Mr Ellison is the first to complain about the sheer hell he has been suffering), but much of it has arisen through inattention to the needs, opinions or feelings of others.

One critic of an early edition of ‘Deadloss’ said that I had set out to embarrass Mr Ellison, as if this was an unacceptable motive. I was glad of the insight: Mr Ellison has a lot to be embarrassed about, and it was high time someone told him so. But there’s a difference between pointing out unwelcome truths, and accusing him of wrongdoing.

With this essay written and published, I became identified as a leading Ellisonian antagonist. Those with an axe to grind would write and tell me their frightful anecdotes about the great man, or try to tip me off to some other perceived outrage, while Mr Ellison’s faithful fans either went to ground or bluntly accused me of jealousy. It would therefore be untrue to claim that I am now as impartial as I was when I wrote the main essay. In addition, it’s pretty difficult to remain impartial about someone who threatens, in a fit of pique or exhibitionism, to have you killed. Mr Ellison did this soon after I published the pamphlet. The fact that I didn’t take the threat too seriously, and also that Mr Ellison, when challenged on it by someone else, quibbled that he had intended it as a “joke”, doesn’t diminish the squalid reflex that the original threat revealed.

Finally, let me say that one of the main motives for writing a pamphlet is to try to influence events.

In the case of Harlan Ellison and ‘The Last Dangerous Visions’ it is perfectly clear how the events should be influenced, and as you read my essay you will see the process taking place: much of the idea is to spur Harlan Ellison into action. But not any old action.

By deliberately exposing his familiar gambits as muddle, boastfulness and procrastination, the idea is to encourage others to stand up to him. In the end he will be cornered by his own contradictions, and will finally have to do the right thing.

A word about the format of the present edition.

In this era of flexible media it is possible for a text to be revised and expanded at short notice. Even in its printed version Deadloss went through many different editions. The main sequence was as follows:

The first 1987 edition consisted of the essay plus letters from writers who had seen the first draft, and an appendix of notes.

The second edition, also published in 1987 (between September and December), contained everything from the first edition, with minute corrections, plus the text of a diary I started to keep when the responses started pouring in. As the diary was being constantly updated copies were issued serially. Many different versions are in circulation, bearing different finishing dates.

At the end of 1987 I became bored with the whole exercise, and stopped adding to the diary. With the help of Andy Richards at Cold Tonnage Books I printed a “complete” third edition (everything from the first two editions brought up to date). This was distributed steadily for five years; it was first released in January 1988, with the last copy mailed in 1992.

This electronic text is an advance release of the fourth edition, which will be published in 1994. It consists of the following:

This new Introduction.
The main essay. I have made a few textual corrections, brought some of it up to date, and generally tightened the criticism of Mr Ellison.
Pre-publication letters.
Notes. These are various lists of named writers, known to have been involved with The Last Dangerous Visions at one time or another.
Post-publication letters. These letters made up much of the bulk of the original diary section. (I have deleted the other diary entries, as they had mainly topical interest.)
The Summing Up. This includes a section called The Remedy, which is addressed to any writer whose work is still being held by Mr Ellison. It is a practical guide.

Brian Aldiss
Michael Bishop
Graham Charnock
John Christopher
Harry Harrison
Barry Malzberg
George R.R. Martin
Charles Platt
Bob Shaw
Ian Watson
(…and many others)

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

Published in England

This text is for private distribution and consumption only. Although it may be downloaded and printed out, it may NOT be sold for gain, and the text MUST NOT BE ALTERED IN ANY WAY.

Quotations out of context may only be made with the EXPRESS ADVANCE WRITTEN CONSENT OF CHRISTOPHER PRIEST.

