M. John Harrison - The New Wave Science Fiction Movement

The New Wave Science Fiction Movement

From 1968 to 1975 he was literary editor of the New Wave science fiction magazine New Worlds, regularly contributing criticism. He was central to the New Wave movement which also included writers such as Norman Spinrad, Barrington Bayley, Langdon Jones and Thomas M. Disch. As reviewer for New Worlds he often used the pseudonym "Joyce Churchill" and was trenchantly critical of many works and writers published under the rubric of science fiction. One of his critical pieces, "By Tennyson Out of Disney" was initially written for Sword and Sorcery Magazine, a publication planned by Kenneth Bulmer but which never appeared; the piece was printed in New Worlds 2.

Amongst his works of that period are three stories utilising the Jerry Cornelius character invented by Michael Moorcock. (These stories do not appear in any of Harrison's own collections but do appear in the Nature of the Catastrophe and New Nature of the Catastophe published under Moorcock's name.) Other early stories appearing from 1966, featured in anthologies such as New Writings in SF edited by John Carnell, and in magazines such as Transatlantic Review, the Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, New Worlds and Quark.

A number of Harrison's short stories of this early period remain uncollected, gathered neither in his first collection The Machine in Shaft Ten, nor in his later collections.