Redshift: Introduction

Minus five points for opening with a dictionary definition.

Al Sarrantonio didn’t pussyfoot around, he wanted Redshift to be the “finest original sf anthology of the last twenty-five years”. His introduction opens with that titular definition because he wants to expand the horizons of the genre. He is also keen to following the footsteps of Dangerous Visions and he identifies four goals of the “Ellison Revolution”:

1) Taboo busting
2) Experimental
3) Expanded the field
4) Really good

It is Sarrantonio’s view that one and two are redundant; the battle has been won, there are no more taboos and everyone is free to experiment. Fair enough but that doesn’t leave much to connect him to Harlan Ellison, he is just left with stories that are a) mind-expanding and b) good. Laudable certainly but hardly revolutionary. He could just said “here is a big, fat original anthology that I think is pretty good” and dropped the iconoclasm. However, in keeping with his wishes I will be marking the individual stories on both quality and shiftiness.

Oh, and minus a million points for including one of his own stories in the anthology. (More on that when we get to it).