All enquiries to CHRISTOPHER PRIEST as follows:

E-mail: cpriest@cix.compulink.co.uk
Fax: UK – 0424 719739
outside UK – (+44) 424 719739

Table of Contents

Introduction
The History of The Last Dangerous Visions
The Background; A Decade of Broken Promises; The Next 13 Years; Some Questions
Why Does LAST Remain Unpublished?
Why Have So Many Promises Been Broken?
Will LAST Ever be Published?
How Will It End?
The Steady State Theory; The White Dwarf Theory; The Big Bang Theory
Pre-Publication Letters
Graham Charnock; Ian Watson; Harry Harrison; C.S. Youd (John Christopher); Michael Bishop; Bob Shaw; George R.R. Martin; Charles Platt
Notes
Post-Publication Letters
Michael Bishop; Brian Aldiss; R.I. Barycz; Laurence M. Janifer; Barry Malzberg; Greg Feeley; Eddy C. Bertin; Taral Wayne; Steven Bryan Bieler
Postscript
The Summing Up
The Remedy

‘ new fanzine, Puny Earthling, contains numerous decent short pieces of fiction and commentary. I particularly liked Julian West’s “Chapters from a Scientific Romance”, recasting The War of the Worlds into the world of Pride and Prejudice.

‘s review of “School Reunion” (the Doctor Who episode from this year featuring Sarah Jane Smith and K9), the first in a series of DW reviews that Strange Horizons is running this week.

Article from Saturday’s Guardian about Rebecca West’s masterwork, Black Lamb and Grey Falcon. He doesn’t mention the fact that some hold Rebecca West’s views as having provided intellectual justification for the international community’s shameful passivity during the Balkan conflicts of the 1990s. In my view that is a total misreading of West, but sufficiently widespread that the omission seems odd in what is otherwise a very interesting article (apparently abridged from the foreword to the new edition of the book).

Black Lamb and Grey Falcon is a vast, ambitious and complex book which repeatedly stresses the kinship between homely and universal truths. By making a cake for friends, West insists, “one is striking a low note on a scale that is struck higher up by Beethoven and Mozart”.

4) The Wreck of The River of Stars, by Michael Flynn

Years and years ago I remember reading a fantastic book about a cargo ship sinking in the North Sea. There were only about half a dozen characters who all abandoned ship in the space of forty minutes; the author sketched them each memorably and effectively and it took about a hundred pages. (Has anyone else read that book? Can you remember what it was called, and who it was by?)

Michael Flynn has done much the same here, though with a dozen or so characters and a timescale of a couple of weeks rather than a few minutes. Not all the characters survive – indeed, the captain dies on the fourth page, with over 500 pages left to go – but all are depicted with great depth and compassion. Flynn picks up beautifully on those little misunderstandings where what appears to be a clear statement of fact, or even a sympathetic remark, to the speaker is picked up as an intentional slight or insult by the addressee, or by other listeners.

Each crew member has a formally assigned role, but each comes from a different part of Flynn’s vividly imagined solar system, bringing their own personal ghosts to the ship, working with, arguing with, and occasionally having sex with each other in a series of tightly controlled shifts of narrative perspective. In what is essentially a rather grim stopry, there are occasional shafts of humour as well: at one difficult moment, the ship’s cook decides to eschew the usual synthetic food, “thinking that a feast upon real mutton would relax the crew and ease the pressure – a sort of pascal lamb” – I had to read that a couple of times before I got the joke.

At first I was so interested in the people that the setting of the spaceship in trouble felt like a mere backdrop for the character interactions. But then the ship itself emerged as an interesting player in its own right: both technically, in terms of the challenge faced by the crew in reviving its solar sails to add crucial extra momentum after its ion thrusters are disabled in an accident, and in character terms, as its AI system starts to behave more and more as a character in itself. None of the lazy spaceship = Napoleonic warship stuff that so annoyed me with Honor Harrington: the engineering issues here do involve a certain amount of handwaving (what, I wonder, is “hobartium” when it’s at home) but it all hangs together as an independent construction.

Anyway, very good stuff, and I’m surprised I hadn’t heard much about this book before. Looking at Flynn’s bibliography I see he wrote the very silly Fallen Angels with Niven and Pournelle, but also “The Clapping Hands of God”, my favourite of last year’s Hugo nominees in the novelette category (it came second, beaten by “The Faery Handbag”). I’ll look out for his other stuff now.

3) Tropic of Capricorn, by Henry Miller

Jeepers, this must have seemed awfully intelligent and hip in 1938; but the anti-semitism, misogyny, and total lack of any actual plot have not aged this book well. I did struggle through to the end, just about.

