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- Title
Sextrapolation in New Wave Science Fiction.
- Authors
Latham, Rob
- Abstract
This essay traces how the representation of sexual content within sf became increasingly acceptable during the 1960s. Rather than treating this development as an epochal achievement of the New Wave movement, however, it argues that a significant number of innovative treatment of sexuality—as well as a sophisticated discourse regarding the pernicious effects of censorship—had already emerged within the genre during the early 1950s. The 1960s New Wave built on this tradition in substantial ways, from Michael Moorcock's ambitious renovations of "New Worlds" to the original anthology series pioneered by Damon Knight and Harlan Ellison. The essay tracks the controversies that sorrounded the explicit depiction of sexual acts and fantasies in science fiction, culminating with a three-part anatomy of New Wave approaches to "sextrapolation": feminist sf, which sought to provide an ethical counterweight to the excesses of the sexual revolution; pornographic sf, with its often lurid but sometimes arresting visions of polymorphous sexual otherness; and more straightforward extrapolative renderings of futuristic sexual mores and behaviors.
- Subjects
SCIENCE fiction; HUMAN sexuality in literature; SEX customs in literature; ADVENTURE stories; FICTION; LITERATURE &; science
- Publication
Science Fiction Studies, 2006, Vol 33, Issue 2, p251
- ISSN
0091-7729
- Publication type
Literary Criticism