{"id":9843,"date":"2010-04-01T12:16:23","date_gmt":"2010-04-01T19:16:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.amptoons.com\/blog\/?p=9843"},"modified":"2010-04-01T12:16:23","modified_gmt":"2010-04-01T19:16:23","slug":"walton-reviews-harlan-ellisons-last-dangerous-visions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/?p=9843","title":{"rendered":"Walton reviews Harlan Ellison&#039;s Last Dangerous Visions"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.tor.com\/index.php?option=com_content&#038;view=blog&#038;id=59006\">Jo Walton writes an intelligent, thought-provoking review<\/a> of <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/The_Last_Dangerous_Visions\">THE LAST DANGEROUS VISIONS<\/a>, edited by Harlan Ellison in 1982. &#8220;On reflection, not very dangerous,&#8221; she concludes. &#8220;&#8230;it wasn\u2019t visionary and they certainly hadn\u2019t seen the future. But we don\u2019t condemn science fiction for not being prediction\u2014and it\u2019s just as well.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>She discusses each of the volumes stories in detail, from Ian Watson&#8217;s &#8220;Universe on the Turn&#8221; to Jerry Pournelle&#8217;s &#8220;Free Enterprise.&#8221;<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>The best thing here is Ian Watson\u2019s \u201cUniverse on the Turn\u201d, a darkly funny satire of a future Britain that has become a surveillance state where everyone is obsessed with watching a \u201creality\u201d TV show about ordinary inane people trapped in a house together. Calling the show \u201cBig Brother\u201d is perhaps a little unsubtle, but the parallels between the claustrophobia of the show and the highly surveilled everyday lives is done with a light touch that recalls the author\u2019s \u201cThe Very Slow Time Machine\u201d and Whores of Babylon&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>Jerry Pournelle is here with a story called \u201cFree Enterprise\u201d in which NASA pretty much abandons space to robots, the shuttle fleet is allowed to decay, and prizes are offered for the first private companies to meet various space goals. This has the usual Pournelle style and flair, but this is a very familiar subject for him\u2014not dangerous, not visionary, not to mention so very much not what happened. I like him better in more upbeat romantic works like Exile and Glory.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>On a day when <a href=\"http:\/\/sfwa.org\/\">SFWA has returned to the previous incarnation of its website<\/a> because &#8220;the earlier website embodies tradition and also provides an important hurdle for new members. If they can\u2019t figure out how to navigate it, we don\u2019t want them,&#8221; a development that&#8217;s occurred at the same time as the announcement that <a href=\"http:\/\/www.imdb.com\/name\/nm0000647\/\">Alan Smithee<\/a> will be taking over as <a href=\"http:\/\/www.maryrobinettekowal.com\/journal\/withdrawing-from-vp-race\/\">SFWA vice-president<\/a>&#8211;it&#8217;s nice to read a smart review about the glory days of science fiction, even if those days weren&#8217;t so visionary after all.<\/p>\n<p>Go to <a href=\"http:\/\/www.tor.com\/index.php?option=com_content&#038;view=blog&#038;id=59006\">Tor<\/a> to read Walton&#8217;s review or to <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/April_fool%27s_day\">Wikipedia<\/a> for a different perspective on today&#8217;s events in science fiction.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Jo Walton writes an intelligent, thought-provoking review of THE LAST DANGEROUS VISIONS, edited by Harlan Ellison in 1982. &#8220;On reflection, not very dangerous,&#8221; she concludes. &#8220;&#8230;it wasn\u2019t visionary and they certainly hadn\u2019t seen the future. But we don\u2019t condemn science &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/?p=9843\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[92],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9843","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-whatever"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9843","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9843"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9843\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9843"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9843"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9843"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}