The Last Dangerous Visions

The Last Dangerous Visions is a speculative fiction anthology conceived by Harlan Ellison as the third volume of a series begun with Dangerous Visions (1967) and continued in Again, Dangerous Visions (1972). Ellison announced it in 1973, but never completed it, and for decades it remained the most famous unpublished book in science fiction. The project became a byword for controversy because of Ellison's treatment of the writers who sold him their stories, estimated at around 120, many of whom died before the book appeared.

British author Christopher Priest, whose story "An Infinite Summer" had been commissioned for the anthology in 1974 and withdrawn four months later without any response from Ellison, wrote a lengthy critique of the failed project. It first appeared in 1987 in his fanzine Deadloss as The Last Deadloss Visions, proved popular enough to be expanded in two further editions that year and in 1988, and was reissued by Fantagraphics Books in 1994 as The Book on the Edge of Forever, an allusion to Ellison's Star Trek episode. That edition was nominated for a Hugo Award for Best Related Work.

Ellison died in 2018 with the anthology still unfinished. In 2020 his executor, J. Michael Straczynski, announced that he would oversee its publication. The final volume is far shorter than originally planned, since it excludes withdrawn stories and those overtaken by real events, and it combines work by established contemporary science fiction writers with stories by newer authors, including one by the previously unpublished Kayo Hartenbaum. Published in October 2024 by Blackstone Publishers, it includes artwork by Tim Kirk, who had been commissioned in the 1970s. It also contains an essay by Straczynski about Ellison's struggle with bipolar disorder, which was never diagnosed, presented as a final unpublished work by Ellison himself.