England Swings Sf

Author: Judith Merril

This was the anthology that effectively introduced America to the British New Wave. Merril had been living in Britain for a year, and was struck by the energy and enthusiasm generated by the circle of writers that had now formed around Michael Moorcock's New Worlds. She brought many of those stories together (mostly from New Worlds though some from New Writings in SF) under a title that deliberately linked the science fiction with the "happening scene" in contemporary London (though the book was later republished under the far less culturally specific title of The Space-Time Journal). Few of the stories here were major works in their own right, but collectively it presents a superb cross-section of what was happening in British science fiction at the time. And t was the first chance many American readers had to encounter the work of new writers who would go on to be major figures in science fiction, including Christopher Priest ("The Run"), Josephine Saxton ("Ne De ja Vu Pas"), Keith Roberts ("Manscarer"), Langdon Jones ("The Hall of Machines"), David I. Masson ("Psychosmosis") and Hilary Bailey ("Dr Gelabius"), not to mention Brian Aldiss ("Still Trajectories") and J.G. Ballard ("You and Me and the Continuum"). Why it's on the list: Much of the most innovative work during the new wave was being done in short stories. Other than working your way through all of the editions of New Worlds between 1964 and 1971, the best way to encounter those stories, and the spirit of experiment and adventure that went with them, is in the pages of this collection.