89 LITERATURE
Janez Steble
University of Ljubljana
Faculty of Arts, English Department 
Slovenia
New Wave Science Fiction and the Exhaustion  
of the Utopian/Dystopian Dialectic
Summary
"e paper explores the development of the utopian and dystopian literature in the experimental 
and proli c period of New Wave science  ction. "e genre literature of the period chie#y 
expressed the dissolutions of the universe, society, and identity through its formal literary 
devices and subject-matter, thus making it easy to arrive at the conclusion that the many SF 
works of J. G. Ballard’s post-apocalyptic narratives, for example, exhausted and bankrupted 
the utopian/dystopian dialectic. However, the article provides textual evidence from one 
of the most prominent authors of the New Wave and the theoretical basis to suggest the 
contrary, namely that the categories of utopia and dystopia had by that time reached a level of 
transformation unprecedented in the history of the genre. Furthermore, the paper explores the 
inherent qualities science  ction shares with utopian literature, and suggests that the dialogism 
of the science  ction novel, especially that of the New Wave, has brought about the revival of 
utopia and rediscovered its potential. 
Key words: "e New Wave, critical utopia, postmodernism, entropy, heterotopia, transvaluation
Novi val v znanstveni fantastiki in izčrpanost utopične/
distopične dialektike
Povzetek
Članek raziskuje razvoj utopične in distopične literature v eksperimentalnem in plodnem 
obdobju Novega vala v znanstveni fantastiki. Žanrska literatura tega obdobja je izrazito 
poudarjala razkroj realnosti, družbe in identitete preko formalnih literarnih sredstev in čiste 
vsebine, kar nas lahko brez težav privede do zaključka, da mnoga ZF dela, npr. J. G. Ballardove 
post-apokaliptične pripovedi, predstavljajo iztrošenje in propad utopične/distopične dialektike. 
V članku pa so predstavljeni teksti pomembnih avtorjev Novega vala in teoretične osnove, 
ki predlagajo nasprotno misel, namreč, da so kategorije utopije in distopije do takratnega 
obdobja dosegle stopnjo preobrazbe, neprecedenčno v zgodovini žanra. Nadalje, prispevek 
odkriva inherentne lastnosti, ki jih znanstvena fantastika deli z utopično literaturo in nakazuje, 
da je dialogizem znanstvenofantastičnega romana, še posebej iz obdobja Novega vala, prinesel 
preporod utopije in ponovno odkril njen potencial.
Ključne besede: Novi val, kritična utopija, postmodernizem, entropija, heterotopija, prevrednotenje
UDK 821.111–312.9.09”196/197”
DOI: 10.4312/elope.8.2.89-103
90 Janez Steble New Wave Science Fiction and the Exhaustion of the Utopian/Dystopian Dialectic
New Wave Science Fiction and the Exhaustion  
of the Utopian/Dystopian Dialectic
1. Introduction
During the 1960s and 1970s occurred the “explosive upward mobility of previous depreciated 
cultural forms” (Pfeil 1990, 83), one of them being the paraliterature of science  ction. "e 
genre underwent substantial changes, both in form and content, to “release writers and readers 
from the preconceptions of the pulp magazine idiom” (Greenland 1983, 167) and to further 
explore the core issues of contemporary society. What is termed as the New Wave science  ction 
is precisely the response to not only the then-relevant issues of psychology and sexuality, but 
most importantly to “mainstream” literary movements of the early 20th-century and the post-
war period. In the span of a few decades, many genre authors
1
 used the literary forms and devices 
of modernism and postmodernism, embellishing their stories with an unprecedented degree of 
aesthetics. All of a sudden, it seemed that too many science  ction authors were preoccupied with 
how the story was written at the expense of subject matter. Familiar tropes of the genre, such 
as robots, aliens, outer space, high technology, became irrelevant; utopian  longing, dystopian 
pessimism and the clashes between them were apparently replaced by the obsessive pursuit of 
the formal experiments common to James Joyce and William Burroughs. Owing to that, we can 
easily arrive at super cial conclusions that  “… th e very e*orescence of a highly literary science 
 ction in the 1960s was itself paradoxically the si gn of a certain exhaustion of content, of the 
bankruptcy of the utopian/dystopian dialectic on which virtually all serious SF was based for 
the  rst hundred years of its existence …” (Pfeil 1 990, 92) or that “the science  ction of the 
New Wave allegorized the exhaustion of the ‘real’ – as represented by the dichotomous terms 
of redemption or damnation – through a baroque and over-elaborate writing that emphasized a 
pure materiality” (Bukatman 2005, 138). 
