Dangerous Visions Read Online Free PDF Page B

hasten to point out my "new thing" is neither Judith Merril's "new thing" nor Michael Moorcock's "new thing." Ask for us by our brand names.
    I smiled inanely. I'd never edited an anthology, what the hell did I know about it? (An attitude many critics of this book may voice when they finish. But onward . . .)
    I had, shortly prior to this, sold Robert Silverberg a short story for a forthcoming anthology he was assembling. I had beefed about some minor matter or other, and received a reply, part of which follows in Silverbob's own inimitable style.
    Oct 2 65. Dear Harlan: You'll be glad to know that in the course of a long and wearying dream last night I watched you win two Hugos at last year's Worldcon. You acted pretty smug about it, too. I'm not sure which categories you led, but one of them was probably Unfounded Bitching. Permit me a brief and fatherly lecture in response to your letter of permission on the anthology (which I'm sure will startle the sweet ladies at Duell, Sloan & Pearce.) . . .
    At which point he launched into a scathing denunciation of my attitudes toward accepting some piddling amount for anthology reprinting of a second-rate story he should have known better than to include to begin with. There then followed several paragraphs of chitchat intended (unsuccessfully, I might add) to mollify me; paragraphs which are hilarious, but which bear little import for here and now, and so you'll have to read them in the Syracuse University archives sometime in the future. But now we come down to the pee and the ess, which read thus and so:
    "Why don't you do an anthology? HARLAN ELLISON PICKS OFF-BEAT CLASSICS OF SF, or something . . . ."
    He signed the letter "Ivar Jorgensen." But that's another story.
    Spinrad nuhdged me. Edit, edit, mein kind . So I got on the phone longdistance (this is one word, I learned it from my Yiddish grandmother, who blanched every time you suggested making one). To Lawrence Ashmead, at Doubleday. He had never spoken to me before. Had he but known what new horrors! new horrors! awaited him because of his common civility, he would have dropped the offensive instrument out the eighth-story window of the Ministry of Truth-style building on Park Avenue where Doubleday keeps its Manhattan offices.
    But he listened. I wove golden magic threads of spidery illusion. A big anthology, all new stories, controversial, too fierce for magazines to buy, top writers, headliners from the mainstream, action, adventure, pathos, a cast of thousands, a parsnip in a pear tree.
    Hooked. On the spot, hooked. The silver-tongued orator had struck again. Oh, was he bagged on the idea. On October 18, I received the following letter:
     
    Dear Harlan: The consensus of the editors who have looked at your prospectus for DANGEROUS VISIONS is that we need something more definite to go on . . . . Unless you can find out exactly what is available in original stories and can supply me with a fairly definite table of contents, I don't stand a chance of getting approval on this project from our Publishing Committee. Anthologies are a dime a dozen these days and unless they are special, they just don't justify a large advance. In fact, it is my policy to limit anthologies (unless they are "special") to authors who regularly contribute novels to the Doubleday list. So, if you can insure most of the contents of DANGEROUS VISIONS with some definite commitments . . .and I know this is tantamount to the situation of the Butterscotch Man who can't run until he is warm and can't get warm until he runs, but . . .
     
    Now a piece of historical information. Traditionally, anthologies have been composed of stories already first published in serial, or magazine, form. They can be purchased for hardcover anthologization for a fraction of their original cost. The profit for a writer is made from subsequent sales, paperback reprint, foreign rights, etc. And since he has been paid once for the piece already, it is gravy.