Classic Revisited: Harlan Ellison's Dangerous Visions

Dangerous Visions is synonymous with The New Wave of American Science Fiction, and clearly marked a boundary in the world of science fiction in the late 60’s: though Isaac Asimov wrote the introduction to this anthology, Ellison clearly intended to break away from the type of fiction writers like Asimov and Heinlein made an institution. Personally, I have always enjoyed science fiction lumped loosely into the category of New Wave—including its generally recognized predecessors and followers—more than those works lumped into the traditional—read: Campbellian, “hard SF,” “that good old stuff,” etc.—category. Even if the authors fail to successfully meld literary techniques into a good science fiction yarn, I tend to enjoy the experiment more than a straightforward alien invasion tale.

            (This view, I should be careful to stipulate, does not denigrate the achievements and contributions of authors like Heinlein, Asimov, and their ilk. Fine writing is fine writing and, generally speaking, most big name science fiction authors are very capable writers, if not major stylists.)

What struck me first about this anthology was its language: the specific operation of words within a science fiction story versus a mainstream story. Clearly, there is so much we take for granted while reading. I read the words—“Jack pet his dog. His dog liked it.”—in a mainstream story, I assume this is a normal relationship between a man and his dog. Jack knows his dog appreciates it because the dog pants and beats his tail against the floor. However, if I read those words in a science fiction story where a character has hinted that animal intelligence has been boosted by some fantastical process, I read the sentence more liberally. I may assume that, instead of one character—Jack—I am now reading about two—Jack and his dog. I may even start to wonder about the word his: Is it okay for Jack to possess a sentient dog? What does the dog think of this?

            In this anthology, one story in particular set off a similar chain of thoughts in my mind. Harlan Ellison—never one of my favorites even at his best; he’s too cynical—contributed “The Prowler in the City at the Edge of the World,” a Jack The Ripper tale wherein the serial killer travels to the future and begins hunting the remnants of humanity in an automated city. While not overly impressed with the story as I was reading, one line gave me pause and in fact inspired me to view the story in an entirely different light: “Jack sank to his knees. The city let him do it.” (146) This simple statement caught my attention, as its success or failure to communicate Ellison’s intention rests entirely on the reader reading it literally—on the reader’s ability to differentiate between metaphor and literal statement. (I use the word ability because it is an acquired skill. Those not familiar with science fiction and fantasy often cannot understand that when Speculative Fiction Writer X writes, “the moon fell out of the sky and landed in the Atlantic,” he is quite possibly describing the actual moon falling into the actual ocean—and not using a poetic metaphor to describe moon dropping below the horizon.) It caused me to reconsider whether the city itself had a role to play in Jack’s murders. Perhaps it was even assisting him. This greatly enlivened the story for me, and opened a new avenue of interpretation.

            Another author playing with the literal versus the figurative is Kris Neville, who contributed “From the Government Printing Office”, a story about a three year-old boy living in a society where parents are encouraged to foster fear in their children in order to create soldiers for an ongoing war effort. If Neville were not such a fine writer, I doubt he would have been able to pull off the feat of writing a three year-old. What he does is unbelievable, but truly interesting. Take, for example, the boy’s reaction to his father’s abuse:

            “You’re a filthy shit!” he screamed at me.

            I guess I am. There must be some reason they want to cut my penis off. I heard them say, once, that all your real education takes place before you’re four years old: by then your character is established. I think maybe I’ll make it. It’s still such a long way off, so long, so long. But maybe I really will make it, even if I’m a nervous wreck.

            So I don’t feel so good about myself. It could be worse. (443)

The entire story is written from this unique perspective—a fantasy, surely (or horror, perhaps), but nonetheless compelling. Neville is obviously aware of how far his tale strains the reader’s credulity, but that is not the point. By writing the boy’s thoughts so literally—the child does not appear capable of metaphor, only copycatted terms—Neville achieves an effect greater than the whole. The horror of the abuse is exposed in glaring detail; the kind of literal detail and emotional resonance a three year-old child is unable to communicate in the real world. It is as if the reader—already used to the tropes of science fiction, fully capable of anthropomorphizing even the most odd creatures—suddenly and fully understands the vicious and heartbreaking spirit of abuse, if not the actual emotions of a child. Neville allows us to tightrope-walk between literal and figurative landscapes, shedding light unexpectedly.

            But truth was not all I sought while reading; I also sought beauty, and found it in an unexpected place. Dangerous Visions is filled to overflowing with interesting language and odd comparisons, but no single story struck me in this regard as soundly as Fritz Lieber’s “Gonna Roll The Bones”, the story of a gambler’s encounter with Death that seamlessly blends Golden-Age science fiction standards with very dark fantasy and horror elements. It is a tall tale told not for laughs or thrills, but for the purpose of scaring the life out of you. I tend to shy away from such stories, preferring to be uplifted rather than depressed terribly, but this one had me from the get-go with its amazing descriptions:

            “In her dirty dress, streaky as the turkey’s sides, Joe’s mother looked like a bent brown bag and her fingers were lumpy twigs.” (233)

            “The gamblers were thick and hunched down as mushrooms, all bald from agonizing over the fall of a card or a die or the dive of an ivory ball, while the Scarlet Women were like fields of poinsettia.” (236)

Not only are these images creepy, much of their power derives from the unusual juxtaposition of images. Lieber seems to mix metaphors (brown bag / twigs, mushrooms / poinsettia), but in reality he is painting startling pictures with all the tools available to him as a writer. Generally, he uses organic images like those above, shying from technological jargon even when he is in full-on science fiction mode, and this lends his story a uniquely anachronistic feel. At times in “Gonna Roll The Bones”, it feels like we are wandering through some dark and gritty pocket universe shoved between the cracks of a more civilized world. It is not the type of world I would like to visit often, but it should be the goal of all writers to set the moods of their stories with Lieber’s subtlety.

