THE LAST DEADLOSS VISIONS
An enquiry into the non-appearance of
Harlan Ellison's
THE LAST DANGEROUS VISIONS
written by Christopher Priest
with comments from:
Brian Aldiss
Michael Bishop
Graham Charnock
John Christopher
Harry Harrison
Barry Malzberg
George R.R. Martin
Charles Platt
Bob Shaw
Ian Watson
(...and many others)
Copyright (c) 1987 - 1994 Christopher Priest. All rights
reserved.
Published in England
This text is for private distribution and consumption only.
Although
it may be downloaded and printed out, it may NOT be sold for gain,
and the
text MUST NOT BE ALTERED IN ANY WAY.
Quotations out of context may only be made with the EXPRESS
ADVANCE
WRITTEN CONSENT OF CHRISTOPHER PRIEST.
All enquiries to CHRISTOPHER PRIEST as follows:
E-mail: cpriest@cix.compulink.co.uk
Fax: UK - 0424 719739
outside UK - (+44) 424 719739
Table of Contents
=================
Introduction
The History of The Last Dangerous Visions
The Background; A Decade of Broken Promises; The Next 13 Years;
Some
Questions
Why Does LAST Remain Unpublished?
Why Have So Many Promises Been Broken?
Will LAST Ever be Published?
How Will It End?
The Steady State Theory; The White Dwarf Theory; The Big Bang
Theory
Pre-Publication Letters
Graham Charnock; Ian Watson; Harry Harrison; C.S. Youd (John
Chris-
topher); Michael Bishop; Bob Shaw; George R.R. Martin; Charles
Platt
Notes
Post-Publication Letters
Michael Bishop; Brian Aldiss; R.I. Barycz; Laurence M. Janifer;
Barry
Malzberg; Greg Feeley; Eddy C. Bertin; Taral Wayne; Steven Bryan
Bieler
Postscript
The Summing Up
The Remedy
Introduction
by Christopher Priest
This is the full text of THE LAST DEADLOSS VISIONS, an essay I wrote
in
1987 and published at my own expense in a fanzine called Deadloss.
It was
an attempt to bring journalistic techniques to a subject that from the
point of view of anyone outside the sf world might seem an odd one for
enquiry: the non-publication of a book.
Of course, the book was Harlan Ellison's anthology 'The Last
Dangerous
Visions', a title surrounded from the beginning by so much hype,
exaggeration and persistent invisibility that it has been a subject of
interest to a generation (literally) of sf writers and fans.
I approached the subject as an investigative journalist might,
the
intention being to find out whatever truth there was, and then report
it.
However, THE LAST DEADLOSS VISIONS is not "objective" in the way that
much
excellent American journalism is objective, but is from a different
tradition. It is a polemical pamphlet, written to express a point of
view
and to persuade others of that view.
A pamphlet is not "balanced". For instance, the subject has no
chance
to defend himself, and indeed is quoted only so that he may condemn
himself
with his own words. Pamphlets are usually written by members of
minorities
who feel that there is a body of thought which has already had more
than
its share of air-time. In this case it can be easily shown that
Harlan
Ellison has had a great deal to say about 'The Last Dangerous
Visions', and
has said it publicly for almost a quarter of a century. By 1987 a
pamphlet
expressing the other view was long overdue.
However, with objectivity and balance out of the window, it
might seem
that the only thing left is personal attack. Mr Ellison and his
followers
are quick to point this out. In fact, calling it a feud is just
about the
only comfort Mr Ellison can take, because then he can try to ignore
what
people are saying about him.
This essay is not one side of a feud: my sole contact with Harlan
Ellison is described later. I know few things about him (other than
the
fact that we are both professional writers working in or around the sf
world) and I have read very little of his work. My interest in him
was
first aroused by his defensive braggadocio about 'The Last Dangerous
Visions', which made me wonder what was going on and what he was
trying to
hide. After I had done some research I realized what a terrific
story it
was. In brief, I still feel uninterested in Mr Ellison himself, but
the
story is fascinating.
My general argument in the following essay is that Mr Ellison
has spun
a web of contradictions around the book. I argue that if he would
face up
to them, and not continually spin more, then there is a chance for
him to
escape. In other words, I depict him as a victim of his own actions,
or
inactions. This makes it sound as if I see what has happened as
inadvertent. I'm sure there's an element of this (Mr Ellison is the
first
to complain about the sheer hell he has been suffering), but much of
it has
arisen through inattention to the needs, opinions or feelings of
others.
One critic of an early edition of 'Deadloss' said that I had set
out
to embarrass Mr Ellison, as if this was an unacceptable motive. I
was glad
of the insight: Mr Ellison has a lot to be embarrassed about, and it
was
high time someone told him so. But there's a difference between
pointing
out unwelcome truths, and accusing him of wrongdoing.
With this essay written and published, I became identified as a
leading Ellisonian antagonist. Those with an axe to grind would
write and
tell me their frightful anecdotes about the great man, or try to tip
me off
to some other perceived outrage, while Mr Ellison's faithful fans
either
went to ground or bluntly accused me of jealousy. It would therefore
be
untrue to claim that I am now as impartial as I was when I wrote the
main
essay. In addition, it's pretty difficult to remain impartial about
someone who threatens, in a fit of pique or exhibitionism, to have you
killed. Mr Ellison did this soon after I published the pamphlet.
The fact
that I didn't take the threat too seriously, and also that Mr
Ellison, when
challenged on it by someone else, quibbled that he had intended it as
a
"joke", doesn't diminish the squalid reflex that the original threat
revealed.
Finally, let me say that one of the main motives for writing a
pamphlet is to try to influence events.
In the case of Harlan Ellison and 'The Last Dangerous Visions'
it is
perfectly clear how the events should be influenced, and as you read
my
essay you will see the process taking place: much of the idea is to
spur
Harlan Ellison into action. But not any old action.
By deliberately exposing his familiar gambits as muddle,
boastfulness
and procrastination, the idea is to encourage others to stand up to
him.
In the end he will be cornered by his own contradictions, and will
finally
have to do the right thing.
#
A word about the format of the present edition.
In this era of flexible media it is possible for a text to be
revised
and expanded at short notice. Even in its printed version Deadloss
went
through many different editions. The main sequence was as follows:
The first 1987 edition consisted of the essay plus letters from
writers who had seen the first draft, and an appendix of notes.
The second edition, also published in 1987 (between September and
December), contained everything from the first edition, with minute
corrections, plus the text of a diary I started to keep when the
responses
started pouring in. As the diary was being constantly updated copies
were
issued serially. Many different versions are in circulation, bearing
different finishing dates.
At the end of 1987 I became bored with the whole exercise, and
stopped
adding to the diary. With the help of Andy Richards at Cold Tonnage
Books
I printed a "complete" third edition (everything from the first two
editions brought up to date). This was distributed steadily for five
years; it was first released in January 1988, with the last copy
mailed in
1992.
This electronic text is an advance release of the fourth edition,
which will be published in 1994. It consists of the following:
This new Introduction.
The main essay. I have made a few textual corrections, brought
some
of it up to date, and generally tightened the criticism of
Mr
Ellison.
Pre-publication letters.
Notes. These are various lists of named writers, known to have
been
involved with The Last Dangerous Visions at one time or
another.
Post-publication letters. These letters made up much of the
bulk of
the original diary section. (I have deleted the other diary
entries, as they had mainly topical interest.)
The Summing Up. This includes a section called The Remedy,
which is
addressed to any writer whose work is still being held by Mr
Ellison. It is a practical guide.
The History of The Last Dangerous Visions
1. The Background
==================
In 1967 Harlan Ellison published 'Dangerous Visions', a long
anthology of
short stories and novellas by contemporary science fiction writers.
The
book is a child of its time: the editorial concept was to encourage
and
allow writers to deal with certain themes then considered "taboo" by
the
mainstream of publishing, especially science fiction publishing.