Jolly good fun. Much thanks due to , , and for organising it. I dragged Anne along to the quiz on the Friday night, and we came third, in a team with , and a guy called Brian from Canada.

I went to about five panels in all (which is probably more than I went to at WorldCon last year, apart from the ones I was actually on), including two on Doctor Who, where the charming was every bit as impressive in person as on the screen. moderated a select discussion of C.S. Lewis immediately after his Guest of Honour speech. Some time afterwards, we ended up having a very nice meal at the Rajput, which is as good as ever, along with , and .

I showed my face much more briefly today, though was able to give Ken MacLeod a printout of the Celebrity Deathmatch Hugo commentary. Also very good to see and again, for certain plotting and nefarious purposes, and to receive my own copy of “Puny Earthling” featuring my article on Northern Ireland in science fiction. Very nice also to see , and anyone else who I haven’t yet mentioned.

I also managed to get into town and buy:

Comics
Ghost World by Daniel Clowes
Preacher: Gone to Texas by Garth Ennis

Books
Sixteenth Century Ireland, by Colm Lennon
Year’s Best SF 11, ed. Hartwell/Cramer
Epic, by Conor Kostick
McSweeney’s Mammoth Treasury of Thrilling Tales, ed. Michael Chabon
Doctor Who: Short Trips: Past Tense, ed. Ian Farrington
Vellum, by Hal Duncan, who was actually there at MeCon but I forgot to ask him to sign it
Winter Moon – in fact not bought in town but kindly given by who is one of the three authors, the other two being Mercedes Lackey and Tanith Lee

DVDs
Chronicles of Narnia boxed set of the four stories done by the BBC in the 1980s
Doctor Who: Lost in Time assorted episodes from the First and Second Doctors where the rest of the story has been deleted
Doctor Who: The Caves of Androzani – possibly the Fifth Doctor’s best story, certainly (sadly) his last
Doctor Who: The Curse of Fenric – I’ve been told that the Seventh Doctor’s last season is actually rather good, well, now I’ll find out if it’s true!

Anyway, great to see you all there. Next year, perhaps?

and , may I introduce you to ? (Who is currently in Belfast but back in Cork tomorrow)

From my grandmother’s notes:

He didn’t get abroad until the Gallipoli expedition; by that time he was a major, and later he was to command the 6th Dublins. He was wounded at Gallipoli through the shoulder, and was sent back to hospital. Before he was pronounced fit he managed to get into a party that was being sent back to the lines and reported to the CO who later heard from the hospital that Major Whyte had deserted; the CO was able to report back that Major Whyte had rejoined the regiment.

I haven’t his military diaries here [NW: wonder where they ended up?], so I have no idea of exact dates and so on, but after Gallipoli there was the Serbian campaign, where a mixed force of French and British got as far as Lake Doiran, but then had to fall back. The Dublins had the honour of forming the rearguard. While they had been at Lake Doiran they had been on one hill with the Bulgarians across the valley on another. In the valley between there were some ruined cottage[s]. Each night a few of the Dublins would quietly work their way down to the cottages and light fires there, and each succeeding morning the Bulgarians would solemnly shell the cottages for some time – of course by then the Dublins were safe back on their hill, well out of range; no living thing was near the cottages.

When the time came to withdraw, Billy arranged it so that his men went diagonally down the hill. When the Bulgarians realised that they had gone, they raced up the hill and fired straight ahead down it; as the Dublins had gone off to the side there were no casualties among them.

The Serbian government sent a number of decorations, the White Eagle, to be distributed among the British and French; three British officers were named specially to receive them, and Billy was one of those three. It is a most attractive decoration.

From Serbia they went to Salonika and later to Palestine. The at last Billy got some home leave and was actually in France when the war ended.

Into the heart of County Down today, to visit an old favourite and a new attraction.

This is the Legananny Dolmen, one of the most spectacular megalithic monuments in Ireland.

On the slopes of Slieve Croob, it has a fine view of the Mountains of Mourne:

You have to bring your own child, though.

