3) England Swings SF, ed. Judith Merril

This was one of the influential sf anthologies of that long ago time, the 1960s, being Judith Merril’s project of familiarising an American audience with the British sf authors of the New Wave. I spotted it with glee in Boston in October, but also it fits in with my planned re-reading of the other rival great 60’s anthology, Dangerous Visions (supposedly even now on its way to me from the book dealer).

It would be very easy to make fun of this book. The gutter is too narrow, especially given the experimental placing of some of the margins. Some of the stories are very bad. One author admits that to write his story “I had to draw in some places on my acid/pot experiences as I think you will detect”. The introduction is earnest and breathless:

Introduction

You have never read a book like this before, and the next time you read one anything like it, it won’t be much at all.

It’s an action-photo, a record of process-in-change,

a look through the perspex porthole at the

momentarily stilled bodies in a scout ship boosting

fast, and heading out of sight into the multiplex mystery of inner/outer space.

I can’t tell you where they’re going, but

maybe that’s why I keep wanting to read what they write. The next time someone assembles the work of the writers in this – well, ‘school’ is too formal

… and ‘movement’ sounds pretentious…

and ‘British sf’ is ludicrously limiting –

so let’s just say, the work of these writers and/or others now setting out to work in this way,

it will probably have about as much resemblance to this anthology as this one does to any other collection of science fiction, social criticism,

surrealism – BEM’s, Beats, Beatles, what-have-you –

you have ever read or heard before. Meanwhile,

I think this trip should be a good one.

Judith Merril

Some of the authors have disappeared with little trace: the stories of “John Calder” and John Clark here apparently represent their only published work; the output of Michael Hamburger, Michael Butterworth, Bill Butler, Roger Jones, and Graham Hall has been pretty minimal.

However there are some fascinatong pieces as well: Kyril Bonfiglioli’s only recorded sf story (that is, recorded by ISFDB and Contento, though helped me track down another by him a few years back); also Chris Priest’s first published story; also a bit of Brian Aldiss’ Barefoot in the Head