The book owed its source primarily to the great social changes
then
taking place in the United States--caused by the Civil Rights
movement, the
Vietnam war, drugs, rock music, student unrest, and so on--and to a
lesser
extent to the "New Wave" science fiction then being written
(predominantly
in Great Britain) and the apparent breakthroughs being achieved by
'New
Worlds' and a few other outlets. The fact that Mr Ellison's
perception of
the "New Wave" seems to have been based on effects rather than causes
is
neither here nor there: the book was a major success, and had an
undeniable
influence on the way science fiction was latterly written and
published, at
least in the United States.
A follow-up anthology, 'Again, Dangerous Visions', appeared in
1972.
By this time the need to flout "taboos" was less urgent. 'Again,
Dangerous
Visions' is longer than the first volume and contains more stories,
but in
spite of commercial success has not been as influential. The second
book
introduced a novelty that was to have a bearing on the third: no
writer who
had appeared in 'Dangerous Visions' was invited to contribute to the
follow-up. The three volumes are therefore intended to be of a piece,
presumably representing a cross-section of work from this period of
science
fiction's development.
What follows is a brief account of the early years in the life
of the
third book, from the time it was announced (1971) until the end of the
1970s. This is the most "public" period in the book's existence: it
was
widely seen as a live and exciting project, and many people eagerly
anticipated its publication.
During this period, though, certain events took place that by
repetition quickly established themselves as constants. An annotated
description of this period will show how the pattern took shape.
[Throughout I use a shortened form of the book's title: "LAST".
The abbreviation commonly used by Mr Ellison and many science
fiction commentators is "TLDV" (some of the letter writers use
it) but in my view this harmless abbreviation has become part of
the iconography of the unfinished book. The familiarity of the
term has come to imply acceptance of, and therefore a kind of
tacit approval of, what has been going on.
[I prefer my own disjunctive abbreviation. Apart from
anything else it implies non-acceptance of, and tacit disapproval
of, whatever it is that has been going on.]
2. A Decade of Broken Promises
===============================
The first published reference to LAST that I have been able to trace
is in
the Introduction to the second paperback volume of 'Again, Dangerous
Visions'. Mr Ellison said then:
"[LAST] will be published, God willing, approximately six months
after this book."
This Introduction was dated 6 May 1971, and 'Again, Dangerous Visions'
appeared in 1972. Was God willing, six months later? He was not.
In this same article Mr Ellison revealed that he already had
stories
on hand from a total of 19 named writers (plus a "gaggle" of others),
and
added that stories had been promised from 12 other writers ("and a few
more"). There are therefore _at least 31 writers_ who have been
waiting
more than 20 years to see their stories in print, although to my
knowledge
some of those stories were written and sold to Mr Ellison in the
1960s.
(See *Note 1*.)
1971 was the year in which 'The Lathe of Heaven', 'Tau Zero', 'A
Time
of Changes' and 'A Soldier Erect' were published. Richard Nixon was
in his
first term as President of the USA. Charles Manson went to prison. A
first-class postage stamp in Britain cost 3p. Harlan Ellison was 37.
Of the writers named in this article, many have subsequently
died.
(See *Note 6*.)
#
23 June 1972
Announcement in 'Locus' 115:
---------------------------
"New American Library has purchased paperback rights for $60,000
to all three Dangerous Visions books. They will publish 'Again,
Dangerous Visions' late in 1973 in a boxed two-volume set and
will publish 'Dangerous Visions' in a one-volume edition after
Berkley's license to publish it has expired in 1974. The
paperback of 'The Last Dangerous Visions' will be published by
NAL sometime after the hardcover has been released."
Announcements in 'Locus' do not come out of the air, and this one will
probably have come from Mr Ellison himself. Although it does not
actually
say so, the clear implication from this is that LAST has been
completed.
One could reasonably infer that LAST will be published soon after the
other
arrangements described, perhaps in 1974 or 1975.
#
18 August 1973
Announcement in 'Locus' 147:
---------------------------
"According to Harlan Ellison, LAST will be completed by September
15 and will be turned into the publisher."
This one is at least unambiguously attributed. (Presumably Mr Ellison
himself didn't write this; his grammar is better.)
#
13 September 1973
Letter from Harlan Ellison in 'The Alien Critic', No. 7, November
1973:
----------------------------------------------------------------------
"...here is a current (as of 13th September 1973) table of
contents for [LAST], with word-lengths appended. The manuscript
of the anthology is now in a file box, ready to go to New York,
with the manuscripts standing on end. The box is three feet
long, and it is jammed. Please bear in mind, as you read this
Table of Contents, that this is _not_ the order the stories will
appear in the book, that the book is closed AND I DAMMIT TO HELL
DON'T WANT TO SEE SUBMISSIONS FROM ANYONE EVER AGAIN IN THIS
LIFE! and that I'm waiting on rewrites from [3 named writers],
but that beyond those three, the book is complete. Save for the
60,000 words of introductions that I have yet to write, or the
50,000 words of Afterwords that are written but haven't been
included in the total wordage indicated on the list.
"I think you'll all like this book. And thank _God_ this
bloody ten-year-millstone has been removed from my aching neck!"
Mr Ellison goes on to list 68 authors and stories (plus the three
promised
rewrites), and estimates a total word-length of 445,250. That, plus
the
110,000 words of introductions and afterwords he refers to in his
letter,
makes a book well in excess of half a million words. (See *Note 3*.)
Mr Ellison also reveals that the book will contain 75 full-page
illustrations by Tim Kirk.
This letter is a significant document in the tortuous history of
LAST,
because for many people it was the first revelation of the sheer
length of
the projected book. I'll have more to say about the length of the
project
later, but it's instructive to try to imagine exactly what we are
talking
about.
'War and Peace', in its English translation, is about 600,000
words in
length. Vikram Seth's novel 'A Suitable Boy' (1993), which at 1,350
well-
packed pages is the longest novel written in English since Samuel
Richardson's 'Clarissa', is probably bigger than that. Stephen
Donaldson's
'The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever' (initial trilogy
only)
totals about 510,000 words. John Brunner's 'Stand on Zanzibar', one
of the
longest science fiction novels ever published, was about 215,000 words
long.
But LAST is already so big (at least in prospect) that questions
of
scale have to be seriously considered. At 550,000 words it's the
length of
approximately seven normal-length novels, or two and a half copies of
'Stand on Zanzibar' bound together.
The rest of the letter is interesting, too. Taken together with
the
announcement in 'Locus' ("...completed and turned in by September
15"), and
itself dated 13 September, it sounds plausible, even to sceptics.
We're told the manuscript is "ready to go", that no more
submissions
will be read, and so on.
But a shadow of doubt does remain, partly because of those three
unreliable authors who are having to rewrite their stories (one of
whom,
interestingly, was one of those announced two years earlier in 'Again,
Dangerous Visions' as being definite--see *Note 2*), and partly
because of
the small matter of the 60,000 words Mr Ellison himself is yet to
write.
Things don't seem so certain after all. Working flat out, a fast
writer could conceivably produce 60,000 words of publishable text in
a week
or so, but this letter was written only two days before the deadline!
It's also worth pointing out that this letter was clearly
intended as
a public announcement, not as a private letter. Richard Geis's 'The
Alien
Critic' (later 'SF Review') was a fanzine with a large circulation,
and Mr
Ellison must have known and intended that it would be read by many
people,
including the writers whose work he was sitting on. (At one point he
says
"you'll all like this book", and there is a general impression of an
announcement being made.)
So why was Mr Ellison announcing in public that the book was
complete,
when not only was it self-evidently incomplete, it could not have been
completed in the time remaining?
In 1973 President Nixon began his second term of office, and the
Watergate scandal broke. The Arab oil embargo was imposed. The
movies
'Last Tango in Paris', 'Godspell' and 'Soylent Green' were released.
Harlan Ellison was 39.
#
February 1974
Letter from Harlan Ellison in 'The Alien Critic', No. 8, February
1974:
----------------------------------------------------------------------
"Since I haven't given out the complete table of contents to
anyone else, I wanted to keep you up to the moment with addi-
tions. Though the book is closed, I could not pass up the
following. Please add to the list you have."
Mr Ellison then lists seven more stories, and summarizes the whole
book in
the following way:
"Total stories: 78. Total authors: 75. Total words: 491,375,
with Preface, Forewords, Afterwords, Introduction, etc., yet to
be added."