I had vaguely known for many years of a large souterrain, an artificial underground chamber, somewhere in the vicinity of the dolmen. To my delight I discovered this morning that it has been refurbished and is now open to the public.

Since it’s halfway up a mountain and underground, an imaginative solution for giving visitors adequate illumination was needed. In this picture of the entrance you can see on the right the solar panels which power the lights:

Inside it’s about 30 metres long, but only 1.5 metres high at the highest point. This makes it a little uncomfortable for those of average size and above, but smaller people will have an enjoyable visit:

Will bring a torch next time to peek into inaccessible corners.

I’d thought for some reason that this was another six-parter, and settled down to watch episode four this morning, only to realise to my disappointment that it was all over. Well, having had a rather unsatisfactory run of Second Doctor stories, I am relieved to say that I very much enjoyed this. Certainly falls into the category of Doctor Who that you can safely show non-fans without fear of embarrassment.

I complained that it is sometimes difficult to tell Patrick Troughton apart from the other actors on the audio tapes. There is no problem at all when you are watching the programme; he is at the centre of every scene he is in. And this is not just the natural effect of the director concentrating on the central character: Troughton is simply fascinating to look at – such an expressive face.

The story is of course a classic. The Cybermen – or rather, the Cyber-controller, who is the only one who gets significant airtime, with Peter Hawkins’ superbly chilling voicing of the lines – are worthy adversaries, assisted by their human dupes (vaguely foreign and therefore sinister, unlike the spaceship captain who is American and therefore clearly a Good Guy). The Cybermats could very nearly have been awful, but carry it off well. There are certain implausibilities in the set-up – why do the Cybermen limit themselves to a single means of egress after they have been woken, with the revitaliser on the other side of the hatch? Why does the Doctor allow the Cyber-controller to recharge himself? – but you can overlook them in the fun of the ride.

There are some nice little touches as well: Victoria’s reaction to the Tardis; the Doctor and Victoria about their families; the Doctor telling Klieg just how insane he is; Toberman cradling his dead mistress. I even quite liked the special effects of the Cybermen doing mind-zinging things – would look very silly now but fitted the 1960s feel of the series.

The DVD has a couple of great extras as well: director Morris Barry’s brief introduction to the original video release, excerpts from a panel discussion in 1992 which brought together the surviving actors and crew from the series, and slightly to my surprise but much to my delight a very brief video of the Dalek civil war from the end of the previous series, The Evil of the Daleks.

In summary, this is a DVD well worth getting hold of.

Just for completeness – as I guess the voting deadline has now passed – but Aaron Hughes has notified me of his reviews of the novella, novelette and short story categories. See also Tim Walters on all the fiction categories.

Christian Sauvé has done much the same, with one post calmly and soberly discussing the merits or otherwise of the short fiction nominees, and a second the recasting this year’s contest for Best Novel as if it were an episode of Celebrity Deathmatch whose climax may not satisfy everyone but would certainly be most gratifying to . Both of these are in French, but I particularly recommend working through the latter, certainly the most entertaining commentary I’ve seen on the Hugo novel nominees this year, or any year come to that.

Will add both of these to my master list but probably not until much later in the month.

This weekend. Will be there. Am looking forward to it.

In fact, it’s an occasion of double nostalgia. MeCon V, in 2002, was the first sf con I had ever paid membership for (not quite the first I had ever attended – I was invited by to participate in a panel about politics at Uniconze in 1990, with Ian Watson and someone else who I’ve forgotten). It was a great weekend, at which I met many people who I now know via LJ for the first time; and I see both Ken MacLeod and Ian McDonald will be there again this year. I particularly remember early March 2002 because two days after I got back to Brussels from Belfast, I was offered my current job more or less out of the blue. No connection, of course, and I am not expecting a repeat this year. I have still not attended a lot of sf cons, but my list has now expanded to include P-Con I in 2003, PicoCon and the WorldCon last year, and P-Con III earlier this year. My participation in sf fandom has been largely on-line.

