Funtimes

So I took an hour off this afternoon and got to have one of the most fun recurring experiences in my life. I went to the hairdressers and asked to get most of my hair cut off. They are always alarmed. Apparently, many people don't realise how short is short. I was going for something much longer than the pixie cut I've had before, so I was prepared and delighted to once again be sporting a manageable length of hair that, I've discovered, looks very fetching with a hairband.

I must purchase a wider range of hairbands.

Funtimes continued when I wandered to a bookshop and discovered that they have reprinted Harlan Ellison's Dangerous Visions anthology. It looks fantastic, but beyond that, it is one of the best anthologies of SF that I have ever read. The stories were published in 1967 and includes Philiop José Farmer's 'Riders of the Purple Wage'. The sequel, Again, Dangerous Visions, features Joanna Russ's 'When It Changed', the precursor to the amazing The Female Man. The sequel doesn't appear to have been reprinted since the 1970s, which is a shame, because I think it has some of the better stories between the two anthologies. I read these when I was in my late teens/early twenties and they shaped my writing by introducing me to the 1970s New Wave. Science fiction, Ellison and his compatriots taught, could be really strange. I still haven't figured out some of the stories. SF could also be witty, funny and extremely subversive. It could be unrecognisable (though I think it was probably a good idea that Ellison warned the reader what they might expect). You guys should definitely take a look at those anthologies, because they are brilliant. And hey, if enough copies of Dangerous Visions sell, they might even reprint Again, Dangerous Visions in its own shiny new cover!