Assuming that the non-fiction matter still amounted to 110,000 words,
the
book has now reached over 600,000 words in prospect: equivalent to
seven
and a half normal-length novels. (See *Note 4*.)
Again, this is a psychologically interesting letter. For
instance,
there is no attempt to rationalize this letter with the previous one,
in
which finality and imminent delivery were so strongly featured, and no
mention of what happened about that deadline, five months earlier.
There
is again a clear intention that anyone reading the letter should
believe
that the book is emphatically finished ("complete" table of contents,
"the
book is closed", etc.), yet at the same time Mr Ellison has neatly
provided
himself with a delaying tactic against expectations: his foot is
generously
still in the door, and it will stay there long enough for a few more
stories to squeeze their way in.
Was LAST delivered to the publisher in February 1974? It was
not.
#
14 June 1974
Letter from Harlan Ellison to Christopher Priest:
------------------------------------------------
"Dear Mr Priest:
"The hour grows late, time grows short, and I'm chagrined
that I was never able to buy the free moments to write you before
this. [LAST] is closed, and I'm in the process of readying the
massive final volume of the trilogy for Harper & Row. In taking
stock of the important writers who haven't been represented in
the previous volumes, your name looms very large. The past few
years and your work during those years have placed you among the
handful of serious writers of imaginative fiction who can simply
be called sui generis. I cannot express in so brief a letter my
admiration for 'Indoctrinaire', 'Darkening Island' and--most
memorable of all, probably because I just finished reading it and
marveling at it--'The Inverted World'.
"Though money is gone on the book, I'm prepared to pay as
best I can out-of-pocket to have a new, unpublished anywhere
Priest story, an important story for a milestone book. It was
always my intention to write and ask you to do one for me. But
time ... and circumstance....
"It would be a terrible omission were there not to be a
story by you in this landmark trilogy, now being taught in over
200 colleges and universities. Please! If you can do something,
or have something available ... any length, but extra-special,
challenging, something you wouldn't be ashamed to have logged in
the book of posterity ... please send it along posthaste.
"I'll hold open the book for you until I hear one way or the
other. But please keep this invitation to yourself; as far as
the rest of the world is concerned, the book is closed.
"With high expectation"
(signed) Harlan Ellison
With this letter began my brief personal involvement with Mr Ellison
and
his unpublished book.
Although I would normally keep professional correspondence
confidential I have included this letter for a number of reasons, not
the
least of which is that it reveals that four months after the letter to
Richard Geis the anthology was still far from finished. If the door
then
had been jammed open with a foot, now it was locked and bolted, but
one
manuscript--mine--could still be slipped through the gap at the
bottom.
Or so it would seem. In fact, the letter feels phony (as it did
on
the day it was received); it has the weird unreality of a
computerized form
letter from a mail order company. This unworthy suspicion was
unexpectedly
confirmed a couple of weeks later when another British writer
confided to
me that he had received an almost identically worded letter at the
same
time. (What he actually said was: "If you were to put my letter
against
yours and hold them up to the light, the only difference would be the
titles of our books.") I suspect this was one of many letters sent
out in
the same period, trawling through the lists of writers Mr Ellison had
not
previously approached. (See *Note 5* for a list of some of the
others!)
But assume for a moment that the letter is sincerely intended.
An
editor approaches a writer and offers to buy a story. What could be
wrong
with that?
Well, the use of flattery is excessive, and manipulative in
intent.
Sui generis, indeed! He says that I loom large as one writer who
wasn't in
earlier volumes. To speak of me looming at that time is nonsensical.
When
the first Dangerous Visions was published I had written and sold only
a
handful of fairly inept stories, published in Britain. He couldn't
possibly have known of me or my work. In 1971, when he completed the
second book, the only work of mine that had appeared in the USA was my
first novel 'Indoctrinaire' (which vanished almost without trace),
and my
first short story 'The Run', published in the Judith Merril anthology
'England Swings SF' (again, a volume of commendable obscurity).
And while seeming to flatter me he is actually using his letter
as a
chance to promote himself. Note the use of the words "milestone" and
"landmark" to describe his own book. Of course, he is trying to sell
someone on the idea of writing for him, but the way he brings in this
self-
congratulation is actually fairly repugnant. He says that someone
writing
for him should produce something "extra-special", something that can
be
"logged in the book of posterity". Most writers try to write
something
"extra-special" every time, and don't need flattery as a goad.
As for posterity: assuming that a writer cares a fig for
posterity,
why does Mr Ellison presume that only by writing for him will
posterity's
book be logged?
The reference to payment "out-of-pocket" is a disingenuous ploy,
because it implies a favour. Even in 1974, struggling endlessly with
a
feeling of failure and a perpetual shortage of cash, I wanted no
favours
done me. A sale should be entered into professionally. Furthermore,
most
anthologies are paid for out of the editor's "pocket", because the
usual
arrangement is for the publisher to pay the editor an advance, out of
which
the contributors will then be paid. What Mr Ellison meant, but
didn't say,
was that he had over-spent his advance but was willing to over-spend a
little more. He couldn't resist dropping this into the letter,
thinking it
would be an extra inducement, a heightening of my presumed importance
to
him.
And where does Mr Ellison think the recipient of this letter has
been
living? Already by 1974 the non-completion of LAST had become an
open joke
in fannish and professional circles. (It is perhaps difficult to
realize,
a quarter of a century later, that even from Mr Ellison's first
announcement many people suspected he would never deliver the book.)
A letter like this is an intimate appeal. It cynically exploits
vanity, goodwill and a desire for success. The writer of the letter
asserts his sincerity, good taste and admiration, and pleads for
confidentiality so that other writers might not grow jealous.
But because the appeal is actually written for self-serving
purposes,
the recipient would have to be pretty insensitive not to notice the
insincerity dripping from it. He gets a queasy feeling in his
stomach, but
cannot easily phrase a refusal: it's nice to be asked to write
something,
no matter by whom. Flattery gets under your defences, however
hypocritical
it is. You want to avoid hassles, but you're cornered.
Prevarication or
excuses will only bring a more concentrated appeal, and so, feeling
cornered, you agree reluctantly to send something along. The letter
has
manipulated you in exactly the way it was intended.
[I prevaricated and made excuses, and duly received a more
concentrated appeal. In August 1974 I reluctantly broke off from
the novel I was writing, wrote a short story called 'An Infinite
Summer', and sent it to Mr Ellison.
[A long silence followed. After four months without any
reaction at all from Mr Ellison, I instructed my agent to get the
story back from him.
[I have never regretted this, even though I was subjected to
a stream of abuse and threats from Mr Ellison. This was
peculiarly unpleasant, but I had one consolation he could do
nothing about. I had promptly resold the story for real money,
and by the time Mr Ellison was calling me names it was already in
print. It was subsequently republished in a "best of the year"
anthology, and since then has been regularly reprinted in books
and magazines all over the world. Two decades after I wrote it,
'An Infinite Summer' is still being resold, and brings me a small
but regular income.
[If I had left the story with Mr Ellison it would today be
sitting in a cardboard box somewhere in his house. No one would
be reading it. Because it escaped this fate, 'An Infinite
Summer's' sojourn in Mr Ellison's hands is irrelevant to this
essay. What is relevant, though, is the fact that if I hadn't
whipped it away from him when I did my story would be in that
joyless box with well over a hundred other stories, most of them
written several years before mine.
[No one is reading them, most people don't even know they
exist ... but this essay is about them.]
#
19 February 1976
Announcement in Locus 185:
-------------------------
"For those who keep asking, Ellison's anthology [LAST] still
hasn't been turned in to Harper & Row and is still unscheduled."
#
7 July 1976
Interview with Christopher Fowler, in 'Vector' 75, July 1976:
------------------------------------------------------------
(Ellison): "[LAST] is done, is closed ... I'm finished up
writing the introductions now. It goes into Harper & Row--it
will not be published by Doubleday. I pulled it away from them
two years ago, three years ago. It's being published by Harper &
Row. It will be in a two volume, boxed set, and it will sell for
approximately $26. It has over 100 stories ... it is over a
million and a quarter words. That is the equivalent of 13 or 14
full-length novels. It's longer than 'War and Peace', and it's
about three times as long as 'Gone With the Wind'. ... It goes
in September 1st [1976]. ... It'll be on sale in America in the
Spring of 1977. I think after ten, eleven, twelve years of this
project, this book will be the final road-marker of a project
that is now clearly indicative of where the field has been and is
over ten years."