But the nostalgia is doubled because I spent a year living at the top of one of the student tower-blocks on the Queen’s Elms complex, where MeCon is to be held this year. Very few people have dared tell the truth about what living in this pace is like in term-time (the only on-line source I can find is in German, but they have got the idea – “es ist manchmal unerträglich, dort zu wohnen”). I had the joyful task of being the sub-warden responsible for 120 students for the academic year 1992/93.

The management sucked. That’s not quite fair – the bloke who I answered to, who was warden to my sub-warden, was great, and tolerant of my occasional lapses from full enthusiasm for the job; but there was an ongoing power struggle between the university administration and the wardens of the halls, exacerbated by each side blaming the other for a tragic accident the year before I lived there, when a student had fallen down a lift shaft and died. I had to patrol the corridors twice a night, once at half past midnight and again an hour later, and in addition there was the Thursday night vigil as students staggered back from the late disco. At least the weekends were quiet because the vast majority of the residents (and almost all the noisy ones) went home to their parents, in far-flung Lisburn or Larne (or, in fairness, Enniskillen or Derry).

The culmination in a way was the Boat Club dinner, as booze-fuelled as any of its Cambridge equivalents (I was one of the 10% minority in Cambridge who never set hand to an oar the whole time I was there). The dinner itself was in the hallowed precincts of the main university building, but several of its participants ended up in my tower block and decided to have a laugh by throwing the refrigerator in the communal kitchen on my floor out the window, without opening said window first. I did mention that I lived on the top floor, didn’t I? We tracked down the perpetrators pretty rapidly, but I was disgusted with the lenient treatment they then got from the university, which seemed to be a particularly stupid by-product of the general management problems. (Don’t ask for details.)

That was a contributing factor to my decision not to do it for another year. More important, however, was the fact that Anne and I decided to get married. (The fact that I had a visiting girlfriend was a source of fascination for horny and frustrated male students. One snowy evening I was happily watching TV and heard a subtle knock on the door accompanied by male giggles, receding rapidly. When I opened it I found a lovely snow sculpture of a phallus and matching testicles. As I was loosely attached to the anthropology department at the time I decided I should take it as a votive offering to my virility. If you have another theory, I don’t want to hear about it! The story of how I got the nickname “Big Snaker” will have to wait for another time.)

Anyway, it seems peculiarly appropriate that the first event of MeCon will be a quiz; I organised one for the weekend students (mainly overseas) as my main contribution to communal life in the halls. I suspect I’ll enjoy the one on Friday more…

The First Doctor brings a very useful tool to the planet of the Savages.

More seriously, see Fiona Moore’s essay on this story, though she misses what was for me the most obvious source – the future society of H.G. Wells’ The Time Machine. I rather enjoyed reading it, I think the first story I read/heard/watched with Dodo, and also the departure of Steven. Will look out for the soundtrack.

1) Lost Railways of Co. Down and Co. Armagh, by Stephen Johnson

In Northern Ireland there’s a big market for books on local history and nostalgia, part of the dinnsenchas phenomenon I’ve written about before. This is just a collection of photographs of old trains and old stations, almost all gone for half a century now. While most enthusiasts are interested in the physical manifestations of old railways – the specifics of the engines, the design of the paraphernalia – what gets me is the geographical impact – the extent to which the railways opened up the countryside before roads were really good.

But in Counties Down and Armagh, it really was far past the point of saturation. From a human point of view I sympathise with the nostalgia for the old days; but really, there were far too many railway lines and stations for the level of the population even then, never mind now. This map doesn’t even show most of the lines in the north and east of County Down as they were run by a different company:

(Map from here, part of an excellent site on County Down history)

To pick but one example, the stops of Ashfield and Mullaghfernaghan, between Banbridge and Dromore, serviced communities which are otherwise unknown to the map-maker, then or now. These days it takes less than ten minutes to drive from Dromore to Banbridge (and I doubt that it took a lot longer a hundred years ago).

Still, I would like some day to spend some time finding the places where some of these photographs were taken and seeing if I can reproduce the scene from fifty years later.