To a certain extent, the argument has its merits; however, I wish to present the New Wave 
as the continuation of the utopian/dystopian dialectic by other means and emphasize the 
importance of this dialectic for the genre as a whole. "e autotelic expressions of the period 
need not lead us to a literary impasse of baroque and decadence, but can show us “the new 
centrality of dilemmas of perception and representation as such” (Jameson 2007, 93). Of all 
the dilemmas the New Wave dealt with, I deem the issue of utopia and dystopia important in 
the future development of the genre.
2. Romances of Entropy
In A Canticle for Leibowitz (published 1960) we are presented with the cyclical history of death 
and destruction, where technological advancement leads to one global nuclear catastrophe to 
1
 Officially, these were the authors collaborating with the British magazine New Worlds, e.g. Michael Moorcock, Brian W. Aldiss, J.G. 
Ballard, under the editorship of Michael Moorcock, and the American anthology Dangerous Visions, e.g. Harlan Ellison, Samuel R. 
Delany, Thomas M. Disch, put together by Harlan Ellison. Unofficially, however, the New Wave movement was more or less part of the 
zeitgeist of the 1960s and the late 1970s, involving authors of varied and even conflicting interests.
91 LITERATURE
another.
2
 One of the last survivors murmurs “Sic transit mundus” (“thus passes the world”) before 
leaving Earth for outer space where the cycle of doom can supposedly be avoided. "e novel 
stands at a threshold between the Golden Age
3
 science  ction and the New Wave, and it de nitely 
leans more towards the latter in terms of subject matter. It can be viewed as a cruel indictment of 
the space age optimism and a precursor to New Wave stories of entropy. "e post-war period of 
rocket science, Cold War con#icts, and governmental hegemony created a hotbed for literature 
dealing directly with dissolutions
4
 ranging from personal to global issues. "e optimism of the 
1950s quickly turned into its opposite, utopias went into a steady decline. “For by the 1960s, 
the utopian mapping and dystopian exorcism … had long since run aground” (Pfeil 1990, 84). 
"is suggests that the polarity between utopia, based on the works of "omas More, William 
Morris, Edward Bellamy, and dystopia,  associated with Yevgeny Zamyatin, Aldous Huxley, 
George Orwell, ceased to exist. Before proposing arguments to the contrary, it is important to 
see why such a conclusion can be persuasive and truthful.
"e most in#uential and groundbreaking authors of the New Wave are undoubtedly Michael 
Moorcock, Brian Aldiss, and J. G. Ballard. When Moorcock took over the editorship of New 
Worlds in 1964, the magazine became a proving ground for experimental  ction, embracing 
varied authors from both inside and outside the genre. It served as an avant-garde forum for 
speculative  ction,
5
 emphasizing the very aspects of society the previous forms of science  ction 
repressed, for example, sexuality. "e essential role these authors played was to transform the 
genre from within with the help of the literary world from outside, meaning to break down the 
barriers of the genre ghetto. "is opening of the sluice-gates immediately resulted in di+erent 
forms of narrative, themes, and literary in#uences.
6
 What is most peculiar for science  ction 
of this period is that the genre had  nally caught up with the modernism of the early 20th-
century. But even more fascinating is the fact that, although the New Worlds authors had been 
using outmoded literary fashions of modernism in their narratives, these New Wave stories also 
acted as precursors to cyberpunk and postmodernism. Style and aesthetics became highly sought 
aspects
7
 and variegated elements made for this proli c peri od of the genre; however, in terms 
of pure content, there are nevertheless common concerns and dissatisfactions underlying the 
majority of these works. And as soon as we venture into these territories, we  nd ourselves in 
bleak and ravaged worlds in which it is di<cult to see any form of utopia.
"e above-mentioned conclusions of the literary critic Fred Pfeil were directly oriented towards 
J. G. Ballard’s  ction, particularly the novels !e Drought, !e Drowned World, !e Crystal World, 
2
 The novel mostly uses medieval imagery to express the themes of recurrence and cyclical history: “Are we doomed to it, Lord, 
chained to the pendulum of our own mad clockwork, helpless to halt its swing?” (Miller, Jr. 2007, 267).
