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Rating: 
Summary: A Curate's Egg
Review: ....is good in parts.I read about this anthology when I was in my teens, in the 1970s, but never encountered it until I literally fell over it second hand. A couple of quid swapped hands and there I had it... I too was diappointed in 'Riders of the Purple Wage' - but found a great deal of pleasure in reading less publcised stories like 'A gift for Juliette', 'Judas' and 'Shall the dust praise thee'. Fritz Leiber's 'Gonna roll the bones' was also a delight. I think my problem with this book was the number of stories that dropped in to the 'New Wave' of Science Fiction that was prevalent in the mid to late 1960s when this collection was first made. I guess I'm a fan of the 'flange and grommet' school of science fiction and find some of the sociological meanderings in this book to be a little pointless 40 years on. Is it as good as it's hype? In my opionion, No. But there are some good stories in here. It will entertain, inspire and infuriate you if you are interested in science fiction, and I guess that's all you can ask for from an anthology!
Rating: 
Summary: The Perilous Life of Anthologies
Review: First, I should make it clear that I bought this book when it
was new back in 1967. I thought the stories were terrific,
and the commentary Ellison provided was both entertaining
and informative. If nothing else, it helps form a picture of
the times--and there's where we start approaching the qualms I
have about the book. An anthology of original stories, no matter how good, is a time
capsule. It contains a snapshot of the period, and the yoking
of all these dissimilar stories written within a few years of
one another certainly gives me that sensation after all these
years. People who are interested in this aspect, either for
personal or scholarly reasons, would find this book valuable. However, when such considerations are eliminated, I ask myself
who would want to read this book in this format today? There are
wonderful stories in this book: the stories by Silverberg,
Leiber, Delaney, Zelazny, are, I think, particularly accomplished;
many other stories here are worthy of rereading.
The problem is that the book is to some extent a victim
of its own success. The best of these stories have become
widely known in the intervening decades. They're practically
all available elsewhere. I fear that familiarity with the
material here may lessen the impact of the book. For all that, I still like the book alot, and it is incredibly
important in science fiction history. But obviously, there are
questions that did not exist when the book was new.
Rating: 
Summary: Long Live the "Golden Age"!
Review: Fritz Leiber distances himself from the other authors in this book in that his story, "Gonna Roll the Bones", has a story and understandable characters, even if those characters are not admirable. If there is a way to find this story in another collection, I would recommend finding it there. The remainder of this book is not intended to be enjoyed. Instead it is intended as a rebellion against SF authors from the "Golden Age". My suspicion is that Harlan Ellison intended to "revolutionize" SF with this book, but all he wound up doing was showing that revolutions start with ideas, not declaring "Revolution!". The irony was that a "Golden Age" author, Leiber, wrote the only quality story in this anti-"Golden Age" book.
Rating:
Summary: Long Live the "Golden Age"!
Review: Fritz Leiber distances himself from the other authors in this book in that his story, "Gonna Roll the Bones", has a story and understandable characters, even if those characters are not admirable. If there is a way to find this story in another collection, I would recommend finding it there. The remainder of this book is not intended to be enjoyed. Instead it is intended as a rebellion against SF authors from the "Golden Age". My suspicion is that Harlan Ellison intended to "revolutionize" SF with this book, but all he wound up doing was showing that revolutions start with ideas, not declaring "Revolution!". The irony was that a "Golden Age" author, Leiber, wrote the only quality story in this anti-"Golden Age" book.
Rating:
Summary: No longer quite so dangerous however...
Review: Of course these stories aren't as "dangerous" or revolutionary as they were when they were published 35 years ago. The culture and SF have evolved quite a bit in that time. That said, its still a pretty good collection of stories, and even more interesting as a piece of SF history.
Harlan Ellison deserves a lot of credit for preserving this book as it was, resisting the temptation to update it (like certain directors have futily tried to update their older movies). This includes his introductions, which are written in the venacular of the time, dig, (and which less secure writers might have been embarassed by). To be honest, I found them the most entertaining part of the book, and they give the reader a great insight into the time in which they were written.
Rating: 
Summary: The first time is still the best
Review: This book is stunning. Most of it is still shocking to this day. Maybe not amongst sf writers and readers. (Certainly not after Delaney's Dalghren.) But in the increasingly hypocritical and fundamentalist world we live in this book still lays down the gauntlet and says, "Non serviam!" The first story, by Lester Del Rey, has humanity hunting down and imprisoning God. Do you seriously see anyone in the clique that runs the Whitehouse for the foreseeable future paying people to say these sorts of things? And Poul Anderson's story takes the sf formula (an average everyday phenomenon seen in a new way) and applies it to incest for incendiary results. For my money the best story in the book is Phillip K. Dick's. The guy was the only American to report on the sacred honestly, in every one of his books. Not only is God a killer. He's the Devil. It's about time someone said it. Ballard's meditation on sex is a close second best. There's a story by William S. Burroughs here about a doll house. It's the usual demented Burroughs stuff, complete with Satanic cackling, only without the cut-up method. Read this book if you want to clear out the cobwebs and confirm that you are thinking correctly after all.