24) Mr Belloc Objects To “The Outline Of History”, by H.G. Wells

Reading this is a bit like reading someone’s livejournal entry when you have only one person’s side of the story. H.G. Wells published his Outline of History in 1920; Hilaire Belloc published a series of articleds castigating it as anti-Christian and immoral over the next few years; and Wells published this 54-page riposte to Belloc in 1926. (Belloc followed up that same year with Mr Belloc Still Objects, but I haven’t seen that.)

Wells argues his case very well, pointing out Belloc’s rhetorical excesses, and giving numerous examples where Belloc has misinterpreted or twisted his words. He also, admirably (and entirely unlike the tiresome Richard Dawkins) rests his case completely on what science has to say about nature and invites the religious reader first, to accept that Wells’ views on science and natural history are entirely reasonable, and secondly that Belloc’s are absurd.

It wouldn’t surprise me at all. I would add, however, that I suspect Belloc’s views were unrepresentative of Catholic scientists of his time. My PhD was on the history of science in Ireland, and one of the hypotheses I was examining was the idea (proposed in particular by Gordon Herries Davies and Roy Johnston) that Irish nationalism in general and the Catholic Church in particular had had an ideologically chilling effect on scientific research in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

I was surprised to discover how little evidence there was for this. There was precisely one example of a Catholic scholar writing on science who was told to shut up by Church authorities: he was a theologian rather than a physicist, and his ideas were pretty absurd (and irrelevant to the contemporary scientific debate). Otherwise, there were as many Catholic scientists as one might have expected, given the general level of discrimination and gate-keeping, and some of them (like maths professor Eamon de Valera) went into Nationalist politics.

There was, of course, some controversy over evolution. I was very fortunate in that my supervisor is probably the world’s leading writer on the history of Darwinism, and thanks to him I realised that the articles about Darwinism and evolution in the Irish theological journals were more reflections of the wider debate in the English-speaking world than evidence of any particular local bias. (The real Irish story here was the Ulster Protestant reaction to John Tyndall’s address to the Belfast meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science in 1874.)

But the evolution question, for Irish Catholics at least, had been closed a few years before the Belloc/Wells controversy, with the convincing arguments of a geological theologian from the University of Louvain (as it then was) that there was no contradiction between Darwinism and Catholic teaching. Belloc, at least judging by Wells’ account, had not got the message.

23) The Man With Two Left Feet, and Other Stories, by P.G. Wodehouse

Harmless, funny stories. Actually read it at the end of last month but only just remembered. Will redate this entry to 31 July.

This was occasional soundtrack while driving from Belgium to Ireland (in between various favourite music CDs). Perhaps it was not the ideal story with which to introduce my wife to the delights of the Troughton Era. It was not long before she started to mime the evil mutant seaweed, causing me some slight distraction and no doubt alarming passing drivers who saw her doing it. She also developed an animus against Victoria (“She’s so wet!”) from a very early stage in the plot, and started making “bang bang” gestures at the stereo speakers every time Deborah Watling’s voice was heard. The punchline – that the evil mutant seaweed is killed off precisely by Victoria’s screaming – made her incoherent with laughter. I do have the DVD of Tomb of the Cybermen with us, but persuading her to watch it may be a tough sell.

However I found it grew on me. There was a lot of padding (helicopters for the sake of helicopters, for instance), and the whole plot would barely have filled 45 minutes of New Who. But it picked up once arrived to sort things out. I’ve written about dodgy accents in this story before, but even Van Lutyens started sounding more Dutch (or at least less like anything else) as the story went on. And it’s a pleasant novelty to have a Who story in which everyone survives.

Victoria’s departure – the Victoria/Jamie relationship was an opportunity never taken up by the programme’s writers (or, interestingly, by fanfic writers). Jamie clearly fancies her rotten in The Power of the Daleks, and at the end of the first episode of The Ice Warriors he is trying to persuade her to wear the more revealing fashions of the locals (when their conversation is interrupted by the waking monster). But nothing more seems to have ever been made of it. NB that the next two female companions (Zoe and Liz Shaw) were both brainy. Then back to screaming, with Jo Grant.

As Anne said as the title music faded at the end, “So the evil seaweed menace that was threatening to take over the world was defeated by a few loud noises? Not awfully threatening then, was it?”

…better known to me as ‘The Star of the County Down’.