One of the features of being in Mr Ellison's company is that he
frequently
makes verbal claims about having finished and delivered LAST. These
claims
are invariably made in such an emphatic way, supported by
plausible-seeming
detail, that it's impossible to challenge them except by having to
call Mr
Ellison a liar.
These repeated claims have become part of the ritual, in which
others
seem content to connive. Few people are prepared to stand up to Mr
Ellison
in person, and no one believes the claims (or even knows anyone else
who
believes them) so they vanish into the air. But every so often
there's a
tape recorder running, the words get transcribed and are eventually
enshrined in print. This is one such case.
As Mr Ellison never publicly retracted or corrected this, we can
take
it that he was not misquoted.
So here is the latest untrue claim that the book is finished and
about
to be delivered. A million and a quarter words: 1,250,000 words.
Using my
own yardstick of "average" length, that's actually equivalent to
nearly 16
novels. In pages? If the "average" novel runs to 250 pages in
hardback,
LAST would work out at more than 3,000 pages. (The London Telephone
Directory, printed on A4 paper in three columns of tiny type,
contains over
3,000 pages.)
This "road-marker" that indicates where the "field" has been for
the
last ten years is clear to read. The "field" has been in a box in Mr
Ellison's house.
Incautiously, Mr Ellison adds a publication date. We all
remember
that Spring of 1977, just over a decade and a half ago, when 'The Last
Dangerous Visions' was at last published, don't we?
1977 was the year President Jimmy Carter took office. New York
experienced its first "brown-out". The space shuttle flew for the
first
time. Harlan Ellison was 43.
#
14 December 1977
Letter from Harlan Ellison, circulated to all LAST contributors:
---------------------------------------------------------------
This is far too long (and too tediously self-serving) to be
reproduced in
full, but here are salient extracts:
"We are now forthcoming from Harper & Row." [A new contract is
enclosed, with alterations.] "The most significant [alteration]
is a guarantee that the book will be published before Christmas
1978. Over the outraged howls of Harper & Row I have made it a
13-month guarantee. I did that to restore faith with those of
you ... who have waited literally years to see the work in print,
and despite delay after delay--justified or not--have stuck with
me. As this will be a 3-volume boxed set, over 600,000 words, it
will take Harper & Row a good nine months to send the book(s)
through production. I know I'm cutting it close with you, but I
felt I had to do it if I was to summon up the gall to ask you to
re-sign with TLDV. It is incumbent on me to advise you once
again that the stories have, in fact, reverted to you. Long
since. You can refuse to sign, keep the advance payment you
received, and sell the story elsewhere. Or you can trust me just
one more time and stay with the project."
[Mr Ellison explains he and the publishers have retained Victoria
Schochet as an outside consultant editor to complete the book.
Ms Schochet is a well-known and highly respected New York
editor.]
"[Victoria Schochet] came out here to Los Angeles from New York
for ten days, to work on this deal exclusively. Her assistance
has permitted me to plunge through to the final edge of the
project, and because of her help the manuscript is now ready to
go. I have some writing to do, but I'll have that done in
January and the book will be sent to Harper & Row by February 1st
for immediate pre-production layouts."
[Mr Ellison encloses a note from Victoria Schochet; see below.]
"Over the next few months I'll stay in touch to let you know what
stage the production of the book has reached. Harper & Row will
be renegotiating the NAL paperback contract, which will mean more
money almost immediately, and there will be, of course,
continuing royalties, unto the 10th generation. With DV and A,DV
having sold millions and millions of copies in hard and soft,
translations and UK reprints, all you need do to reassure
yourself that you're investing in an annuity, is to query anyone
who appeared in the first two books."
(signed) Harlan Ellison
Here is the handwritten personal testimony from Victoria Schochet,
enclosed
with Mr Ellison's letter:
"_Please_ do be assured that this enormous project is in the
final stages of completion. I say Please because it would truly
be a tragedy to lose any of the pieces in the volume. Having
spent the last week reading through all 600,000 words of it, I
promise you that no claim for its significance, scope, and
excellence could possibly be extravagant. I have never had the
honor of working on as fine a project. I know it's been a long
time coming for us all, but the waiting will have been worth it.
"The manuscript is now all together, in order, finished.
All that remains is to integrate your (_immediate_) responses and
it's off to the publisher. The book will be a 3-volume, large-
sized (D), about 650 pages each. The illustrations are equal to
the stories -- the set will be a beautiful, mind-boggling
product. Harper & Row recognizes the importance of TLDV and is
preparing to support its publication in force.
"The editors and publisher thank you for your patience and
understanding and have faith that you'll be well pleased with the
rewards."
(signed) Victoria Schochet
Thrust out of your mind the distracting hindsight knowledge that LAST
did
not actually appear in December 1978, and try to put yourself in the
place
of the writers who received this in 1977. It's a fine and convincing
performance: open, frank, plausible, attested to by an independent
witness.
You would be a distrustful churl indeed to question this
full-frontal
assault on your mind and heart, with its confession of fault,
willingness
to let old stories be released, optimism about the future ... and its
promises of untold wealth.
The integrity of Victoria Schochet is not in question. An
intriguing
element in all this, though, is that Mr Ellison makes heavy weather
of her
fine reputation, and underlines the fact that she did not write her
letter
under duress. (At one point in his letter he says: "Vicky's
credentials
speak for themselves; and not even thumbscrews could get her to write
those
words if she didn't mean them." Why should he make such a meal of
this?
Why on earth should he think that anyone would suspect otherwise?)
What went wrong after these letters were sent? After all, here
we
have unambiguous statements concerning the book's completion. Mr
Ellison
says, "the manuscript is now ready to go." Victoria Schochet says,
"The
manuscript is now all together, in order, finished." If these
statements
are true, why was the book not published 15 years ago?
It wouldn't be anything to do with the single betraying flaw,
would
it? Mr Ellison says, "I have some writing to do."
Meanwhile, what's all this about "continuing royalties"?
"Continuing" implies there is a process that started in the past
and
will continue uninterrupted into the future. Is Mr Ellison
suggesting that
the writers have been receiving "royalties" even before the book is
published? (A royalty is a payment made to a writer based on retail
sales
of a book.) Using the word "royalties" is an interesting semantic
stratagem, because it implies that the book has somehow come into
existence
before it is published!
The reality of LAST payments to contributors is that anything
paid is
in the nature of a payment on account until publication. The source
of
this will be the original advance, contributions from Mr Ellison's
"pocket", and, most important of all, surpluses created by the
payment of
larger advances whenever the projected book is moved to a new
publisher.
The passage of time and price inflation allow replacement publishers
to pay
an advance which is sufficiently larger than the one immediately
before.
This enables the old publisher to be paid back, and the surplus
distributed
as "royalties" (see below).
Insofar as I have been able to trace actual payments of these
"royalties", I understand one distribution was made ("out of pocket")
in
August 1973, and another was made in early 1984. More might have
been paid
since then. (My argument is with Mr Ellison's terminology--which
creates
misunderstandings--not with his honesty.)
By the way, did you notice how in 18 months the estimated
word-count
dropped mysteriously from 1,250,000 to 600,000 words?
#
29 January 1979
Letter from Ellison to contributors. ("SUBJECT: Impending
Publication"):
----------------------------------------------------------------------
-
"As the enclosed letter will inform you, there has been a major
change in the status of [LAST] and, as a result, a major
improvement in your position in the book.
"G.P. Putnam's Sons will be doing the book in a three-volume
boxed set. They are advancing us $50,000. After repayment of
the monies owed to Harper & Row and New American Library, I will
be dispersing most of the remaining thousands directly to you, as
an additional advance payment for your work in the book.
"The entire month of February will be spent completing the
prefatory material and the introductions; delivery is scheduled
for 15 March and publication--if all goes as expected--will be
Christmas of this year.
