It’s a legend in the SF genre: Harlan Ellison’s anthology The Last Dangerous Vision. Ellison originally announced plans to publish it back in 1972; he’s bought stories for it but, for various disputed reasons, has never published the book. The consensus is that he never will.
But the stories themselves exist. The list of them is readily available online. Ellison’s publication rights have lapsed over the decades. So why has no one taken the obvious step and just published the book without Ellison’s participation? Contact the original authors (or their estates as amny have died since they first sold the stories). Come up with a title like Lt D*****s V***s or The Book Ellison Couldn’t Finish. And publish it.
From time to time I run into one of the accepted authors–who was very excited about said acceptance, at the time. His theory is that as the times changed, the stories, which were cutting-edge when accepted, may have aged badly (after all, they are now '70s stories, and while a good story is always a good story, the conventions of the genre may have left some of these once very good stories in the dust–his included).
A few years ago, a British writer speculated the problem was that Harlan bought too many stories to fit into a single volume, especially when you added Harlan’s introductions and the author’s comments on the story. So it was no longer possible to put out the book, and Harlan didn’t want to break it up. There is the possibility of a book on CD, but for that he has far too little material.
Harlan evidently fell behind when he developed a chronic fatigue and couldn’t finish it. Certainly things have been released (for instance, Harlan talked about a complete novel by Alfred Bester, but I believe that was released as The Computer Connection), but very little and there has even been requests that Harlan publish the stories by authors who have died in the meantime.
Harlan, being Harlan*, refuses to be rushed.
*Though he may not be able to use that excuse after his antics at the last Worldcon.
I’m not sure it’s true that the rights have lapsed. Harlan sold the book to three different publishers over the years, and collected advances from each. Somebody still owns the rights to those stories. I’m pretty sure that individual authors would have to specifically request the reversion of the rights rather than just assuming that the rights are theirs.
And I can confirm the outdatedness of many of the stories. Harlan went on a buying spree in the early 1970s, purchasing stories from a number of fledgling authors to give them a boost when the anthology came out. They were mostly writing the most god-awful psychedelic modernistic experimental crap at the time. I wouldn’t want it associated with my name at this point if I were them.
That’s not to say that a goodly number of important stories weren’t buried along with the crap. The non-publishing of the book is a tragedy and it is one thing I can never defend Harlan for.
I recently read Christopher Priest’s book (it was published online and is readily available) and that was one of the things that prompted me to start this thread. Another was reading Joe Haldeman’s recent anthology in which he finally published the LDV story he wrote back in the seventies. He was understandably bitter about how much bigger an impact it would have made back when it was first written.
Not sure, since he seemed to be making a play on “rushed,” but perhaps Chuck is referring to the infamous touch/rub/squeeze/grab/feel (look at the video, probably on YouTube, or Googletube, or whatever it will be called and decide for yourself) of Connie Willis’ breast.
No, I was making the play on the “Harlan being Harlan” excuse and, yes, I meant him groping Willis, something that was inappropriate, in bad taste, and ultimately uncalled-for. However, the reaction was a bit over-the-top, too.