22) The Restaurant at the End of the Universe, by Douglas Adams

Ah, much more fun. For me, the original radio series remains the one and only canonical version of the story, so it’s interesting to review how different bits of it were cut up and pasted together for the novelisation. One bit of good writing that is strikingly out of place is the introduction of Max Quordlepleen, the compère at Milliways: an unusual piece of character-sketching from Adams, which is original to the book, and then doesn’t really go anywhere. (But the Disaster Area section is also original, and delightful.) Interesting that here Zarniwoop is left alone with the ruler of the universe by Zaphod and Trillian, his offence being, as far as I can tell, that he was being a boring git – rather different from the radio version’s dramatic denouement of Arthur abandoning everyone else after he discovers who really was responsible for the destruction of the Earth.

Anyway. Reading the final sections I begin to inderstand why some people are drawn to Ford/Arthur slash, a concept I don’t think I could have imagined until I got to know . (For instance.)

21) Henderson the Rain King, by Saul Bellow

Read this as part of my effort to improve my knowledge of Nobel Prize-winning literature. My penguin edition described the book as “a comic novel…a hilarious, often ribald story”. I confess I missed the joke; there didn’t seem to me a sinlge laugh-out-loud moment in this first-person narrative of an American who atempts to go native in Africa. Plenty of food for thought on the human condition; Henderson’s moral decay is contrasted with his physical vigour, and his unflitered deliberations on the meaning of life in general, and his own in particular, added up to a much more convincing portrait than the central character in The Red Badge of Courage. I enjoyed the book. But I remain worried, not for the first time, that I have failed to grasp American humour.

Actually finished listening to this mid-week, but due to pressure of other things have been only slowly catching up with reviews. Four out of six episodes survive, and perhaps I should give it another chance by watching them (I may even spend some time on the BBC’s photonovelParanoia role-playing game. And the technobabble and had-waving science was pleasingly incomprehensible, thus not getting in the way of enjoying the show.

It is childishly amusing to find this phrase in the Declaration of Independence.

20) The Lady of the Shroud, by Bram Stoker

The only time I have ever been to Israel was for a conference on European foreign policy, in Caesarea five years ago. The only other participant with Balkan expertise was a Serbian journalist based in Berlin (who I last saw in Strasbourg a few years later) who stunned me by describing a novel by Bram Stoker set not in the eastern Balkan environment of Dracula but in the western Balkans, in what was then the future Yugoslavia (and is now, of course, the former Yugoslavia). I spotted and bought the book, The Lady of the Shroud, just over a year ago in Hampshire, and read it last weekend.

At least, I thought I had read it; and then, as I was preparing to write it up here on Sunday night, checking out the on-line text on Project Gutenberg, I discovered that there was a whole chunk of the book missing – the Arrow edition of 1962, whose 1974 version (with cover shown to the right) was the one I had bought, had hacked off the last quarter of the text, without explanation! Extraordinary. I don’t mind buying an abridged version if it’s marked as such, but it was a shock to discover I had been cheated of such a substantial amount of the content. (Though since I only paid £1.60 I can’t complain too much.)

Anyway. The book is set in the present day (ie 1907). It is about a Rupert St Leger, an Irishman who has become a citizen of the world, who unexpectedly finds himself a major landowner in a fictional Adriatic territory, the Land of the Blue Mountains, which should not be confused with any country named after mountains of some other colour with which I might be familiar. He gets entangled with a mysterious and chilly lady who appears wearing only a shroud (the exciting cover – wonder who the artist was? – shows her standing up in a water-borne coffin, in what is in fact the book’s very first scene). The plot is complex and exciting, but is resolved with his rescuing her father from captivity using an aeroplane (which is pretty bloody advanced for 1907) and it turns out that the only element of the supernatural not otherwise explained away is Celtic rather than Balkan, in that Rupert’s aged Scottish aunt has the Second Sight.

At least, that’s where I thought the book ended. However, in the substantial section censored from the 1962/1974 edition, the story continues directly into the political rather than the supernatural (perhaps the reader of the 1960s was deemed by the publishers to be more interested in the horror elements than the politics). Rupert uses his vast fortune, and the mineral wealth of the Land of the Blue Mountains, to unite the entire Balkan peninsula under his moderate and constitutional rule, defended by a fleet of – get this – radium-powered aeroplanes.