3
 These were the decades of John W. Campbell’s exacting editorship of the highly influential Astounding Science Fiction. The trio 
Arthur C. Clarke, Isaac Asimov and Robert Heinlein represent the apex of the period. 
4
 These are also characteristic of postmodernist narratives.
5
 The term was widely used by authors at the time to dissociate themselves from the earlier forms of science fiction.
6
 William Burroughs became the new Renaissance Man for the movement, and the New Worlds authors continually praised him: “I was 
an admirer of Burroughs’s use of modern imagery and idiom, for his metaphorical use of SF ideas, for his ear for the language and 
ironies of the drug underworld and of the streets” (Moorcock 2004, xx).
7
 Brian W. Aldiss designated the search for style as an obsession permeating the New Wave: “Style – it implies a degree of self-
consciousness which wasn’t there before, an element of outrageous showmanship, defiance, detachment, and just a touch of narcis-
sism. Style – it is the heart of science fiction controversy in the sixties …” (Aldiss 1986, 286 7).
92 Janez Steble New Wave Science Fiction and the Exhaustion of the Utopian/Dystopian Dialectic
!e High-Rise, and Concrete Island. All of these stories are in one form or another concerned 
with the disintegrations of subjectivity, inter-subjectivity, and the objective environments; 
more speci cally, Ballard’s  ction represents the d ying of the capitalist class,  nding no genuine 
redemption in either the bourgeois notion of progress or the socialist idea of radical revolution. 
His characters usually follow a pattern which can only mean the death of subjectivity as we know 
it – not  ghting against the destructive environmen t, but embracing it. In !e Drowned World, 
we follow Kerans’s “neuronic odyssey” towards the southern regions of the dying Earth where we 
can only expect his imminent demise; we observe the steady decline of the environment, inter-
personal relationships, and Kerans’s own psychology through his eyes alone; the style is highly 
modernist with a special twist of the New Wave, i.e. Kerans’s subjectivity is becoming one with 
the landscape;
8
 we see the gradual fusion of the outer environment and the inner landscape of 
the character’s psyche, and when the fusion is complete, the novel must end, for then we have 
reached the unsayable. A great many of his stories deal with characters bent on self-destruction; 
what we are seemingly reading is a character’s suicidal journey. And yet, we can actually  nd 
glimmers of hope, true happiness and even utopian longings in Ballard’s entropic narratives. 
Before we peer into these glimmers, it is essential to underline and expose similar characteristic 
dissolutions in other authors as well.
What was said for Ballard, can be said not just for Moorcock and Aldiss but also for the majority 
of authors involved in the New Wave storytelling, and it is no wonder that at  rst glance we can 
judge the whole movement as spiralling towards the exhausted content. Moorcock is especially 
#amboyant in using the concept of entropy in his opus – the very character of Jerry Cornelius 
is a great metaphor for entropic identity in the modern world.
9
 Science  ction tropes, such as 
time travel and parallel universes, become vehicles for the advanced decay of identity, Cornelius 
moves from antiquity to modern times, from life to death, only to seek a stable ontological 
centre, presented as an elusive goal.
10
 In the third Cornelius Chronicles novel, aptly named !e 
English Assassin: A Romance of Entropy, the postmodern sense of precarious existence is succinctly 
summarised in the language of thermodynamics:
“If time could stand still,” said Hira re#ectively, “I suppose we should all be as good as dead. 
"e whole business of entropy so accurately re#ects the human condition. T o remain alive 
one must burn fuel, use up heat, squander resources, and yet that very action contributes 
to the end of the universe – the heat death of everything! But to become still, to use the 
minimum of energy – that’s pointless. It is to die, e+ectively. What a dreadful dilemma.” 
(Moorcock 1977, 617)
"e reverberation of the second law of thermodynamics is such a presence in the New Wave 
period that it essentially becomes a type of romance. Most notably, this is expressed in various 
end-of-the-world scenarios; the New Wave revelled in catastrophes and most of the time they 
8
 Ballard termed this process the “spinal landscape” whereby one’s journey through the ravaged world is essentially a concrete meta-
phor for introspection.