"It is a year later than my last communique with you
indicated, and God knows most of you have waited far longer to
see your work in print than I had any right to expect; but I
think you'll agree this is a most salutary development.
"This is the third publisher to contract for [LAST]. We
started with Doubleday a long time ago, then moved the book to
Harper & Row, and now Putnam. A number of you have been
(properly) annoyed at what seemed to be unnecessary delays in
getting the book out. I've always tried to be candid with you
about these delays; and with only a few exceptions you've all
understood that I take my custodial responsibilities for your
work very seriously. It is precisely that sense of
responsibility that brings us to this point. Please understand:
I've seen too many rotten examples of anthologists who've conned
you into doing original stories that went into books that
instantly vanished from view. And you never saw another cent of
royalties.
"Everyone who has ever published a story in one of the
Dangerous Visions books can attest to the large and regular
royalties that keep on coming, year after year. I feel it is the
most basic element of my obligation to you, to keep on making
money for you. A story in a DV book has life, it will be an
annuity. So as caretaker, I have to go with my instincts about
marketing. Thus far I've been correct."
[Two rambling paragraphs follow, in which Mr Ellison explains why
he keeps changing publishers.]
"Well, last year Vicky Schochet came out here from New York to
help me finalize the book. She read it from front to back, and
was more enthusiastic than I can say. Now she's the editor at
Berkley/Putnam who has arranged for the buy-out with H&R. She
wants to do the book, she knows how good the book is, and she has
fired up Putnam's so _they_ want to do the book.
"The way it should be done.
"With major advertising. With special packaging. With
heavy promotion. And with a $50,000 advance payment.
"That's the story. I tell you all this, of course, to get
you to hang in there for one more month. By March 15th the book
will be in Vicky's hands and she'll circularize you confirming
same. But before that time, we'll have an advance check of fifty
grand. I'll pay back the advance we got from Harper, the money
New American Library gave us, and the vast bulk of what's left
will be divided into pro rata shares and sent off to you. Within
a month you'll have a big schlug of money to cement your staying
with the project so we can do it right.
"I've run out of ways to beg you to stay with me; you've
long since run out of patience with me. TLDV has become one of
the big myth-objects of our time. Like Atlantis or Reagan's
intellect. But that very word-of-mouth advertising, that bated
breath attitude on the part of the audience, serves you all in
the extreme. When Putnam's releases TLDV for the Christmas
season, it has a guaranteed trade sale waiting.
"And we're talking a _very_ expensive package here. Three
books, approximately 700,000 words, over 115 stories. And huge
profits for all of you. The attached letter from Berkley will
buttress all the foregoing. Be patient for another month and
enjoy a second advance payment as a mark of good faith, as well
as my way of saying thankyou for your patience up till now."
(signed) Harlan Ellison
This letter, like the one in 1977, was accompanied by one from a
publisher.
The writer this time was Rena Wolner, Vice President and Publisher at
Berkley Publishing Corporation:
"To the contributors to The Last Dangerous Visions.
"Welcome to Berkley! Thanks to the involvement of Victoria
Schochet, our new senior editor for science fiction, Berkley is
now negotiating to take over the publishing of [LAST]. I would
like to take this opportunity to tell you just how proud and
excited we are to be the publisher of this final volume in the
remarkable Dangerous Visions series.
"I would like to tell you something of our publishing plans
for the project. We intend to bring out a hardcover edition,
under our Berkley/Putnam imprint, on our winter 1979-1980 list.
We recognize that publication of [LAST] will be an event of great
importance in the science fiction field, one which has been
awaited for some time. Although it is too early to be specific,
I want to assure you that we are planning to promote the project
with all due fanfare, and see that it receives the meticulous
production attention and post-publication notice that it
deserves. (This will involve publicity releases, posters,
adequate review copies, and the like.) And of course we will be
bringing out the paperback editions later in 1980, and have grand
plans for selling and promoting the books again at that time.
"I hope that you are as pleased to have [LAST] published by
Berkley as we here are to have it on our list, We know that the
project will be a tremendous success for all of us."
(signed) Rena Wolner
This was another convincing performance, one which must have seemed
plausible on that wintry day in 1979.
There is hardly any reference to Mr Ellison's broken promises in
the
past, except by implication. By concentrating on the change of
publisher
Mr Ellison also manages to imply that the further delay was caused by
this,
not by him. In a confident manner, Mr Ellison gives every impression
of
being back in control: publication is "impending", etc.
You will have noted Mr Ellison's ingenuous reference to
anthologies
that "instantly vanished from view". This could not have been said
accidentally (because if so it is insensitive to the point of
crassness) so
what on Earth could he have meant? No other book in modern
publishing has
"vanished" so publicly and over such a long period of time as LAST.
Was he
using verbal legerdemain, trying to persuade his writers that
although they
probably think the book has vanished, in fact it has not?
Mr Ellison of course contradicts himself on this. The amusing
joke
about Atlantis and Reagan's intellect is trying to make a virtue of
the
book's long period of non-appearance.
Later in 1979, Margaret Thatcher became Prime Minister of the
UK. In
1980, around the time the paperback was expected, Ronald Reagan was
elected
President of the USA. 'Star Trek - the Motion Picture' was released
in
Britain. Harlan Ellison was 46.
#
June 1979. Report in Locus 222:
-------------------------------
'Locus' published a list of the contents of LAST, presumably obtained
from
Mr Ellison. The book was said "to be published next year by Putnam".
A
total of 113 stories were listed, amounting to just under 645,000
words.
(See *Note 5*.)
"Next year" was of course 1980, and of course the book was not
published then.
#
August 1980. An eye-witness account:
------------------------------------
During a visit to New York I went to a party where Harlan Ellison was
present. (This is one of the very few occasions when I have been in
the
same room with him, although we have never actually been introduced.)
A
large number of writers, including myself and Mr Ellison, were sitting
around chatting about this and that. Suddenly one of the others
said, "How
are you getting on with TLDV, Harlan?"
"I just delivered it!" he cried. "I handed it in this afternoon!
It's over!"
Amid squeals of delighted scepticism, raspberry noises and
general
hilarity, Mr Ellison managed to look hurt and indignant.
"Listen, you guys," he said. "This time I really did."
He launched into some complicated story about how he had had to
get a
cab to take him and the oversize box to the airport.
"It's OK, Harlan," somebody said. "We understand. But you
don't have
to bullshit us. We won't tell the fans."
Mr Ellison look chastened, but relaxed a little. He then
explained
that although he hadn't, you know, actually _delivered_ the
manuscript, the
delay was a mere technicality. As soon as he got back to Los Angeles
he
would be setting aside a whole month to write the introductions, and
...
Everyone cheered up. The status quo had been restored.
A few days later, at the worldcon in Boston, I heard part of a
long
and colourful speech Mr Ellison gave about his life and works. During
this, a question from the floor raised the same subject.
While the laughter rang out, Mr Ellison lowered his head in mock
modesty. As the laughter died he raised a clenched fist and shook it
in
triumph.
"I was in New York last week," he declared. "And I handed it in!
IT'S DONE!"
The whole place erupted with cheers. Mr Ellison trotted happily
to
and fro across the stage. People stood up: it became a standing
ovation.
Then I noticed that some of the people who had been at the same
party
as me, and who had heard the reluctant truth from Mr Ellison's own
lips,
were also clapping and cheering ...
I left the auditorium, bemused by all this. As I went through
the
doors I heard Mr Ellison begin his entertaining story about getting
his
oversized box into the cab.
3. The Next 13 Years
=====================
Thus the history of LAST to 1980. It has been going on like that ever
since, and simply because in that time the book still has not been
finished, delivered or published, to go on detailing the saga would be
pointless.
From the above it is possible to discern a wave pattern with a
period
of about two or three years.
The first phase is a sudden burst of activity from Mr Ellison:
tables
of contents are released, a new publisher is named, a glitzy advance
is
paid, publication dates are announced, consultant editors are flown
out to
Los Angeles at Mr Ellison's expense, Mr Ellison promises that writing
the
introductions will take no more than two or three weeks. Then there
is a
period of apparent retrenchment: more stories are acquired from new
writers, old stories are rewritten, somewhere in the background
another
contributor or two drops dead. The third phase arrives insidiously:
nothing much happens, Mr Ellison no longer tells everybody he is
working on
the introductions, the publisher waits, the contributors wait, the
manuscripts sit in a box.
