The Last Dangerous Visions

This anthology has been a shibboleth of a book, a phantasm from the mind of the late Ellison that was announced in 1973 to great applause as the follow-up to his two groundbreaking, mind-blowing collections, Dangerous Visions (1967) and Again, Dangerous Visions (1972). In spite of contracting for over 100 stories, Ellison was never able to finish this magnum opus of a project. Six years after Ellison’s death, J. Michael Straczynski (Babylon 5) has put together a collection that represents Ellison’s original vision, through 13 works from an earlier iteration, plus 18 new stories commissioned for this final publication. “War Stories” by Edward Bryant and Ellison’s own original introduction give readers a glimpse of what this anthology was intended to be, and new stories by current luminaries in the field, such as Cory Doctorow and Adrian Tchaikovsky, prove there are plenty of dangerous visions yet to explore in the genre. The standout in the collection is Straczynski’s “Ellison Exegesis” about his decades-long friendship with the irascible, argumentative, outrageous, and ultimately self-destructive Ellison.