disappointment was inevitable

My Goodreads review of The Last Dangerous Visions.

 

 

 

I'd give this an extra half star if possible just for Straczynski's lengthy essay on Ellison and the DV books. It's more enlightening about Ellison than the full-length biography from a few years ago. But half stars aren't possible here, and I can't bring myself to give the book 4 stars, so consider it 3.5 stars. Most of the stories simply aren't exceptional. Should you read it? If you're a serious SF reader and have read "Dangerous Visions" and "Again, Dangerous Visions," then yes, of course you should read it, if only because of the historical significance of the book. But this isn't an outstanding anthology. Too many duds, too many stories that are past their prime and out of their time and that have become irrelevant or embarrassing. Perhaps Straczynski should have split the project into two volumes: one with some of the older stories that Ellison bought, giving us a time capsule look at supposedly dangerous SF from 1973 to around 2000, and another volume of newer material from 2000 onwards. One of Straczynski's purchases, the James S. A. Corey story, is one of the better ones in the book, and the other more recent stories by Doctorow, Tchaikovsky, and Hartenbaum (their first publication) have some strengths. It would have been interesting to see more stories by other younger writers.

Definition of civilization

 I love this from Roger Ebert in 1981: "...some of [QUEST FOR FIRE's] best scenes involve man's discovery of laughter. When one of the primitive tribesmen is hit on the head by a small falling stone, the woman from the other tribe laughs and laughs. Our heroes are puzzled: They haven't heard such a noise before. But it strikes some sort of deep chord, I guess, because later, one of the tribesmen deliberately drops a small stone on his friend's head, and then everybody laughs: The three men together with the woman who taught them laughter. That's human. The guy who got hit on the head is, of course, a little slow to join in the laughter, but finally he goes along with the joke. That's civilization."