Then, out of the blue, another burst of activity ...
The ten-year history detailed above was drawn from the public
record,
or from sources that were easy to find. It is therefore documented,
and
can be checked by anyone who cares to do so.
#
The undocumented record is wider still; there can be few people who
go to
American conventions who have not heard Mr Ellison renew his claims
and
promises. For instance, three months after the worldcon in Boston, Mr
Ellison took part in a three-way telephone link-up that was broadcast
at
another science fiction convention. In this conversation with Fritz
Leiber
and Arthur C. Clarke, Mr Ellison again repeated his claims:
"I'm getting ready for the final push [on LAST]. It's going to
press. Berkley/Putnam is doing it. They're taking a year to
publish it in three volumes. ...That's it then, that rock's off
my back forever."
[Transcript in 'Science Fiction Review' 40, Fall
1981.]
Again the unambiguous assertions: the book is _going to press_, it's
off
his back _forever_ (and never mind what he had said in public only
three
months earlier).
Any professional writer will know that when a book is "going to
press"
it has already been in the publisher's hands for some weeks or
months. The
implication is clear: the manuscript must have been delivered.
And that same writer will want to believe it, and will put aside
the
memory of the earlier qualification: "I'm getting ready for the final
push."
#
Since 1980, of course, the book has still not been published, nor has
it
even been announced. As always, the exact situation is difficult to
determine, but the book appears now to be under contract to Houghton
Mifflin.
Mr Ellison has been widely criticized over his tardiness. Most
of
this is in private (he would probably be appalled to know what people
say
about LAST when they know he can't hear them ... fear of reprisal from
Harlan Ellison is a very real phenomenon, as some of the following
letters
will confirm), but some, inevitably, gets into print.
One such was by the American writer and critic, Gregory Feeley
[published in 'Thrust', Spring/Summer 1984].
This made a point I had not seen before: that many of the longer
stories in the first two Ellison anthologies had been expanded into
novels,
and that LAST contained a large number of long stories, many of which
would
seem likely candidates for the same expansion. Feeley pointed out
that the
writers of these--with one or two exceptions--were effectively barred
from
developing their work so long as Mr Ellison was sitting on them.
#
I realized while I was researching that to be one of Mr Ellison's
friends
is something to be avoided. Mr Ellison does not hesitate to recruit
his
friends to mouth his words for him.
In October 1983 yet another letter went around to LAST
contributors,
this one purportedly written by the science fiction writer Ed Bryant.
Writing on Mr Ellison's headed notepaper, Ed Bryant uses his
_first
paragraph_ to go out of his way to establish his credentials as
someone
"not wont to hyperbole" or "unwarranted enthusiasm in regard to
matters
such as TLDV."
From the first moments, then, the weary LAST contributor is
presented
with another hypocritical performance. Why on Earth should Ed Bryant
begin
a letter with such a disclaimer?
Could it be explained by the fact that he is using Mr Ellison's
headed
notepaper paper in Mr Ellison's typewriter on Mr Ellison's desk in Mr
Ellison's office, no doubt with Mr Ellison standing right behind him?
If
he had been at his own typewriter, in his own office, would he have
launched into this degrading "Honest Ed" routine? Whatever the
truth, all
the signs are instantly up: truth is going to be a rare commodity, yet
again.
Inevitably, familiar matters are raised:
Yes, Mr Ellison paid Honest Ed's air fare out to Los Angeles.
Yes, Mr Ellison is busy writing the introductions.
Yes, there's a new publisher (this one Houghton Mifflin).
Yes, there's a major promotional budget.
Yes, there's a new publication date (Spring 1984).
Yes, Mr Ellison has been busy litigating "out of his own pocket"
on
the contributors' behalf, this time against a bankrupt British
publisher.
Yes, the previous publisher reneged on the deal, and the fact
that Mr
Ellison left them is _nothing_ to do with the book not being
delivered on
time.
Yes, what Mr Ellison says about paying lots of money is EVER SO
TRUE.
Yes, Mr Ellison has had health problems.
Yes, it is a letter disgracefully wont to hyperbole and
unwarranted
enthusiasm in regard to matters such as TLDV.
One cannot help feeling sorry for Ed Bryant, a pleasant man, and hope
he
was at least well paid.
#
A poignant glimpse of what it's like to be one of Mr Ellison's long-
suffering contributors appeared in 'Science Fiction Review' 46, Spring
1983. In an article called "How Not to Write Science Fiction",
Richard
Wilson wrote:
"Another way not to write is to sell a story to Harlan Ellison
and wait for it to be published in [LAST]. You sit and wait with
visions of rave reviews, foreign and other subsidiary sales, a
movie or television option, fame and money, money, money. You
wait and wait. The story was at one time only a gleam in my eye,
a fragment no one was interested in until Harlan saw 17,000 words
of it. He liked it and demanded more. It grew and grew and in
1969 it was 40,000 or 47,000 words long, depending on who was
counting, and Harlan bought it. I heard the book will be out
real soon now. It's only 13 years later, so I really shouldn't
complain. You don't hear me complaining, do you?"
Mr Wilson died in 1987, without seeing his story published.
#
As the years slip by the macabre roster of dying contributors gets
ever
longer, and seems to acquire a ghastly relevance. (See *Note 6*.)
It is
of course fortuitous, but only an inexcusably delayed book as this is
prone
to so many reminders of human mortality. A scurrilous but amusing
article
in 'Patchin Review', by the pseudonymous "Jane Doe", did not shrink
from
the delicacy of this topic and made much wicked play with the
mortality
rate among LAST contributors.
She published a tabulated list of the contributors' known ages,
noting
which ones had died since selling to Mr Ellison, and estimating how
many
(on past record) were likely to die in the coming years. According
to Doe,
more than 50,000 words of LAST were written by writers now deceased,
and
that by 1991 a total of 210,000 words will be by writers then aged 60
or
over. (Several of the writers who were alive in 1981, when this
article
appeared, have in fact died since.) Beneath the dark mischief of this
article lay the serious if obvious question: how much longer will
this go
on?
#
It is now the winter of 1993/94.
Most of the books mentioned here as historical markers have come
and
gone; the films are now seen only on video, or as TV re-runs.
When LAST was announced Watergate and Irangate had not happened.
The
USA was still embroiled in the Vietnam war, and men were walking on
the
moon. Half the world was communist, or communist-dominated. The
Berlin
Wall stood, Yugoslavia was one country, the Ayatollah Khomeini was in
obscure exile in Paris. No one would have credited that a second-rate
Hollywood actor and a former research chemist would for a time become
the
two most powerful leaders in the West.
Satellite TV and home video recorders did not exist. CD records
did
not exist. Home computers were used only by enthusiasts. A pocket
calculator or a digital watch cost several hundred dollars.
Kim Philby, Brook Benton, Raymond Carver, the Shah of Iran,
Robert A.
Heinlein, Art Blakey, Mao Zedung, Graham Greene, Indira and Rajiv
Gandhi,
Joel McCrea, Leonid Brezhnev and John Lennon were still alive.
Salman Rushdie had not yet published any novels.
No one had heard of Aids.
A baby born when Mr Ellison first started acquiring stories is
now an
adult.
Harlan Ellison, who was a young man when all this began, will be
60 in
1994.
4. Some Questions
==================
Why Does LAST Remain Unpublished?
Why Have So Many Promises Been Broken?
Will LAST Ever be Published?
How Will It End?
Over the next few pages these questions will be addressed
directly,
and some answers will be proposed.
Why Does LAST Remain Unpublished?
Anthologies have failed before. They have been started and not
completed.
They have been published late. They have been unsatisfactory to the
publisher when delivered: over-long, or unsuitable in some other way.
They
have not lived up to expectations.
In the generality of things no blame attaches, only
disappointment,
and then only from a few in the know. One book that does not after
all get
published is neither here nor there; no one loses face, no one is too
surprised or alarmed. The publishing of books is an uncertain
business,
and many projects fail.
