Kogiopsis's Reviews > Dangerous Visions

Obviously, the definition of what constitutes a 'dangerous vision' changes with the times, and with a few exceptions I didn't find any of these stories particularly revolutionary or boundary-pushing from a modern perspective. It sort of functions as a time capsule, both in that regard and in others - it was kind of wild to read an introduction to Roger Zelazny which predates his Amber books, or one to Larry Niven calling him a promising young writer. But mostly, other than as an historical curiosity, I don't think this book is very worth reading nowadays. Frankly, a lot of the 'dangerous visions' seemed to mostly be 'dangerous' by dint of their preoccupation with sex (and a very male-focused POV on it which I started to think of as "penis-gazing" about halfway through, in which sex exists as a thing that men desire and women, conveniently and without any diversity in perspective, give them).

A few standouts:

The good:
- "Evensong" by Lester Del Rey, which opened the collection with a short, pointed allegory. I caught on to the twist early, but still find it satisfying and well-rendered.
- "The Day After The Day The Martians Came" by Frederick Pohl, which pits earthly prejudice against alien threat; it took me a bit to figure out what Pohl was getting at, but I think he makes his point well.
- "Faith of our Fathers" by Philip K. Dick, which got weird, but ultimately had a very interesting root concept and speaks to the easily corruptible power of fanatical belief.

The bad:
- "Riders of the Purple Wage" by Philip Jose Farmer neatly cured me of any desire to read any of Farmer's other work. It was pretentious, nearly incomprehensible, and had no payoff. By the end of what seemed an interminable slog I no longer cared now notable Farmer was in the genre.
- "If All Men Were Brothers, Would You Let One Marry Your Sister?" by Theodore Sturgeon, which is actually one of the only stories that I think would still qualify as a 'dangerous vision' these days, because its postulate is that incest is so natural that, in fact, resisting the impulse leads to cancer. This story made me uncomfortable, which it was clearly supposed to do, but my discomfort was a bit more... specific, as the description of this utopian-but-for-incest society sounded a little too much like what Moira Greyland, Marion Zimmer Bradley's daughter, described when she spoke up about her abusive childhood. (Warning, her full blog post has a lot of homophobic rhetoric and, obviously, a lot of upsetting content. She's clearly gone through a LOT of trauma.) Sturgeon's afterword in this book was not exactly comforting vis-a-vis whether this story was just a thought experiment or... not.

And I have mixed feelings about "Eutopia" by Poul Anderson, because the multiverse and alternate histories of the Americas it postulated were neat, but the twist was 'hah! this enlightened man is actually GAY!' was... weird and I still can't parse how it was intended.

There's a lot of casual homophobia and transphobia throughout the book, as well as a very flat view of women (obliging Providers Of Sex, always willing when the protagonist wants, very little character beyond that), which is something I'm accustomed to in reading old SFF but still gets exhausting when, over thirty-two stories claiming to offer original perspectives, it's ALL like that. By the way, a whopping three women in that cohort - I suppose I should be glad there were any, but oof.

Also, Ellison's introductions were annoying as hell. Self-referential in the extreme, more about how he's buddy-buddy with all these cool folks than anything about their stories, and made the whole book feel like a self-aggrandizing project.