9
 “The entropic decay of the British empire mirrors the entropic decay of Jerry’s attempts at constituting images of survival in dehu-
manized London as the sixties turn sourly downwards into the seventies” (Clute 1977, xii).
10
 Jerry Cornelius’s attempt to find stability in assuming a plethora of roles only backfires: “I thought I’d remain comparatively static 
while my surroundings were in a state of flux. But I appear to have been caught in the flux …” (Moorcock 1977, 134). 
93 LITERATURE
did not even bother with discerning the cause behind a global catastrophe. Even when Ballard 
“named” a catastrophe, i.e. !e Drought, the focus was primarily upon the characters coping with 
the dying world, the acceptance of it and even  ndi ng happiness in it. "e coming of the end of 
the universe becomes a grandiose festivity in Moorcock’s series of novels !e Dancers at the End 
of Time. "e ravaged landscape thus becomes an aesthetic form – the end of the world for art’s 
sake. However, that is merely one side of the coin.
End-of-the-world narratives were not merely autotelic experiments conducted on a set of 
exhausted themes and topics of science  ction liter ature. As mentioned earlier, modernism in 
Ballard’s  ction becomes something di+erent than in the realm of the “mainstream”. "e New 
Wave transformed the genre, both in form and content. Revelling in apocalyptic landscapes 
was for authors such as Ballard and Moorcock a unique approach at trying to solve classic 
epistemological and ontological dilemmas of science  ction. William Burroughs and James 
Joyce, as two of the main in#uences of the period, signify that authors of the genre used formal 
literary devices to express postmodern concerns, in e+ect respecting and continuing their legacy. 
Brian Aldiss’s psychedelic pastoral Barefoot in the Head features a post-apocalyptic world caused 
by the spread of airborne psychedelics throughout western civilization. "e author concretizes 
the dissolution of the western world via stream of consciousness and run-on sentences, the 
punctuation of poetry provides us with a commentary on the prosaic parts of the novel. And 
even though the portrayed world is a terrible place for existence, there is much concern about the 
happiness and the new way of living
11
 one can  nd in such a post-apocalyptic environment . "e 
destruction of the “westciv” thus becomes an intermediary stage between “the pre-psychedelic” 
and “the post-psychedelic man”. "e formal devices borrowed from outside the genre helped 
Aldiss and a plethora of other authors of the period to  nd new meanings and values in the 
supposed imminent con#agration of our planet – destruction becomes a source of revival. Even 
the most morose and macabre  ction of Ballard’s mod ernism includes not only a source of new 
formation of subjectivity, but also the transvaluations of utopia.
Positive aspects in Ballard’s devastating and decadent tales are not at all di<cult to  nd. If we 
take the previous example of !e Drowned World, the protagonist’s odyssey is peculiar precisely 
because the more he travels towards the death of his physical being, the more content he is. 
Consciously, he dreads the total change of the familiar environment, the reversion of our planet 
into a prehistoric environment, yet, unconsciously,
12
 that is exactly his ontological goal. At the 
very end, when he reaches his goal, he is compared to “a second Adam searching for the forgotten 
paradises of the reborn sun” (Ballard 2008, 175). It is di<cult to accept the inevitable death of 
the character as a form of a happy ending, yet the author’s approach to style and content would 
suggest exactly that, and perhaps we are not supposed to regard the physical death of Kerans as 
something tragic. In !e High-Rise similar odysseys and unconscious strivings are present, yet this 
1 1
 The ravaged world of Barefoot quickly turns into an opportunity for a paradisiacal future: “Everyone’s touched! Don’t be taken in by 
appearances here. Believe me, the old world has gone, but its shell remains in place. One day soon, there will come a breath of wind, 
a new messiah, the shell will crumple, and the kids will run screaming, barefoot in the head, through lush new imaginary meadows 
...” (Aldiss 1985, 39).
12
 The Drowned World is a veritable fountain of Freudian language and imagery: “Just as psychoanalysis reconstructs the original trau-
matic situation in order to release the repressed material, so we are now being plunged back into the archeopsychic past, uncovering 
ancient taboos and drives that have been dormant for epochs” (Ballard 2008, 44).
94 Janez Steble New Wave Science Fiction and the Exhaustion of the Utopian/Dystopian Dialectic
time the perversions a+ect thousands of denizens of the apartment complex which mirrors the 
modern society in all its contradictory nature. "e eponymous building gradually turns from a 
rational society to a perverted Bakhtinian polyphony of carnivalesque and grotesque atmosphere. 