'The Last Dangerous Visions' appears to be different, though,
because
of the interest that has been aroused in it. That interest has been
created by Mr Ellison himself.
From the outset he has boasted about the brilliance of the
stories,
has made exaggerated claims about the importance of the project, has
pointed to the reputation of his first anthology, has periodically
raised
hopes and expectations of seeing the book in print.
Interestingly, none of this has come from the writers themselves:
certainly, the ones I have spoken to have been extremely modest about
their
work, and in many cases have been noticeably defensive about it,
because
they feel that what they sold to Mr Ellison no longer represents
their best
work.
Unlike other books in progress, insider knowledge of LAST is not
confined to a few writers, a handful of people in the publisher's
office,
the editor. LAST is known around the world. There can hardly be a
science
fiction fan anywhere in the world who not only does not know about
it, but
who has not got an opinion about it. In this wider circle of insider
expectation the book has become something of a sick joke, synonymous
with a
project that has never been completed and likely never will be.
All this cynicism, this defensiveness, all these anticipations,
arise
from one source alone.
Only Harlan Ellison still seems to believe that the book is
viable,
only he keeps bringing up the subject. He single-handedly stokes the
fires
of expectation.
Why can he not let the book go?
The problem seems, quite simply, to be one of fears about
credibility.
So much has been put at stake: personal integrity, professional
reliability, the regard of peers, the importance of not seeming to be
a
quitter ... all these have become part of the book's rationale. Too
much
boasting has been done in public, too many grand statements have been
made,
too many promises about annuities.
Behind this facade of bluster and strutting must lie a deep
sense of
insecurity.
Mr Ellison is the author of his own problems. We expect of him
only
what he has made us expect, and if he thinks the non-appearance of
the book
will represent indignity and failure, then so will we.
Any hint of disbelief in the project (e.g., when a writer tries
to
withdraw his story) is greeted with such a display of bad temper,
wheedling, renewed promises, emotional blackmail, accusations,
threats, and
so on, that few will challenge him. Writers living both in the UK
and in
the USA have been on the receiving end of this kind of thing, but few
will
talk about it. (See Pre-Publication Letters.)
One of the immediate consequences of crossing Mr Ellison is a
broad
and enduring distaste for the whole subject, part of which is clearly
the
wish not to renew the trouble. Fear of reprisal: this has been
mentioned
before, but it is surprisingly common. What should be a matter for
free
comment is rarely discussed, because people don't like being vilified.
The forcefulness of Mr Ellison's personality is obviously not in
doubt, and there is no question but that should he channel his
energies he
probably could make the anthology succeed.
Then why has he not? Why has 'The Last Dangerous Visions' not
so far
been published?
#
At a very basic level, the problem of LAST is a classic example of
someone
biting off more than he can chew.
Yet it's easy to see how it happened:
A few stories held over from 'Again, Dangerous Visions', a
perfectionist desire to crown a project with something even bigger and
better. Past efforts have been successful, feedback is coming in from
readers. The idea of the book is sound: a publisher leaps at it and
puts
up some money. Writers are approached, stories are written. The
book gets
bigger, the stories look good, but time is starting to pass. The
publisher
calls up to see how it's coming along. Meanwhile, five of the
stories are
being rewritten, three young and hitherto unknown writers are
nominated for
prizes (and the book won't be complete without stories from them), and
there is the small matter of all those stories that were promised
last year
and haven't been delivered yet ...
The first publisher gets tired of waiting, but a second is only
too
eager to step in. More money is paid. The book goes on getting
bigger,
and time is still passing. A visit to France introduces a welcome
touch of
the exotic to the contents page, but raises an unwelcome thought: what
about German writers, Swedish writers, Australian writers ...?
Meanwhile,
in the time it takes to go to France and back, five more young
American
writers have emerged who should be included. Letters go off.
Then...the
inspiration! The book must contain every writer of note who wasn't in
either of the first two anthologies. After a hurried search through
the
SFWA Directory, more sycophantic letters are sent, more stories are
promised, more stories are delivered. The book is getting bigger and
bigger, and now represents a major investment of time and energy.
Mean-
while, there are television scripts to write and lawsuits to pursue.
The
publisher changes again, writers begin to get restless. The fans are
gossiping, speculating ... some coveted writers refuse to take part,
others
try to withdraw their stories, hassles are developing all around.
Afterwords need to be rewritten, and introductory articles already
written
have drifted out of date. Contributors start to die; things don't
look so
good.
The larger the book grows the more unmanageable it becomes, not
only
physically but also creatively.
All books represent an idea, but now the idea of LAST extends
over a
huge period of time, with dozens of different writers working at
different
stages of their careers; young writers whose work was snapped up at
workshops, old writers teased out of retirement. Even to try to think
about it gives you a headache. And what about all those sui generis
writers who won't have anything to do with the book? Doesn't their
very
absence imply something might be wrong?
Then another attempt to impose order: reassuring letters go out,
but a
large number of the contributors respond by asking if they can change
the
ending of their story, or suggesting that they send in something more
recent instead, something a bit longer but more up to date.
Meanwhile,
word comes in that two more contributors have inconsiderately died.
The book is out of control.
Like a man who has to keep running to save himself from falling,
Mr
Ellison moves the book on and on, shouting to keep his spirits high.
This is undoubtedly what has happened, and what is still going
on. It
does not necessarily indicate what will happen in the future, but it
does
explain what went on in the past.
It's difficult not to feel some sympathy for the problem.
No one, not even Mr Ellison's worst detractor, has ever
suggested that
his motives were not the highest. He undoubtedly intended to produce
a
worthwhile book, and probably still believes that that is possible.
But Mr
Ellison has become the victim of scale and the scale of his own
ambition.
It was too much. It is a book that is no longer possible.
Why Have So Many Promises Been Broken?
The record is plain: one promise after another has been broken.
LAST has been falsely announced more often than any other book in
history. Many of these false predictions have been highly specific,
almost
incontestably so. The claims are so specific, so exact, so apparently
binding, that people have been gulled by them again and again.
If Mr Ellison were ever confronted with this record, he would
doubtless have a string of excuses to hand, most of them entirely
plausible. Each promise would be documented with a note of its
breach, a
deft explanation of someone else's failure or betrayal, his own human
error, an unwelcome attack of one of his famous incapacitating chronic
ailments. Individually, each excuse might well be valid.
But taken as a whole, he has been crying wolf about this book
since
1971.
Why? What is the real reason?
Theories are easy; the previous section contained one that was
not
hard to envisage. But the phenomenon of the multiple false claims
about
this unfinished book is extremely interesting. Clearly, things are
more
complicated than they seem, and any attempt to explain them must be
equally
as complex. The problem has to be approached indirectly.
#
Harlan Ellison is famous. It's likely that he is not as famous as he
thinks, but for a writer whose work consists almost entirely of short
stories he has done remarkably well. He has won awards, he has been
anthologized all over the world, he goes on TV chat shows, he has been
guest of honour at numerous science fiction conventions, he has fans
and
allies and friends. His writing is taken seriously in American
universities, he has done unpublicized work to encourage young
writers, his
views and his presence are widely respected.
But all writers, famous or otherwise, have one thing in common.
They
see themselves as individuals, and that only by individual qualities
will
they prevail. The two qualities most prized by writers are ability
and
integrity. They stand or fall by these.
Mr Ellison's past ability with his anthologies has been
demonstrated,
and is not in doubt. He has nothing to prove.
Nor is his integrity in doubt ... yet here we approach the
answer.
The appeal Mr Ellison makes _is_ to his integrity. By his public
announcements, his lurid claims on convention platforms, his answers
to
interviewers, his specific naming of dates and details, he is
throwing down
a challenge.
He is saying, in effect, "I, Harlan Ellison, say this is so. If
you
question what I say, you are not questioning the fact but casting
suspicion
on my integrity and professional reputation."
It is a curiously effective way of suppressing criticism,
because his
integrity is not an issue with anyone else.
His fame, his record, his word ... all these are accepted. It
is Mr
Ellison himself who makes integrity an issue; if he did not, no one
else
would be bothered about it.
The position of any anthology editor is one of trust: he is first
trusted by the publisher, then by the writers who send him stories,
and
finally by the readers who buy the book. Trust is implicit in this
kind of
work, and anthologies would not be possible without it.
