ABSTRACT
The New Wave both dominates and complicates histories of this period, with a multitude of contradictory claims made for its inuence (Latham 2005: 202). For some it is “the single most important development in science fiction” (Priest 1978: 164), an era that “transformed the science fiction landscape” (Silverberg 2001: 4), but others suggest that it is a meaningless generalization (Delany and Russ 1984: 31) or that it never really existed (Dozois 1983: 12; Ellison 1974: 40, 42). Even this brief sample suggests “an era of generational dissent, crisis and rebellion” (Luckhurst 2005: 141), leading to representations of the New Wave as absolute rupture, at the expense of important continuities both before and after (Latham 2006: 252-3).
