Old New Worlds: January 1965.

 With a new year beginning, and the magazine evidently pulling in enough sales to see itself returned to a monthly schedule, the editorial of New Worlds # 146 finds Michael Moorcock in a buoyant mood, judging 1964 to have been “..another boom year in the field of SF publishing”, and singling out in particular four “brilliant books” published in the past twelve months: Ballard’s ‘The Terminal Beach’, Aldiss’s ‘Greybeard’, Charles Harness’s ‘The Paradox Men’, and – notably – William Burroughs’ ‘Dead Fingers Talk’ (a sort of “remix” of his ‘Naked Lunch’ texts if I remember correctly?), qualified here as “a book which can’t strictly be called SF, yet which deals in all the ideas found in SF”.

After the numerous thrilling and thought-provoking yarns illustrated above (disappointingly, this, and indeed most of the subsequent issues of NW I own, entirely fail to credit their illustrators and cover designers), this issue’s review & commentary section kicks off with a jaunty ‘background’ piece by Gordon Walters, examining the history of the ubiquitous ‘hyper-space drive’ in SF, and swiftly digressing into a discussion of the dilemmas faced by skiffy writers trying to keep pace with real world scientific discoveries:

“Before the first World War, heroic adventures on Mars ala E. R. Burroughs were quite plausible in light of what was known about Mars. Today, the science fiction writer moans softly: ‘I mustn’t dream of cream princesses enthroned on Mars because the astronomers insist that mammalian life is impossible. So I have to find an outlet for my sexual fantasies among a bunch of nasty green lichens!’”

Sex rears its inquisitive head once again on the letters pages, which this month are largely concerned with the aftermath of a Langdon Jones story entitled ‘I Remember Anita’, which was published in NW # 144, and which apparently took a more frank approach to mammalian life than many SF readers were used to.

“I’m not a prude, far from it!,” insists Louis E. Van Gastel of Alost, Belgium. “I enjoy pepper on my meat but I don’t eat a lot of pepper with a little meat if you see what I mean. […] But why must Mr. Jones express the feelings of a young, sensitive artist so crudely! It isn’t sex anymore, it’s downright pornography! What youngster, with refined artist’s feelings, would so blatantly overstress his sexual relation with an adored and respected mistress! No, sir, it should have had a more delicate touch!”

“Am I mistaken if I take your editorials as a warning for shocks to come?,” Mr. Van Gastel continues, “All right, shocks it will be, but please note the difference between shock and disgust!”

A curt response from our editor simply clarifies that NW’s staff “are not publishing a magazine for schoolboys”.

Ivor Latto of Merryton Avenue, Glasgow takes a rather more measured approach, but emerges equally unimpressed:

“One of 1964’s most controversial tales you call it; by that I hope to God you don’t mean because of its sexual content, for I don’t think I could take another bout of Should There be more Sex in SF? Mr. Jones has as much right to employ blunt sexual realism as any non-sf writer… if he thinks it justified for his purpose […] The sweaty realism of love and death has been employed to advantage by many writers, most notably by the Existentialists. But when Sartre or Camus do this they use the language of realism.”

With the air suitably cleared, it is left to Tony Walsh of Bridgwater, Sussex (both he and his wife enjoyed the story, he notes), to address the real burning issue here;

“Could not the emotional impact be made just as effectively in another context (substitute an earthquake or nuclear explosion, say)? In other words: Is it SF?”

Meanwhile, Mrs. Elizabeth French Briscoe of Brighton Road, Dublin reveals herself as no friend of ours, calling as she does for an all-out ban on illustrations in Science Fiction;

“Illustration has given SF a bad name. […] it is only recently that I have ‘discovered’ SF, having been put off by garish covers depicting bug-eyed monsters: I took the accompanying reading matter to be a decadent genre slanted toward sadistic boys, until I chanced upon a novel by Arthur C. Clarke.”

Following the lead of Moorcock’s editorial, this month’s review features seem more positive than usual, with MM (under his own name) offering  up extensive praise for the aforementioned ‘Greybeard’ and ‘The Paradox Men’, whilst Langton Jones undertakes an affirmative reappraisal of the work of this issue’s lead contributor, Arthur Selling.

Later on though, our editor’s alter ego James Colvin has the knives out once more, passing acidic comment on the ‘juvenile’ approach taken to SF by publishers, and those among his peers who are willing to pander to it (brave words perhaps from the creator of Elric?), finding time to take at least a few of his contemporaries down a peg or two along the way;

“I’ve had the feeling recently that I’m being cheated all round. Poul Anderson’s ‘Time and Stars’ (Gollancz, 16s.) shows us a writer who, in all his working life, seems not to have developed at all. His best current stuff is as good as his best stuff of ten to fifteen years ago, his worst is as bad as ever. […] This pulp Western dressed up as an SF story [is] badly written, highly reactionary and embarrassingly sentimental – and it won this year’s Hugo Award for best short fiction. […] I’m still bewildered – can it mean that the Hugo has become valueless as an indication of what is good? I’m equally bewildered at Gollancz for selecting it. I always had the impression that he was a left-wing publisher. Not any more, it seems.”

“Damon Knight’s reputation is good, yet surely he can’t have gained it from his fiction? I hoped his latest novel might be an improvement on his short stories, but no such luck.”