Yes, the author of Dracula wrote a book with nuclear fuelled aircraft. Set in the Balkans. In 1907.

Digging around the internet a bit, I was thrilled to discover that there is a respectable school of thought suggesting that when Stoker wrote about the Balkans, he was really writing about,er, the Balkans, rather than whatever other undercurrents of sexuality, Irishness, etc may be attributed to him. (See especially essays on Dracula here, here and here, with the middle essay looking also at The Lady of the Shroud.) His younger brother George served in the Red Crescent in Bulgaria, and wrote a book about it (With “The Unspeakables”: or, Two Years’ Campaigning in European and Asiatic Turkey, published in 1878). There are several substantive monographs and essay collections on Stoker’s sources for Dracula. I may have to start reading some of them.

I must say I had not expected this book to be quite so intriguing. I certainly got more than my money’s worth anyway.

I have never done this before, but has inspired me:

1. Are you named after anyone? If so, explain.

Yes. There were a large number of Nicholases in the Whyte family tree, going back to Sir Nicholas Whyte/White, an Irish judge in the reign of Queen Elizabeth I, who died while a prisoner in the Tower of London.

2. Do you have your children’s names picked out already? If so, is there any significance?

B’s name was chosen originally because it was original, and Irish, and we didn’t actually know anyone with that name. – who has almost certainly forgotten this – convinced me retrospectively that we had named her in honour of a 14th-century Swedish saint who famously moved to Rome to try and improve the moral behaviour of the Pope.

F was also chosen as an Irish name, and because we didn’t know anyone else with that name, but this time there was a deliberate reference to an eighth century Irish saint, a bishop of Salzburg, who famously believed that the world was round.

U was named after a favourite aunt, who died in 1998. My aunt, oddly enough, had been named after the wife of an earlier Nicholas Whyte (not the Elizabethan judge, but his grandson).

3. If you were born a member of the opposite sex what would your name have been?

Don’t know.

4. If you could re-name yourself what name would you pick and why?

I have occasionally toyed with rechristening myself with my middle name, which is Henry, but it doesn’t really work. I think I would choose something unabbreviatable and difficult to mis-spell (see next question).

5. Are there any mispronunciations/typos that people do with your name constantly?

Absolutely. People call me “Nick” even though I always introduce myself and refer to mjyself as “Nicholas”; in writing, the “h” disappears from my first name, the “y” turns to “i” in my surname, occasionally if I’m spelling it down the phone to someone who is only half listening the “h” disappears from my surname as well. And because I work in a slightly multi-alphabet environment, my surname can be either Γουάιτ or Ουάιτ in Greek, and in Cyrillic it can be Уайт (Russian) or Вајт (Balkan). And I’ve seen an Albanian interview where I was “Nikolas Uajt” – even though it is theoretically the same alphabet.

Still, it could be worse. At least I’m not like the guy from “The Hunting of the Snark”, who had “wholly forgotten his name”:

He would answer to “Hi!” or to any loud cry,
Such as “Fry me!” or “Fritter my wig!”
To “What-you-may-call-um!” or “What-was-his-name!”
But especially “Thing-um-a jig!”

19) The Mark of Ran, by Paul Kearney

Paul was good enough to send me this after a brief encounter at P-Con earlier this year. I very much enjoyed it. It’s the first in a series, so includes a certain amount of coming-of-age narrative: our hero, Rol, sees his family massacred, gets trained as an assassin, and becomes a successful naval warrior. The contrasting environments – especially the city where he gets his training, and a long desert interlude in the middle of the naval section – are very vividly realised. Possibly this demonstrates my own ignorance, but I felt no particular problems with a 17th-century-at-latest-plus-magic urban environment coexisting with 18th-century-at-earliest naval warfare in the same world. Will look out for later books in this series.

I see Jerry Ford has been ill again, though sounds like he is getting better.

Similarly best wishes to for a speedy recovery.