"Sometime in the late '60s, a civil war would begin within the science fiction community. On one side stood the old guard, who looked for good, clean stories about good, clean science and engineering. On the other side stood a movement of young radicals that said science fiction could be every bit as revolutionary, every bit as abstract, every bit as sensual or gritty as any other art. Their works would be called the New Wave."
"[The New Wave is] sci-fi that's about psychology, about people, about the depth of who we are, and yet it's also about abstractions, ideas, and even the form of writing itself. In fact, just about the only thing it's not about is science. Science becomes secondary to science fiction, as the ability to explore the fantastic, or really delve into the human psyche, takes precedence. And while one might argue that later, it gives way to science fantasy that simply uses the trappings of sci-fi to give us adventure stories, for one short decade, the New Wave brought the literary to sci-fi, and said, It's okay not to be popular. It's okay to be hard to understand. It's okay to be art. And in doing so, it gave the new wave of science fiction authors permission to touch on all of the things that sci-fi to this point hadn't been about."