Rating:
Summary: Influential and Still (Mostly) Revolutionary
Review: This classic anthology of speculative fiction (a deeper form that standard sci-fi) deserves the praise and influence it has enjoyed since 1967. These stories were indeed dangerous for their era, and most of them have proven to be well ahead of their time, retaining the power of expanding your literary horizons even today. Some of these stories are downright shocking - including the submissions from Miriam Allen deFord, Robert Bloch, and Carol Emshwiller. Others are bizarre to the point of great insight - like the stories from Brian W. Aldiss, Larry Eisenberg, and Norman Spinrad. Others have the great social commentary and human drama that most sci-fi writers would kill to be capable of - especially the submissions from Frederick Pohl and Howard Rodman. The true key to this compilation is the editing work of Harlan Ellison, whose sarcastic and caustic personality shines through almost every page, even though he only wrote one of the stories himself. (That isn't self-glamorization, because his submission is an endorsed sequel to Bloch's story.) Ellison's introductions to each story combine the best in praising and roasting, and he certainly located many fascinating writers. Here we can see up-and-comers who later went on to greater things, along with intriguing unknowns who encourage where-are-they-now speculation. Another groundbreaking aspect of this collection is Ellison's use of afterwords by each author to comment on their own stories. This is usually successful except for a few cases of self-aggrandizement by the writers, and at least one attempt to explain a sub-par story (J.G. Ballard). Aside from a few minor clunkers, there is just one story that may have once been dangerous but is now a flop. That's the 70-plus-page novella from Philip Jose Farmer, which has aged wretchedly with an overload of creaky 60's politics and an unreadably faddish writing style. That's about the only story here that's not still capable of opening new horizons all these decades later.
Rating:
Summary: Dangerously dated
Review: This is a difficult review for me to write. I really didn't like the collection though I wanted to. I believe the problem is that the success of this book has made it seem nowhere near dangerous 35 years later. They pushed the envelope, now everbody goes there and their works seem commonplace. On the plus side we get some early works from Zelazny and Delany, Harlan's acerbic, biting introductions cannot hide the love he actually feels for his other writers. There are some quite good stories in here, typically these stories are where the author didn't feel the need to try to be "edgy", or "dangerous" or "relevant" and let the pushing of the mores come from the story, not the other way around. The stories where it seems the authors wanted to be "dangerous" don't come across well now. They are either irrelevant, naive and some even seem to come across as little children playing potty-mouth in the absence of their parents. When the stories are bad, they are very, very bad. Good works do abound in this collection, thus the three stars. However some are so bad you'll wonder if it's worth continuing. The last stories are generally stronger. The stories that begin the collection are the duller and poorer ones. I am disappointed I did not find this to be revolutionary, and it does not live up to its hype, nor legend. It is a look at a certain time in the field, a time when the style of writing changed, or tried to change with some good stories and some bad ones. That's all it is now I'm sorry to say.
Rating:
Summary: Classic anthology of serious SF
Review: This is Harlan Ellison's ground-breaking 60s SF anthology for which he invited writers to explore "dangerous" themes that were generally considered taboo at that time. Even now, many of these tales still retain the capacity to shock. Like most anthologies, the quality of the content is uneven, but the overall result is elevated by Ellison's story introductions, the afterwords to each story by the writers themselves, and the general sense that one is reading a serious attempt to push the genre in a more significant direction. Standouts include stories by Ellison himself, Fritz Leiber, David R. Bunch, Sonya Dorman, JG Ballard, and Norman Spinrad. Interestingly, the only real stinkers in the book are produced by veteran writers: Theodore Sturgeon, Damon Knight, and Poul Anderson.
Rating:
Summary: Most Influential SF Anthology Ever.
Review: Too many good and great stories in this one to list in this review. Keep in mind that these were original stories which were never before published. A rare phenomena indeed for SF. Often, it turns out that only a small portion of the yearly writings in the SF field is good. It was a time of changes back then. Many daring, not before tolerated ideas.
At the time these stories were written they were considered _dangerous_. They remained dangerous for a long time and when I read them in these days I can see why. Innovating and shocking they still are, well some of them. A great read and necessary reading for SF lovers.
This book has also useful for-and afterwords.
Lately, many o.o.p. books are instilled with new life, but I don't think this will be available long. It can't hurt to have a bit of a history of SF on your shelves. However, it remains a period book. Some dated stories, but always interesting.
No SF library is complete without it.
One other reviewer mentioned some favorites. The Bloch story is tremendously fun to read. As is the PKD story.
Good reading here.
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