Has Ellison even mentioned it lately? I tried searching, but didn’t find anything recent.
Ask him. Just be wearing a cup when you do.
Harlan has promised to have it out before you die, but you have to promise not to die. No word on whether or not it will be out before he dies.
No word. There was an article a few years ago that indicated that Harlan had bought too many stories, so you couldn’t fit it into a book. He was considering a CD, but there weren’t enough stories.
Harlan denied it.
Another movement asked him to release the stories from deceased authors, so their works could see the light of day.
Harlan ignored it.
No one seriously expects it ever to see the light of day during his lifetime.
Has there ever been a reasonable explanation as to why he’s being such a dick about this one?
Personal consistency?
It’s Harlan?
Well, OK, I knew I’d get those answers.
But seriously, why build the suspense, the spend about a zillion years telling people you’re working on it, then get pissed off when people ask. It would have been easier for him to say, fifteen years ago, ‘Sorry, this one died aborning and I’ve moved on.’
If he ever does actually publish it, they’re going to have to retitle it, “At Last! Dangerous Visions”
Well fifteen years ago Christopher Priest published a short book titled The Book on the Edge of Forever on why Last Dangerous Visions would never be published. I haven’t read it myself but I recall it causing a bit of a stir and it was part of a decades long argument between the publisher and Ellison that led to a lawsuit a couple of years ago.
Honestly at this point I think it’s a matter of pride for Ellison and I don’t think I need to restate how massive his ego is. I suspect that when he dies there will be a provision in his will to prevent its publication…
Generally because the book is too long (he evidently contacted nearly every new writer of the early 70s for a story), and that the introductory material needs to be rewritten (if it was written in the first place) due to changes in the writers’ careers. Also, stories that were cutting edge back in 1974 are probably badly dated now.
Harlan fell behind due to illness and hasn’t been able to catch up. I suspect he’s also a bit sick of the project at this point. And he also knows that any publication won’t live up to the hype.
Maybe he could publish it as a secret level in Duke Nukem Forever
The really unfortunate part is, of course, that all of those stories are stuck in limbo since Harlan has the first publication rights and, since it’s unlikely at this point that there will BE a first publication, and Harlan isn’t going to relinquish them back to the authors, they may never see the light of day.
Some of the stories have been published elsewhere (another nail in LDV’s coffin). I just recently read John Varley’s contribution, which was pretty damn creepy.
Did Ellison relinquish the rights or did the authors just choose to assume that the rights had expired (not that I would blame them at all)?
I believe the exclusive rights expired long ago, and Ellison has only held onto the bulk of the stories through sheer force of personality.
Well, if you’re going to spend something, it might as well be something you have a hell of a lot of!
Without looking at the contracts, it’s hard to answer whether Ellison still has control. Not all short story contracts have a reversion clause, and at the time Harlan was putting the anthology together, there was no reason to believe it wouldn’t be published.
I could see Harlan charming/bullying authors into a contract that has no reversion clause, though. Certainly if the rights reverted, we would have seen the stories in print years ago (generally, the clauses are for less than two years). I don’t think any of the authors at this point seriously believe that their stories will ever see print in LDV, and would have taken them back long before now.
It’s amazing someone hasn’t forced the issue legally by taking back their story and getting it printed elsewhere. Let Harlan sue. The fact that there has been zero effort to get the book published in the last century would serve as evidence of Harlan’s “malfeasance,” and might get all the contracts voided.
The way Varley puts it in the intro to his story (“The Bellman”) is, “Being Harlan, he was able to hang on to this story, and many others by other writers, long past the expiration of his rights to it.” He goes on to say that Ellison had talked him out of selling the story elsewhere half a dozen times before he finally went ahead and published it anyway. And after all that, Varley still admits to feeling “guilty…a bit” about selling his own story.