And so on.

‘Colvin’ does at least conclude with a mention of one notable volume that might have slipped beneath readers’ radars;

“Anthony Burgess’s ‘A Clockwork Orange’ (Pan, 3/6) is a wonderful study of a run-down society of the future, told in the first person by a latter-day Teddy Boy in his own weird patois. It is powerful and horrifying – and spoiled by a hurried, rather sentimental ending. Still much better than most of the stuff being produced inside the field at the moment.”

So much for those ‘encouraging signs’ then.

Old New Worlds: Nov-Dec 1964.

 (Cover Design: Robert Tilley)

An unexpected treasure awaited me whilst mooching about in Blackheath’s charity shops last month: a stack of Moorcock-era New Worlds issues. Lacking either the money and storage capacity to pick up the lot, I merely grabbed a selection, which I now intend to present to you in chronological order in a monthly-ish series of posts, thus to give us an insight into the unique position the magazine occupied in the mid/late 1960s, and to help illustrate the process by which it eventually became a prime meeting point between old school SF fandom and the literary counter-culture… or something like that. It’ll pass the time, anyway.

(Illustration: J. Cawthorn)

In April 1964, a letter from 25-year-old Michael Moorcock appeared in issue 141 of New Worlds SF, lamenting both the planned cancellation of the magazine, and the recent departure of its editor, John Carnell. To say that penning this letter was a good career move on Moorcock's part is something of an understatement. Apparently Carnell was impressed with what he had to say, and behind the scenes, things obviously moved quickly. In May 1964, New Worlds # 142 appeared on schedule, now under the auspices of new publishers Roberts & Vinters, with Michael Moorcock installed as editor.

The first issue we’re looking at in this series finds Moorcock only six months into his editorship, and, whilst you wouldn’t know it from the defiantly trad illustrations and cover design accompanying his own ‘The Shores of Death’, the battle lines between the old schoolers and the new wave are already being drawn.

In a rather po-faced editorial, Moorcock laments the poor quality of SF on film, radio and television, directing particular ire in the direction of The First Men in the Moon, a now largely forgotten British adaptation of the HG Wells story of the same name (although he did think George Pal’s ‘The Time Machine' was quite good, “..save that it replaced Wells’ socialistic message with a fuzzy humanistic one”). Point made, he then moves on to recommend the first issue of the SF criticism zine ‘Epilogue’, which amongst other things apparently includes L. Sprague de Camp outlining his belief that too many contemporary writers are simply “re-hashing the work of the old masters” – a pretty ballsy claim if you take a minute or two to google Mr. de Camp’s own literary legacy. Finally, our editor reminds London SF readers that “..many writers and readers meet regularly on the first Thursday of every month at The Globe Tavern, Hatten Garden (near Gamages). The atmosphere is completely informal and all are welcome.” Thanks Mike.

One of the things that has most surprised me whilst perusing these old New Worlds is the sheer amount of venom included in the magazine’s critical writing. I’m not sure whether this was simply representative of the discourse in SF fandom at the time, or whether Moorcock and his pals (assistant editor Langdon Jones and staff writer James Colvin) are deliberately trying to take their elders down a peg or two, but either way, though it seems somewhat at odds with a culture built entirely on fan-boy enthusiasm, it certainly makes for more lively reading than a bunch of back-slapping.

In his book review column, Colvin bestows some reluctant praise upon Robert Heinlein’s ‘The Unpleasant Profession of Jonathan Hoag’, before, predictably, tearing him a new one for the majority of his other recent output (“Here we get a good glimpse of Heinlein in his cosy reactionary mood (just as insidious as his more often noted violent reactionary mood.)”). Colvin’s writing style here is concise, acidic and often very funny, as is aptly demonstrated by the following page, which I thought I’d scan in its entirety for the purposes of Strong Truth:


On the letters page meanwhile, Mrs Ellen Channon of Nettleham, Lincoln declares New Worlds a “..jolly good magazine, once you get past the covers!”, and demands to see more Moorcock in its pages (I’m not even going to go there).

Elsewhere, Mr. Arthur Selling of Uckfield, Sussex expresses his reluctance to get behind new up-and-comer J.G. Ballard:

“I don't know who acclaimed Ballard the ‘finest modern SF writer’ but his ideas are too thin – like those other admirable lads Sturgeon and Aldiss. Give him the title of the best writer writing SF, which is a bit different. It’s probably the main problem today. Critics both in and out of SF plead for better writing and characterisation in SF, but they carp when, as it inevitably must, it crowds out the old SF elements.”

“On the other hand,” Selling concludes following his assessment of the magazine’s new approach, “it’ll have me developing some of the ideas that I’ve kept in a drawer this many years for the knowledge that none of the other editors would smile on them.”

"We look forward to seeing them!" the NW editors respond, and, in a turnaround that makes even Moorcock’s assumption of editorship seem slow, the following page announces that New Worlds # 146 will lead with “the first part of Arthur Selling’s new satirical novel ‘The Power of Y’”, with supporting stories from Ballard, Brunner and E.C. Tubb amongst others – and that indeed is the issue we’ll be looking at in the next thrilling instalment of this series. Bet you can’t wait.