**1950s–60s counterculture:** rise of youth rebellion, anti-establishment politics, and experimentation with altered consciousness.
**LSD (discovered 1943, popularized 1960s):** reshaped cultural interest in perception, identity, and inner realities.
**William S. Burroughs:** cut-up techniques and surreal, transgressive prose became a stylistic blueprint for New Wave experimentation.
**Beat Generation:** Kerouac, Ginsberg, Ferlinghetti—subjectivity, fragmentation, and personal mythmaking enter SF’s toolbox.
**Modernist and postmodernist literature:** Joyce, Kafka, Pynchon, Borges—models for narrative play, ambiguity, and psychological depth.
**Cold War anxiety:** paranoia, nuclear threat, and bureaucratic control themes anticipate New Wave dystopias.
**Shift in magazines:** *New Worlds* under Michael Moorcock becomes the laboratory for radical, literary SF.
"Sci-Fi's Most Controversial Figure"
bipolar disorder
quite decorated: 8 Hugo Awards, 4 Nebula Awards, 5 Bram Stoker Awards, SFWA Grand Master
anthologies: Dangerous Visions (1967); Again, Dangerous Visions (1972); Last Dangerous Visions (2018)
Star Trek ("The City on the Edge of Forever"); Disney (well, not really); I, Robot (well, not really)
"Repent, Harlequin ! The Ticktockman said" (1965); I have no mouth and I must scream (1967); A boy and his dog (1967)