Babel-17
Nebula winner (1966).
Book Entry · Science Fiction
What is Dangerous Visions (editor) about?
Thirty-three original stories commissioned on a single brief: write the thing no magazine would print. Ellison's anthology — with Lester del Rey on God, Philip José Farmer on riders of the purple wage, Delany on the holy foreskin of a dead spacer, and Dick, Niven, Sturgeon and Aldiss between — detonated American SF's remaining taboos in one volume, with the editor's carnival-barker introductions stitching it together. It won special citations, multiple individual awards, and a sequel (Again, Dangerous Visions); the legendarily unpublished third volume became the field's longest-running ghost story until its posthumous 2024 appearance.
Why it matters
The single most influential original anthology in SF history: the American New Wave's founding document and the proof that the genre's future lay beyond magazine censorship.
Read next
Behold the Man
Nebula winner and the New Wave's most notorious provocation: time-travel paradox as theology, handled with a seriousness that outlasted the scandal.
The Big Time
Hugo winner (1958).