Dangerous Visions was published by Doubleday in 1967, and it was the manifesto of the New Wave in American science fiction — an anthology of thirty-three original stories, each one commissioned by Ellison with the explicit instruction to write something that no other editor would publish. The writers were told to break taboos, to challenge assumptions, and to treat science fiction as a literary form capable of engaging with the full range of human experience.
The result was extraordinary. Philip José Farmer contributed “Riders of the Purple Wage,” a dense, Joycean novella about a welfare state of the future. Samuel R. Delany offered “Aye, and Gomorrah,” about the castrated astronauts of the future and the people who fetishize them. Philip K. Dick provided “Faith of Our Fathers,” in which a Vietnamese citizen discovers that the world leader he sees on television is actually a Lovecraftian horror. Robert Silverberg wrote “Flies,” about a man returned from alien captivity with the ability to absorb emotions — and an inability to feel them.
Ellison’s introductions to each story — pugnacious, opinionated, and frequently longer than the stories themselves — are as much a part of the book as the fiction. They position each story within the history of science fiction, explain what taboo is being broken, and argue passionately for the genre’s literary ambitions. The book was a commercial and critical success, winning a special Hugo Award and establishing the New Wave as the dominant movement in American SF.
Collecting Dangerous Visions
First edition (Doubleday, New York, 1967): Cloth binding, dust jacket.
Market values:
- First edition in dust jacket: $100–$400
- Without jacket: $25–$60
- Paperback editions: $10–$25
- Signed limited editions: $200–$600