This collection was quite an eye-opener at the time of publication in 1967 and impressed me two years later when I borrowed a copy from a friend soon after matriculating at Grinnell College. Other than the fact that Ellison was able to obtain original work from luminaries in the field, his emphatic instruction was that they were to submit without fear of censorship. In other words, he encouraged his writers to push the limits and, by the standards of the time, many of them did. I was particularly "shocked" by the inclusion of a very naughty piece by Kurt Vonnegut.