Beginning in the 1960s and stretching through the 1980s, the New Wave era of science fiction developed in Great Britain and the United States as both a response to Golden Age science fiction and the sweeping social and political change that encompassed those decades. Many authors and editors felt that the common themes tackled in Golden Age science fiction were played out and dead when read through the new ideological frameworks of the 1960s.

New Wave science fiction was an attempt to move the genre in a more mature direction. Writers strove to diverge from the hard science fiction stories geared towards teenage boys, targeting an adult audience in tune with the cultural changes of the time. New Wave aimed to rejuvenate the genre with more developed themes, thereby moving science fiction into mainstream literature. Characteristics of New Wave science fiction include a greater focus on literary style and experimentation. New Wave stories often extrapolate from the soft sciences such as psychology and sociology, rather than from the hard sciences popular during Golden Age science fiction.

The New Wave era also marked the beginning of the use of overt sexual themes and obscene language. Other common themes in New Wave science fiction represent a backlash against the utopic tendencies of Golden Age science fiction, including a lack of faith in man’s intelligence, a general distrust of science and technology, and a disbelief in the perfectibility of the human race. New Wave is science fiction’s attempt to keep up with the drastically changing cultural landscape of the era. Just as the radical 60s became a transitional period in history, so the New Wave became a bridge between classic (e.g. Golden Age) and postmodern (e.g. cyberpunk) science fiction.