We may see the novel solely as the exploration of the exhaustion of the late-capitalist system,
13
 
its intoxication with orgiastic display of death and decay, yet there is enough textual evidence to 
support a di+erent point of view, a more favourable one, in which the literal crumbling of the 
high-rise represents the ascension of new subjectivity, a post-Freudian self:
Secure within the shell of the high-rise like passengers on board an automatically piloted 
airliner, they were free to behave in any way they wished, explore the darkest corners they 
could  nd. In many ways, the high-rise was a model of all that technology had done to 
make possible the expression of a truly “free” psychopathology. (Ballard 2011, 36)
We need not only dwell on the trio Moorcock, Aldiss, Ballard to understand the more positive 
sides of the science- ction avant-garde. "omas Disc h, a renowned American New Wave writer, 
who knew a thing or two about dystopian projections, always found a way to integrate an aspect 
of life and beauty into the horrible vistas of the concrete horizon,
14
 he too was gravely aware 
of the encroaching entropy, yet o+ered glimpses of opposing forces.
15
 Further, Pamela Zoline’s 
peculiar short story, published in New Worlds, about a housewife preoccupied with ontology 
and the meaning of entropy, is on the one hand a depressing descent into madness, but on the 
other hand, an ontological con rmation of the ubiqu ity of life.
16
 "ere is a profusion of similar 
examples throughout the works of Ballard and other New Wave authors in which the entropic 
state of (post)modern existence engenders brilliant science  ction tales of human revival and 
hope. "e last part of the article will deal with the utopian and dystopian concerns of these 
apparent decadent storytellers, for now it is essential to see that even the most depressing and 
mean-spirited  ction of the New Wave o+ers a pleasu rable aesthetic experience and a renewed 
interest in the contemporary world.
3. The Utopian Nature of Science Fiction
Science  ction is  rst and foremost, as the name im plies, associated with scienti c and 
technological aspects of modern society; secondly, with future-oriented  ctional worlds, 
13
 The high-rise is, first and foremost, a microcosm of  modern society: “What angered Wilder most of all about life in the apartment 
building was the way in which an apparently homogenous collection of high-income professional people had split into three distinct 
and hostile camps. The old social sub-divisions, based on power, capital and self-interest, had reasserted themselves here as any-
where else” (Ballard 201 1, 53).
14
  The dystopian novel 334 features niches of life and beauty among the endless concrete jungle: “There, not twenty feet below, was 
her story, the absolutely right thing: in a triangle formed by a feeder ramp to the highway and the building she was in and a newer 
building in the bony style of the 70s, was the loveliest vacant lot she’d ever seen, a perfect little garden of knee-high weeds. It was a 
symbol: of Life struggling up out of the wasteland of the modern world, of Hope…” (Disch 197 4, 65).
15
 In his Camp Concentration the rise of intelligence via syphilis-based injection makes the characters turn to alchemy and the occult 
for answers concerning their absurd existential position: “Science acquiesces, fatally, to the second law of thermodynamics - magic 
is free to be a conscientious objector. The fact is that I’m not interested in a universe in which I have to die” (Disch 1996, 75).
16
  In her short story The Heat Death of the Universe the character Sarah Boyle finds through her obsessions with the entropic nature 
of the universe the logical existence of spaces opposed to disorganization: “In Gibbs’ Universe order is least probable, chaos most 
probable … there are local enclaves whose direction seems opposed to that of the Universe at large and in which there is a limited 
and temporary tendency for organization to increase. Life finds its home in some of these enclaves” (Zoline 2004, 142).
95 LITERATURE
extrapolated from the writers’ and readers’ present state of a+airs; thirdly, with strange new worlds 
o+ering alternative modes of living. Even in these popular analyses there are implications of 
world-building, progress, and more perfect forms of social organizations. When an author posits 
some form of advanced technology to further the plot of their story, it is almost inevitable that 
this piece of technology will have rami cations on a social scale. It is up to the author to imply or 
explicitly state whether some device or invention turns out to be a bene t to society or a complete 
hazard. “[B]y imagining strange worlds we come to see our own conditions of life in a new and 
potentially revolutionary perspective” (Parrinder 2001, 4). "e author’s individual #ight of fancy 
can thus quickly turn into a text of political, sociological and even critical implications. Science 
 ction is at its core a cognitive
17
 literature, a  ctional account of the “presence an d interaction 
of estrangement and cognition” (Suvin 1979, 7‒8). When a new world, device or concept is 
introduced to estrange the reader’s perceptions, they eventually  nd themselves familiarized with 
the estranging element, and the enchanting element becomes disenchanted. 
