Wednesday, January 1, 2014

Towards a New Wave Canon

Fellow SF Signal Irregular Karen Burnham has set up (and worked through) three genre reading lists: Pre-Golden Age SF, Golden Age SF and a list of critical works.

Her next quest is the New Wave. I confess not being too sure what I'd include in such a list (and she said something similar), so I'm throwing it open here: what would you consider to be key works in the New Wave? What period of time should the New Wave include?

The definition is somewhat slippery. I recall seeing Larry Niven named in the movement at one point. Chip Delany writes in one essay that he doesn't consider himself to be part of the New Wave.

My thoughts:

Samuel R. Delany: Empire Star, Babel-17, Nova and several shorter works.

Damon Knight (as editor): The Orbit series of anthologies.

Michael Moorcock: The Jerry Cornelius books.

Johanna Russ: The Female Man (others?).

James Tiptree, Jr.: Up the Walls of the World (others?).

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