Thread 24668252

What is your opinion on the Sci-Fi New Wave wars?

Gene Wolfe was on the Nebula Award final ballot with this story and was initially announced as the winner—until the master of ceremonies, Isaac Asimov, was told that it had placed second to No Award. Gardner Dozois picks up the story in Jo Walton’s An Informal History of the Hugo Awards (Tor, 2018):

>I was there, sitting at Gene Wolfe’s table, in fact. He’d actually stood up, and was starting to walk toward the podium, when Isaac was told about his mistake. Gene shrugged and sat down quietly, like the gentleman he is, while Isaac stammered an explanation of what had happened. It was the one time I ever saw Isaac totally flustered, and, in fact, he felt guilty about the incident to the end of his days. It’s bullshit that this was the result of confusing ballot instructions. This was the height of the War of the New Wave, and passions between the New Wave camp and the conservative Old Guard camp were running high. (The same year, Michael Moorcock said in a review that the only way SFWA could have found a worse thing than Ringworld to give the Nebula to was to give it to a comic book.) The fact that the short story ballot was almost completely made up of stuff from Orbit [Damon Knight’s anthology series] had outraged the Old Guard, particularly James Sallis’s surreal “The Creation of Bennie Good,” and they block-voted for No Award as a protest against “nonfunctional word patterns” making the ballot. Judy-Lynn del Rey told me as much immediately after the banquet, when she was exuberantly gloating about how they’d “put Orbit in its place” with the voting results, and actually said, “We won!”

It's a diversion, a way to pass time, but at least there is some intellectual and thought-provoking element to it. Classic novels of the 19th century were also diversions, but they had historical meaning and thoughtful themes. Even this little drama in this little world has been lost to time, it is a diversion in itself. I don't make too much of it, but I don't throw away 20th century fiction as nonsense.

We all strive to be a part of something bigger than ourselves. There is something endearing and innocent about this little revolution of books, and to be honest I am indulging this partly just to provide you some intellectual company and something to read. This is basically a full review of a literary movement, it is more than marketing. Yet we can see that it exists to be read, to pass the time, a story told by a fire. To fill the pages. The author is documenting a natural transition of style and format in a literary tradition, one that functions in large part as entertainment but has grown to show more merit than just amusement.

If we dived from the boat, swam through the depths, and gathered up these long ago authors from the sea floor, there are some that will yield pearls. That is all that will last of them, their pearls. That is all you can expect from this world and its people. If it brings you solace, then it does not hurt to admire these pearls in the free corners of some passing day before the great wave eternity washes over.

>>24668302
look at this smart retard

>>24668252 (OP)
cool charts
you have talent
make moar

>>24668302
Thank you for the comment. Very well said.

I feel this sums up the New Wave of Sci-Fi. Notice, if you will, your lack of surprise at seeing the names in the appropriate columns. This is either because you lack familiarity to have any sense of betrayal or instead because they aligned very strongly with the thrust of their work. New Wave was an upset, a betrayal of the idea that futurological progress was unitarian. The men with slide rulers who had lived peacefully with the dwindling embers of the two-fisted men were being confronted and replaced by whizz-bangers who wanted to turn the lens of speculation on social what-ifs and daring social trespass. The short story in its brevity captures the movement was that one Dangerous Visions screed that ends with the reveal that the main character is gay, cut to black.

>>24668422
This is addressed in the above piece, and the thing is some people used New Wave as an analog for conservatism vs liberalism or dove vs hawk. However, if you were to apply new wave on the basis of storytelling, you have golden age writers on the opposition to Vietnam side, and Orbit writers on the support side, such as Lafferty. This obviously breaks the expected political mold.

Heinlein's writing was noted to become very new wave esque in style despite him being perceived as the John Wayne of Sci Fi.

As >>24668266
said, Gene Wolfe was denied a nebula as part of an effort to stick it to Orbit, which was perceived as new wave. Wolfe was also featured three times in Again, Dangerous Visions. Yet, we obviously know that Wolfe would be accused of being a reactionary by the hippies if they knew his beliefs. That doesn't fit in the expected political mold.

The problem is that New Wave was ill defined, and many people had their own personal definitions of what it meant and what was going on.

>>24668266
>Michael Moorcock said in a review that the only way SFWA could have found a worse thing than Ringworld to give the Nebula to was to give it to a comic book
LMAO

>>24668695
I found that humerous as well.

>>24668695
I found that humorous as well.

did they ever tackle the cold war via scifi plots and if so what are some examples?

>>24669067
No, that never happened.