“SF’s domain is the possible. "is is not a question of whether a  ctive world is in reality 
impossible, actual, or possible, but rather, how the text implicitly asks the readers to respond to 
its invented reality as well as the state of science and technology when and where the work was 
composed” (Franklin 2009, 23). In the literary criticism of science  ction the category of reader 
is becoming more and more important, concepts of “cognition”, “estrangement”, “plausibility” 
abhor a reader’s vacuum. Alternative worlds may start as an innocent introduction of a novum,
18
 
but a text such as Le Guin’s !e Dispossessed which implements a novum in the form of an 
anarcho-communist society can rapidly transform into a didactic, critical, and revolutionary 
reading. "e novel is essentially asking the reader to imagine a society, alternative to a capitalist 
one, and science  ction is one of the most e+ective literature and medium for engaging critical 
thinking. "is is where we encounter the importance of the genre and its a<nities with utopia. 
Darko Suvin, as one of the  rst academic critics of the SF genre, designated utopia as a socio-
political sub-genre of SF (Suvin 1979, 61), with utopia being an intrinsic part of the genre 
and also its predecessor (Suvin 1988, 42). "omas More’s inaugural work is indubitably 
connected with a plethora of stories in the fruitful periods of science  ction history, and 
that includes the bleak and pessimistic conclusions of the 20th-century dystopias. Indeed, 
a complex connection exists between More’s Renaissance strivings of the nascent bourgeois 
class and the transvaluations of the New Wave SF utopian/dystopian writings. Starting from 
the book Utopia itself, the distinguishing features of this (sub-)genre immediately present 
themselves, namely the dissatisfactions of the current social system and  nding the source of 
its evils,
19
 not just the panoramic view of the utopian society the author/narrator presents to 
17
 “… cognition – a central and informing concern for conceiving and discussing radically new views and understandings of human 
relationships and potentialities …” (Suvin 1988, 30).
18
 Suvin’s term for scientifically plausible innovations in science fiction narratives.
19
 Both features are strongly expressed in the first part of Utopia, mainly focused on presenting the wrongs of the author’s society: 
“Though to speak plainly my real sentiments, I must freely own, that as long as there is any property, and while money is the standard 
of all other things, I cannot think that a nation can be governed either justly or happily; not justly, because the best things will fall to 
the share of the worst men; nor happily, because all things will be divided among a few (and even these are not in all respects happy), 
the rest being left to be absolutely miserable” (More 1997, 24). Furthermore: “For if you suffer your people to be ill educated, and 
their manners to be corrupted from their infancy, and then punish them for those crimes to which their first education disposed them, 
96 Janez Steble New Wave Science Fiction and the Exhaustion of the Utopian/Dystopian Dialectic
the readers in a monologic mode of discourse.
20
 It is myopic to reduce the concept of utopia 
to a form of escapism or an ideal society that cannot exist, we need only resort to an attentive 
reading of More to see that it is actually “an heuristic or educational device for perfectibility, an 
epistemological model and not an ontologically real country” (Suvin 1988, 42). Both utopia 
and science  ction are estranging genres, yet at the level of pre-science- ction literary utopia 
we are given a relatively strong estrangement and  a relatively weak cognition (Freedman 2000, 
73), as More’s formation of the island of Utopia and Swift’s exotic lands, for example, attest. 
Come the New Wave SF period, the cognition in, e.g., John Brunner’s dystopian cityscapes or 
Le Guin’s self-critical utopias, is substantially strengthened, continuing More’s imperative to 
imagine radical alternatives by other means.
