Science Fiction, Fantasy & Horror Forums

Here ya go. 

When did the 1960s start for science fiction? In Rock and Roll, it was when the Beatles came to America. Looking back, I think many would say 60s Sci-Fi hit when Stranger in a Strange Land came out, because looking backward it feels like the Sixties. However, Heinlein had started working on that story in the 1940s.

For me, the borderline between the 1950s and 1960s is with "A Rose for Ecclesiastes" by Roger Zelazny. When I look back I remember how Samuel R. Delany and Roger Zelazny came on the scene and they felt young and different. But I put none of their books in the Top 12 for the decade https://www.worldswithoutend.com/lists_60s.asp because the average reader today seldom encounters Zelazny and Delany. I started reading SF around 1961, so its a decade I remember as it unfolded. I'm surprised by how different the books I remember excited me then are from the ones that everyone remembers.

When I first read "A Rose for Ecclesiastes" I thought it was dazzling. I still do. But it's a mixture of old and new. That's why I say it's on the borderline between the 1950s and 1960s. It's a shame that Zelazny was never as dazzling as I found him in "A Rose for Ecclesiastes." When he started writing novels, stretching out the narrative weakened his impact. His novels have flashes of brilliance, but they were stuck together with less exciting filler.

But the epitome of 1960s for me was "The Star Pit" by Samuel R. Delany. The very story is about longing to go out into space, and being held back by barriers. That's how I felt in the 1960s as a kid reading SF.

 The sixties was when science fiction began to want to be considered something other than gosh-wow books for boys. Novels got more complex, and the writing started to improve. Plus, the genre began its first steps towards diversity. Ursula K. Le Guin and Samuel R. Delany added a lot of flavor that didn't exist in the 1950s.

I just started Thorns by Robert Silverberg because it was one of the three books I could get on audio for this reading challenge -- well of the 10 I selected to read. But it does seem like there are fewer 1960s SF classics on audio than there was for the 1950s challenge. It would have been just two audio books, but a handful of lesser Clifford Simak books showed up on Audible.com in the last couple weeks. For some reason, there is no Samuel R. Delany at all on audio. Only Stand on Zanzibar for John Brunner. Luckily, a handful of Robert Silverberg books have been showing up on audio, but mostly his 1970s titles.

Thorns starts out quite engaging. It's about a manipulating impresario who finds emotionally problem people to make famous. I haven't come to this part, but evidently there's some kind of TV or movie tech for emotional theater. I'm just guessing though.