Some pieces here, like that on Barry Malzberg, are brief, almost squiblike. All of it immensely readable and shot through with photos of writers and with absolutely wonderful book covers, hundreds of them. Thirty-five years of books, of catalogs and literary crawlspaces, countless diverse authors, editors, and publishers, not to mention 22 contributors to this 209-page, 8×10 book, make for quite a mixed lot, of course: pop culture history, bits of lit crit channeling Trilling’s “adversary intent,” bloodhounds with prey at bay, the occasional daft electrician looking for connections.

Science fiction, with its basis in speculation, possibilities, and the future, became the ideal vessel for expression in an era in which the focus of many was on the questioning and refusal of established power and social relations, on the one hand, and the exhortation and exploration of radical scenarios, on the other.Ĭhiefly concerned with cultural expression and social recognition, the editors continue, these resistance and liberatory movements opened “a flood of new work that challenged and destabilized the conservative norms of narrative and expression, as well as outlook and belief.” It strives to document major trends and publications that, mid-century on, helped bring radical, substantive – and enduring – change to the field.

Dangerous Visions and New Worlds is not, as the title might suggest, a deliberation on Ellison’s anthology and Moorcock’s magazine its aim is much broader. History, to be useful and in any true sense accurate, must be anecdotal, a compendium assembled from multiple points of view and perspectives. Delany, Wesleyan University Press, 2021, $24.95 Higgins, University of Iowa Press, 2021, $39.95 Reverse Colonization: Science Fiction, Imperial Fantasy, and Alt-victimhood, by David M. Dangerous Visions and New Worlds: Radical Science Fiction, 1950-1985, edited by Andrew Nette and Iain McIntyre, PM Press, 2021, $29.95

Dangerous visions book