| New Wave n.
|
1988 R. A. Lupoff New Wave in J. Gunn New Encyclopedia of Science Fiction 328
New Wave was a term first applied, by anthologist Judith Merril, to the avant-garde stories published in the British science-fiction magazine New Worlds for a few years after 1964. Some writers and critics deny that there ever was such a thing as the New Wave in SF. They are doubtless correct in the sense that the literary movement lacked organization, a broadly accepted credo, or a formal membership list. However, an identifiable group of writers and editors operating for approximately ten years, from the mid-1960s to the mid-1970s, did have an immense impact on the field. In retrospect there can be little doubt that they represented a defacto literary school, whether this was their conscious intention or not. The term New Wave was borrowed from the French cinema. In SF it originated in and was first published in New Worlds when that magazine was controlled by Michael Moorcock. Although the magazine had been published since 1946, it was only with Moorcock’s editorship eighteen years later that the movement began to coalesce. It should be noted, further, that the writers who participated in the movement had in many cases been writing well before this event. Further, the roots of and influences on New Wave writing had existed in general (mainstream) literature for many years. The essential nature of New Wave SF can best be seen in comparison with more traditional SF, particularly that categorized as ‘pulp’. Pulp SF is primarily concerned with physical problem solving and/or combat. Conflict is seen in terms of good protagonist versus bad antagonist (or occasionally natural catastrophe). Moral and psychological ambiguities are few. Style tends to be simple and structure of narration straightforward. In contrast, New Wave writers frequently saw problems as social or psychological in nature, subject to resolution only through radical alterations of the psyche or similarly radical restructurings of society. The conflict they wrote about is between the victimized individual and oppressive society or nature, or it takes the form of a pathological society at war with itself. Moral and psychological ambiguities lie at the heart of most New Wave stories. The movement is characterized by an emphasis on style and experimentation; the structure of the narration could be anything an author found successful. Resulting structural and linguistic experiments, although far from startling in the context of mainstream experimental or avant-garde literature, were startling to readers whose ears had been trained on the pages of Astounding Science Fiction. By these criteria, both GeorgeOrwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949) and Alfred Bester’s The Demolished Man (1953) may be seen as forerunners of the New Wave.
|