            Subtlety is not always called for, however; sometimes a guy bursting in with guns blazing achieves the needed effect in a story. One of my favorite authors, Robert Silverberg, wastes no time getting to the gut wrenching in “Flies”, the story of a man modified to transmit his emotions back to the aliens who captured him. As a side effect of modification, Cassidy is bleached of compassion, committing horrible acts without even a scintilla of revulsion. It is therefore an atypically brutal showing from Silverberg, as evidenced here:

How did you abort a fetus two months from term?

A swift kick in the belly might do it. Too crude, too crude. Yet Cassidy had not come armed with abortifacients, a handy ergot pill, a quick-acting spasmic inducer. So he brought his knee up sharply, deploring the crudity of it. (18)

What strikes upon the second and third reading of this story—I read it for the first time some years ago—is the aesthetic sense Cassidy seems to have retained in spite of his modification: aborting the child of a former lover in such a mortifying manner is regrettable because of its crudity. The power of Silverberg’s narrator rests on the blank statements of his narrator, the horror heightened by the casual dialogue and plain language. Silverberg does not rush into the action, or describe it in any great detail—nor is there a lingering moment of deliberation before the action takes place. Just as if the man were momentarily mulling over which sweater to buy in the store, Cassidy asks himself how you would abort a fetus. He then, in language that is sophisticated without being rarified, describes how unprepared he is for this horrendous act. With no great fanfare—a simple “So...”—he knees the woman. The apparent normalcy of his thoughts and acts send shivers down the spine.

Carol Emshwiller—for my money one of the best stylists the field of science fiction has ever produced—contributes an eerily evocative tale to rival the best stories in Dangerous Visions.  With its oddly fitting title, “Sex and/or Mr. Morrison” chronicles a very short span of time in the narrator’s day—a day during which she attempts to discover whether her neighbor, Mr. Morrison, is an alien or not. When he leaves for work, she breaks into his apartment and begins to nose around. What transpires is truly unsettling in its blatant sexual undertones. Through her aged female narrator, Emshwiller seems to explore the same territory as James Tiptree, Jr. (Alice Sheldon) will trod in a few short years—namely, the everyday alienation of being a woman. Here, Emshwiller portrays her narrator as odder than odd, deftly juxtaposing her examination of her neighbor’s apartment—ostensibly to discover his alienness—with her own highly abnormal behavior. Here, she describes a moment hiding behind one of Mr. Morrison’s bookcases, waiting for him to arrive:

What with the dust back here and lying in the shirts and socks before, I’m getting a certain smell and a sort of gray, animal fuzz that makes me feel safer, as though I really did belong in this room and could actually creep around and not be noticed by Mr. Morrison at all except perhaps for a pat on the head as I pass him. (333)

There is some similarity to Silverberg here, of course. By describing the actions of exceedingly peculiar individuals in plain language, both increase the sense of strangeness exponentially— especially when compared to authors whose evocation of the weird is achieved through hackneyed shock-and-awe tactics. Emshwiller is the clear winner of the two, as her tale manages to amp the oddness factor without her protagonist doing anything particularly violent or morally repugnant. Instead, she rolls around on the floor and imagines the alien man she has come to seduce, all the while observing the world in literal terms: Readers find no ambiguity here, no place to hide from the narrator’s disturbing quest.

            Perhaps the quietest story of the thirty-three presented in the anthology, Frederick Pohl’s “The Day After The Day The Martians Came” also manages to have the most compelling ending. Taking place in a hotel lobby over the space of one night, the story is composed largely of the hotel manager’s quiet observations of the various reporters who have come to town to cover the arrival of the Martians. Downplayed is the relationship of the manager to his African American porters—men he tries to treat as equals but cannot resist denigrating. As the story progresses, it becomes obvious that every joke told by the reporters is in fact a racial joke. The only difference, of course, is that the black/yellow/brown man is replaced by the Martian as the butt of the joke. The truly extraordinary thing about this story, which reads for most of its length as an extended (and rather mundane) bull session, is the last line, spoken by the porter Ernest in response to the manager’s claim that the arrival of the Martians will make no difference to anyone:

“Hate to disagree with you, Mr. Mandala,” said Ernest mildly, “but I don’t think so. Going to make a difference to some people. Going to make a damn big difference to me.” (28)

In my opinion, Pohl achieves greatness in this closing line. Much like Raymond Carver’s “Cathedral”, “The Day After The Day The Martians Came” possesses an ending that causes the entirety of the story to come into stark focus. Much of the effect, again, is achieved through a literal storytelling technique that hides nothing from its audience; there is no doubt that Pohl is discussing race—no doubt that he is talking about injustice that will continue even in the face of the greatest event in human history. Men will now have the Martian to vent their racial hatred on, and even though this will allow other people to feel a little less burdened, the overall result will be a tragedy.