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.

Read more about this topic:  M. John Harrison

Famous quotes containing the words wave, science, fiction and/or movement:

    The wave of evil washes all our institutions alike.
    Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)

    Everything in science depends on what one calls an aperçu, on becoming aware of what is at the bottom of the phenomena. Such becoming aware is infinitely fertile.
    Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe (1749–1832)

    ... if we can imagine the art of fiction come alive and standing in our midst, she would undoubtedly bid us to break her and bully her, as well as honour and love her, for so her youth is renewed and her sovereignty assured.
    Virginia Woolf (1882–1941)

    The director is simply the audience. So the terrible burden of the director is to take the place of that yawning vacuum, to be the audience and to select from what happens during the day which movement shall be a disaster and which a gala night. His job is to preside over accidents.
    Orson Welles (1915–1984)