We’ve spent time looking at the Golden Age of science fiction, but it
couldn’t last. Many young writers entering the field came to feel, either
instantly, like
Thomas M Disch,
or after some years' slogging away at conventional commercial science fiction,
like
Harlan
Ellison and
Robert
Silverberg, that genre science fiction had become a straitjacket; though
widely supposed to emphasize change and newness, science fiction had somehow
become conservative.
As the 1960s arrived, in the minds of many, it was time for science fiction
to 'grow up.' A New Wave of authors began to experiment with literary and
artistic form, and to break away from the earlier 'pulp' science fiction as
adolescent and poorly written. The magazine
New Worlds, under
Michael Moorcock,
who became editor in 1964, was prominent in this new movement.