Why then does Mr Ellison bring it in as an issue?
Why are doubters given such short shrift? Why are writers who
withdraw their work treated as if they have betrayed a cause? Why
are the
periodic promises to his surviving contributors couched so
emotionally?
(In his circular letters Mr Ellison uses phrases like "your trust may
be
better placed this time", "appeal for solidarity", "imploring", "I've
always tried to be candid with you", "hang in there for one more
month",
"I've run out of ways to beg you to stay with me", and so on.)
These appeals are obviously sincere, but they are equally
obviously
calculated ... and the effect is manipulative.
Mr Ellison sincerely believes in what he is doing, sincerely
believes
that he is worthy of trust ... but at the same time he does not
shrink from
using that trust as a weapon of challenge. Few will take up the
challenge,
because it is not at issue.
Only the reckless respond, try to get their stories back or
point out
that this is the umpteenth time the anthology has been promised ...
and the
fury of a man who feels his integrity impugned is turned full upon
their
hapless heads.
Will LAST Ever be Published?
It is always possible that everything will happen just as Mr Ellison
has
always claimed.
The Herculean labours will come to an end, the manuscript will be
delivered, the publisher will accept it, the book will come out. It
will
be a two- or three-volume boxed set of handsome hardcovers in a fine
edition, superbly designed and illustrated. It will of course be
expensive
(obviously much more than the $26 mooted several years ago), but a
reasonably priced paperback will follow. The book will be an instant
collector's item, it will stay in print for years, universities will
compete to be the first to put it on the syllabus ... and a group of
slightly elderly writers will at last start receiving their annuities.
Can it happen?
When I first drafted this long essay in 1984 I found it
difficult to
suppress the nervy feeling that everything I was writing would be
rendered
invalid in an instant, if LAST suddenly appeared in the shops. It
turns
out I need not have worried: the intervening years have seen, if
anything,
a decline in the likelihood.
Even so, again, now in 1993, I cannot easily suppress the same
feeling. So plausible is Mr Ellison's vehement belief in himself
that even
an unbeliever like myself is periodically beguiled.
Only when I think about the numbers do I feel certain.
#
The last published list of contents that I have been able to trace
was in
1979, when there were 113 stories with a total length of 645,000
words.
But that was nearly a decade and a half ago. How many stories have
been
added or withdrawn since, and what is the word count now?
On past performance it seems unlikely that the list has remained
unchanged.
Between 1974 and 1979 (a period when the book was "closed") the
number
of stories increased from 78 to 113. Those 35 new stories
represented a
percentage increase of about 45%, or a straight-line increase of
about 9% a
year.
Have more been added since? If so, how many? In 1982 I was
told by
one of the contributors that the number had risen to 180, but this is
of
course hearsay. Discounting this and being conservative: let's
assume that
in the last fourteen years Mr Ellison has not actively sought new
stories.
Even so, irresistible new writers must have come to his
attention. A
glance at any Hugo or Nebula nomination list from the last ten years
will
reveal there are dozens of top-class writers not on his 1979 list.
If we assume that Mr Ellison's rate of acquisition has slowed in
recent years, but that he has even so gone on buying stories, what
would be
a realistic estimate? That he has acquired, say, just four new
stories a
year?
That would produce a further 56 stories, bringing the total to
169.
(Using the same basis, this means a percentage increase of about 50%,
or a
straight-line increase of about 3.5%. Both these figures are
drastically
lower than before.)
The average length of each individual story in 1979 was about
5,700
words, but we know that several of these are very long indeed--Richard
Wilson's is 47,000 words--and that even Mr Ellison must by now be
trimming
his sail to suit the wind.
To stay on the conservative side, let's assume the average
length of
the new stories is 4,000 words.
The total length of the book then increases to 869,000 words.
(That's
the known 645,000 plus 56 stories x 4,000.) I suspect that this huge
amount of wordage is none the less an underestimate.
#
The one thing we know for sure about the Dangerous Visions books is
that
they do not confine themselves to short stories.
There are the introductions to each story (written by Mr
Ellison), the
afterwords (written by the authors), and an overall introduction
(Ellison).
On past form the introductions run to at least 2,000 words each,
and
the afterwords average out at about 1,000 words, and these have to be
added
to the overall total.
If we assume (against all likelihood) that the overall
introduction is
a minimalist 5,000 words, and that there is only one (and not one
each for
the separate volumes in the boxed set), we arrive at a grand total:
Introduction 5,000
Stories 869,000
Author introductions 338,000
Afterwords 169,000
_________
Total 1,381,000
=========
The closest estimate to this Mr Ellison has ever made is the one
he
gave to Christopher Fowler in 1976.
(If you prefer to believe that the 1979 contents list remains the
final one, the same basis of calculation produces a total of 989,000
words.)
And while we're at it, let's not forget Tim Kirk's 75 full-page
illustrations. Assuming there is one for each story, more must have
been
executed since: presumably there are now 169 of these, also to be
included.
169 pages of a book take up roughly the same amount of space as 45,000
words of text, so these too should be added to the nominal total.
It seems likely that Mr Ellison, a writer who normally only
produces
short stories, cannot properly conceive what a book of this length
actually
means in physical terms.
If the publishers chose the normal large format of a hardcover,
and
used 8pt or 9pt type, they would still have to produce a total volume
at
least 4,000 pages long, perhaps closer to 5,000 pages.
(My small-type, war-economy 1941 edition of 'War and Peace', with
which Mr Ellison compares his own book, has a mere 1,352 pages.)
#
Physically producing a book of this length would be a nightmare.
Length aside, remember that the text will consist of 169 (or 113)
different manuscripts, each produced on a different typewriter or word
processor, and each having its own ideas about spelling, punctuation,
paragraph layout. The first thing any publisher would have to do is
send
the book away to be copy-edited; one publisher's editor I spoke to
estimated that copy-editing alone could take up to four months, all of
which will obviously have to be paid for.
Typesetting would take at least as long again ... and never mind
the
overheads which are accruing while all this is going on. Then there
are
the costs of purchasing the paper, making the plates, binding,
warehousing,
distribution ...
Is such a book practicable these days? How much would the book
cost
to print? How many copies would have to be printed to get the
cover-price
down to $26? (Actually, millions and millions, which happens to be
the
numbers Mr Ellison unconvincingly claims the earlier books have sold.)
Would the market exist to support such a print run?
Being sensible, and assuming a print-run of the same sort of
size as a
bestselling novel, the book would still have to be noticeably more
expensive than the average hardcover. To pluck a figure out of the
air:
say $75.00 for the 3-volume set.
The book would obviously sell well, even at that sort of price.
But
well enough?
Rich collectors would snap it up, of course, and those 200
universities would scramble for copies. Perhaps 1,000 copies could be
counted on as certain sales ... maybe twice that if you feel generous.
But Mr Ellison's sights are clearly set higher than this: he
imagines
it will become a bestseller.
The book, in fact, must become a bestseller. There is no other
way it
could conceivably be published.
You start to sense the divine lunacy of the project at this
point.
Science fiction has become a bestselling category in recent years;
surely
LAST, one of the most heralded, talked-about books in years, surely
this
would slide into the bestsellers list with regal assurance?
Maybe it will.
#
The publisher does have other ways of saving money.
The print-run can be increased by doing a deal with a book club;
this
would bring down the unit cost of the book a little. Mr Ellison has
always
stoutly maintained that cheap editions will not be allowed; but
suppose he
were over-ruled ... how many copies would a book-club want? How
would they
release it? As a "choice" or an "alternate" for that month? Surely
it
would make an ideal premium title, the sort that is offered for a few
dollars as an inducement to new members ...
Will it end up being practically given away?
Another option open to the publisher is to make co-production
deals
with other English language publishers. An American paperback house,
say,
or a British publisher.
Would the typography required for a massive hardcover be
suitable for
reproduction in paperback? Might it not have to be re-set?
And what about Britain? The only British deal Mr Ellison has
ever
mentioned was with Millington Books, back in 1976. But Millington
went out
of business years ago, and no other British publisher has announced it…[File truncated due to length; see original file]…