In 1973 celebrated writer and editor Harlan Ellison announced the third and final volume of his unprecedented anthology series, which began with Dangerous Visions and continued with Again, Dangerous Visions. But for reasons undisclosed, The Last Dangerous Visions was never completed.
Now, six years after Ellison’s passing, science fiction’s most famous unpublished book is here. And with it, the heartbreaking true story of the troubled genius behind it.
Provocative and controversial, socially conscious and politically charged, wildly imaginative yet deeply grounded, the thirty-two never-before-published stories, essays, and poems in The Last Dangerous Visions stand as a testament to Ellison’s lifelong pursuit of art, uniting a diverse range of science fiction writers both famous and newly minted, including Max Brooks, Edward Bryant, Cecil Castellucci, James S. A. Corey, Howard Fast, P. C. Hodgell, Dan Simmons, Robert Sheckley, Adrian Tchaikovsky, Mildred Downey Broxon, and Cory Doctorow, among others.
The historic publication of The Last Dangerous Visions completes the long-awaited final chapter in an incredible literary legacy.
Harlan Ellison (1934–2018) wrote and edited more than 120 books and more than 1,700 stories, essays, and articles, as well as dozens of screenplays and teleplays. He won the Hugo Award nine times, the Nebula Award four times, the Bram Stoker Award six times (including the Lifetime Achievement Award in 1996), the Edgar Allan Poe Award of the Mystery Writers of America twice, the Georges Méliès Fantasy Film Award twice, and was awarded the Silver Pen for Journalism by PEN, the international writer’s union. He was named a Grand Master by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America in 2006.
J. Michael Straczynski is a legendary American writer and television producer—best known as the author of The Complete Guide to Scriptwriting, as the creator and showrunner for the science fiction TV series Babylon 5 and, from 2001 to 2007, the writer for the long-running Marvel comic book series The Amazing Spider-Man.
Max Brooks is a senior nonresident fellow at the Modern War Institute at West Point and the Atlantic Council’s Brent Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security. His bestselling books include Minecraft: The Island, The Zombie Survival Guide, and World War Z, which was adapted into a 2013 movie starring Brad Pitt. His graphic novels include The Harlem Hellfighters.
James S. A. Corey is the pen name of fantasy authors Daniel Abraham and Ty Franck. Their Expanse series receive a 2020 Hugo Award for best series. In addition to writing the novels and short stories of The Expanse, they wrote and produced the television series of the same name.
Born in Decatur, IIlinois, Richard Peck has written over 41 books for young readers. He is the winner of the 1990 Margaret A. Edwards Award, a prestigious award sponsored by the Young Adult Library Services Association of the American Library Association in cooperation with the School Library Journal; the 1990 National Council of Teachers of English/ALAN Award for outstanding contributions to young adult literature; and the Mystery Writers of America Edgar Allan Poe Award. In 2001 Mr. Peck was awarded the Newbery Medal for A Year Down Yonder.
Cory Doctorow is a science fiction author, activist and journalist. He is the author of many books, including The Lost Cause, a solarpunk science-fiction novel of hope amidst the climate emergency. His nonfiction book The Internet Con: How to Seize the Means of Computation is a Big Tech disassembly manual. Other recent books include Red Team Blues, a science fiction crime thriller; Chokepoint Capitalism, nonfiction about monopoly and creative labor markets; the Little Brother series for young adults; In Real Life, a graphic novel; and the picture book Poesy the Monster Slayer. In 2020, he was inducted into the Canadian Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame.
Dan Simmons, the author of critically acclaimed suspense and science fiction novels, is a recipient of numerous major international awards, including the Hugo Award, World Fantasy Award, Bram Stoker Award, and the Shirley Jackson Award, among others.
Adrian Tchaikovsky is a British science-fiction and fantasy writer known for a wide-variety of work including the Children of Time, Final Architecture, Dogs of War, Tyrant Philosophers and Shadows of the Apt series, as well as standalone books such as Elder Race, Doors of Eden, Spiderlight and many others. Children of Time and its series has won the Arthur C Clarke and BSFA awards, and his other works have won the British Fantasy, British Science Fiction and Sidewise Awards.