Way Marks of the Otherland

 

Today's date in the Universal Solar Calendar, Way Marks of the Otherland, sounds like the title of a 1960s science-fiction story. I should know - not only did I read a lot of science fiction in the '60s, I just finished reading Harlan Ellison's 1967 Dangerous Visions anthology.   

Around 1973, I randomly checked out Ellison's sequel, Again, Dangerous Visions, from the library. I hadn't read the original collection, but I had heard Ellison was an "edgy" sci-fi writer. I had graduated from Ray Bradbury and was into Robert Heinlein at the time (I hadn't yet discovered Philip K. Dick), and was looking for science fiction even more "far out" than Stranger in a Strange Land.

So, apparently, was Harlan Ellison. The premise of his Dangerous Visions collections was that science fiction had become somewhat juvenile and safe, a sexless and non-offensive genre geared toward protecting the tender sensibilities of young readers (as if teens weren't the horniest readers in the world). Religion and politics were also taboo in sci fi, and Ellison invited the best science- and speculative-fiction writers to submit material for his collection, stories they felt would never get published elsewhere.  

He compiled the results in 1967s Dangerous Visions anthology. The book was well received, so he put out another call for submissions which resulted in 1972's Again, Dangerous Visions. The '72 anthology blew my mind when I read it in 1973 (or so), but I eventually had to return it to the library. To this day, I can't remember any of the stories or any of the specifics, other than Ellison saying in the introduction that the only submission he rejected as "too extreme" was a story about a snot vampire that was too nauseating even for him.

A third anthology, The Last Dangerous Visons, was supposed to complete the trilogy but  never got published. Rumors abound about why it was never released - it was critical of Nixon in an election year and he had it suppressed, it  contained deep, metaphysical secrets that the human race wasn't yet ready to receive, and so on.  The book remained unpublished for decades, and then earlier this summer, it was announced that The Last Dangerous Visions will finally be released this month (August 2024).

This was exciting news, so earlier this summer I bought Dangerous Visions and it's sequel to catch back up before the third volume was finally published. 

I finished Dangerous Visions early this week. God, I was disappointed. A lot has changed between 1972 and now; I've changed a lot since 1972. What may have seemed daring and edgy then frankly seems kind of lame now.   

The first couple of stories in the collection take on the taboo subject of religion, or to be specific, Christianity. The opening tale, Evensong by Lester del Rey, is an account of a desperate individual being pursued across the galaxy by vengeful hunters. In the last few lines, it's revealed (spoiler alert) that the refugee is God, and the hunter is modern Man. Lamely, the story ends "And the evening and the morning were the eighth day." Oooh, so edgy!

The next story is just as trite. A strange, otherworldly person upsets the status quo. Some people are attracted to his presence and others find him deeply disturbing. The last line finds the fellow "nailed to his cross" (italics as in the original). Oh, I get it! The person wasn't an alien from outer space but the Christ! That may have seen shocking then, but now I just ask, "and?" 

The worst story is Riders of the Purple Wage, an 80-page novella by Philip Jose Farmer. The title is taken form Zane Grey's classic western, Riders of the Purple Sage, although to those of my generation, it recalls the psychedelic country-rock band, New Riders of the Purple Sage. The story is full of puns and stylistic conceits, used more to show "there, I did it," than to convey any meaning or art. For example, the main character, Winnegan, is a pun on the words "win again" (he wins the purple wage lottery) but also so that he can later be exposed as a charlatan and let Farmer decry, in bold, capital letters, "Winnegan's Fake!," as if the reader hadn't already realized the whole novella is a poor knockoff of James Joyce's Finnegan's Wake. The story is written stream-of-consciousness style, and alternates between Joyce's dense, pun- and language-garbled works and surreal Dylanesque imagery of historical figures:

Socrates, Ben Johnson, Cellini, Swedenborg, Li Po, and Hiawatha are roistering in the Mermaid Tavern. Through a window, Daedalus is seen on top of the battlements of Cnossis (sic) . . . Through another window is a lake on the surface of which a man is walking, a green-tarnished halo over his head. Behind him, a periscope sticks out of the water.     

Then he shifts gears to faux-Joyce: 

Oh, delectation tabu and sickersacrosanct! There's a baby in there, ectoplasm beginning to form in eager preanticipation of actuality. Drop egg, and shoot the chuteychutes of flesh, hastening to gulp the lucky Micromoby Dick, outwriggling its million million brothers, survival of the fightingest.

It goes on and on like this, for 80 pages, lurching between A Clockwork Orange, Ulysses, and Desolation Row. I never finished the story, and moved on to the next.

The stories try to shock but in their earnestness, they try too hard. There's sex, but it's usually more alluded too than erotically described. A Toy for Juliette by Robert Bloch (Psycho) tells the story of a time-travelling grandfather who brings back "toys" for his favorite granddaughter - men and women from other ages with whom she can have sex before killing them. It's all fun and games, at least for Juliette, until Grandfather brings home Jack the Ripper, who has the last laugh. It's actually one of the better stories in the collection, and Ellison himself follows it with a companion tale of the Ripper's abduction as told from Jack's point of view.

My reaction to most of the rest of the stories was "Hmmph" as I moved on to the next. Philip K. Dick's Faith of Our Fathers, one of the better stories, is a typical Dick tale of a person who thinks he's been given LSD, but actually took a hallucination suppressor and discovers that the government has secretly been putting hallucinogens in the tap water for mind control. I'm not tripping - you are! Gonna Roll Them Bones by Fritz Leiber is a fun tale and his writing picks up a momentum to carry the reader to its conclusion, but other than that the stories were all pretty forgettable.

My disappointment made me question my reaction in the 70s to Again, Dangerous Visons. Was it really that mind-blowing, or were those just simpler, more naïve times? But I bought the latter volume too and began reading in Monday night. 

The first two stories in Again, Dangerous Visions are much better than 90% of the first volume, and by "much better" I mean more interesting and better written. Then the third story, a 120-page novella by Ursula K. Le Guin, The Word for World Is Forest, is a flat-out masterpiece. It's as if Richard Powers had written the script for Avatar, only better. I loved it.

Maybe I wasn't as gullible and impressionable in 1973 as I had feared. I'm now looking forward again to finally reading The Last Dangerous Visions as soon as I finish the 1,141 pages of Again.