New Worlds: An Anthology

From Barnes & Noble

The Barnes & Noble Review
From its inception as a fan magazine in pre-WWII England, New Worlds consistently published controversial and groundbreaking works by authors like Samuel R. Delany, Harlan Ellison, Fritz Leiber, and John Brunner and became the vanguard of the New Wave writing movement that redefined science fiction in the 1960s. In New Worlds: An Anthology, Michael Moorcock -- who worked as New Worlds' editor from 1964 to 1971 -- collects a "sampling" of short stories that appeared in the magazine during that revolutionary era.

Included are landmark works like "The Four-Color Problem" by Barrington Bayley, a masterpiece of ingenuity that is part mathematical dissertation and part dark comedy about how a satellite mapping survey reveals that geometry is "wrong" and that the Earth has extensive areas of undiscovered countries. Also included is "Gravity" by Harvey Jacobs, an unusual look at the Space Age from the ground -- or more specifically, the bed of an astronaut's wife! Other powerful selections include J. G. Ballard's "The Assassination Weapon," a decidedly contentious look at personalities and events of the 1960s through the eyes of a mentally unstable protagonist, and "Running Down" by M. John Harrison, where an unfortunate man emanates entropy -- with disastrous results.

With award-winning works from such noteworthy authors as Harrison, Ballard, Norman Spinrad, Brian W. Aldiss, and Thomas M. Disch, this impressive collection captures the inexhaustible experimentation and irreverence, the innovative literary techniques -- the pure creative genius -- of that period when science fiction transformed itself into the boundless genre that it is today. Paul Goat Allen

Publishers Weekly

New Worlds, an anthology edited by Michael Moorcock, showcases 30 stories from the British SF magazine of the same name that made such a literary splash in the 1960s. Contributors include M. John Harrison, James Sallis, Thomas M. Disch and Charles Platt. Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.

Library Journal

From John T. Sladek's incisive look at office politics ("Masterson and the Clerks") to essays on Tolkien and James Blish, this anthology of short stories, essays, and poems represents the best of the British sf publication New Worlds. Compiled and introduced by sf writer Moorcock, it makes up a time capsule of British sf and belongs in large libraries. Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews

For your consideration: a collection of mindbenders from the groundbreaking speculative fiction magazine of the 1960s and '70s. Psychotropic drugs not necessary but recommended. There probably wasn't a genre or style out there in the 1960s that needed a swift kick in the rear more than the often terminally adolescent fields of SF and fantasy, and the British New Worlds was there to provide it. Since Moorcock has now consigned himself to his gnomic pursuit of all the things in his Multiverse novels, it's interesting to get a feisty and engaged introduction here from the magazine's stalwart leader. In it, Moorcock revisits fights with the censors and the old-line straight literary and SF establishments as the magazine pushed boundaries, broke with convention, and was treated with churlish scorn for it. It would be wonderful to report that the works here hadn't dated, that they are as stunning and eye-opening as when they first appeared. But, alas, not so. Barrington Bailey's "The Four-Color Problem" is symptomatic: a lengthy dissection of said problem that involves much invoking of vectors and pseudoscientific principles but ends up sounding like nothing so much as the compiled ramblings of stoned philosophy and physics majors, dashed with surrealism. The specter of William S. Burroughs runs rife through the book, from Bailey and Moorcock's invocations to Langdon Jones's cinematic experiment, The Eye of the Lens, as do the general themes of violence, paranoia, and the surreal. There are a few successful items, like J.G. Ballard's skittish and malevolent "The Assassination Weapon," with heavy nods to Dada, and Thomas M. Disch's mildly dystopic future cityscape "Angouleme." Mostly, though,once you've stripped away what might once have been shocking, it's hard not to be distracted by the self-indulgence and overreliance on unconventional acid-trip narrative, at the expense of true vision. Top-notch for its time and still spiked with the occasional stunner, but overly dense and unfriendly to an extreme.