“"e traditional utopia takes the human condition as given, and hopes to make the human 
 t into utopia by legislation and education; the modern form of utopia regards a more perfect 
society to be the result of evolution and technology” (James 2008, 227). "e judgment that 
the utopian/dystopian dialectic had ended by the middle of the 20th-century would only be 
entirely true if the technological developments, dissatisfactions and con#icts of the real world 
had ceased to exist. "e  ndings of modern natural and social sciences, coupled with the 
post-war existentialist conundrums, modernized, re ned and transformed the imagination 
for alternatives, and the aesthetic stage of the 1960s SF , including the most e*orescent and 
stylistic works revolving around the New Worlds experiments, contributed to the growth of 
the imagination. At the end of the 19th-century, News from Nowhere and Looking Backward 
represented the culmination of pre-science  ction utopian literature, and as soon as the 
October revolution degraded into a Stalinist oppressive regime, coupled with the rise of fascist 
ideology, it became a trend to turn to dystopian discourse, beginning with Zamyatin’s We and 
culminating in Orwell’s 1984. "e idea that by the 1960s the visions of a better or worse world 
had subsided or even disappeared entirely from the literature of science  ction is all the more 
absurd due to the fact that it was in the 1960s and 1970s that a whole set of critical utopias
21
 
came to the fore – Le Guin’s !e Dispossessed, Delany’s Trouble on Triton, Piercy’s Woman on 
the Edge of Time, Joanna Russ’s !e Female Man, to name a few. It should be noted that three 
of these authors were featured in Dangerous Visions,
22
 which represented a focal point for the 
American New Wave SF , therefore the utopian/dystopian dialectic not only did not cease to 
exist, it entered a new phase of development. However, before we explore the nature of these 
unprecedented developments, we should seek more reasons why science  ction is inherently 
imbued with the utopian/dystopian polarity.
Utopia is a literary genre or verbal construction whose necessary and su<cient conditions 
are the presence of a particular quasi-human community where socio-political institutions, 
what else is to be concluded from this, but that you first make thieves and then punish them?” (Ibid., 1 1)
20
 One of the most important additions to the utopian discourse in the realm of SF is exactly in expanding the panorama of utopia via 
novelistic dialogic works of literature. Even News from Nowhere (1890), affiliated with the Marxist scientific analysis of society, fell 
victim to monologism: “Morris’s text explicitly celebrates communist collectivity, but does so in a monologic, pre-novelistic form that 
depends heavily on individualist ideology” (Freedman 2001, 92).
21
 More on this term in the next section of the article. According to Fredric Jameson, these works are the “rediscovery of SF’s utopian 
vocation” (Jameson  2007, 289).
22
 These works are Delany’s “Aye, and Gomorrah…”, Le Guin’s The Word for World is Forest, and Russ’s “When it Changed”. 
97 LITERATURE
norms and individual relationships are organized on a more perfect principle than in the 
author’s community, this construction being based on estrangement arising out of an 
alternative historical hypothesis. (Suvin 1988, 35)
Instead of the abstract formulation in his general de nition of the genre, “the presence and 
interaction of estrangement and cognition,” here we  nd a socio-political speci city aimed at 
concretizing the vocation of cognition and estrangement in a manner be tting the discourse 
of the social sciences. "e de nition, if taken seri ously, should put to rest various objections to 
utopian literature, namely its alleged social engineering of a faultless community; “the more perfect 
principle” relates to the spatio-temporal distance between the reader and the author, meaning 
that Plato’s or More’s conceptions of the locus of utopia may be another man’s secular hell. More’s 
 ctional island is nevertheless based on a more per fect principle than his own empirical England. 
"e narrative is indeed static, closed and monologic, yet any such  ctional creation is based on 
the dynamic social forces, present from the times of Plato to the revival of the critical dystopias of 
the 1980s, such as Margaret Atwood’s !e Handmaid’s T ale. Even though science  ction follows 
more closely the Bakhtinian concept of polyphony
23
 than the static panoramas of early utopias, 
they both have an a<nity for objective social awareness and organisation.
24
 According to Suvin, 
utopia, especially More’s work, is very familiar to and often equated with the mode and genre 
of satire; however, the  ctional artefact of Utopia “explicates what satire implicates, and vice 
versa” (Suvin 1979, 54). Satire in general explains human nature, its merits and demerits, yet 
implies the social structure of a more perfect community, and therefore the reduction of Utopia 
to satire is insu<cient for the scope of literary criticism. "ere are many more modes and genres 
connected with the history of utopia, such as folk tales, myths, cockaynes, etc., but for our 
purposes the homology, posited by Suvin, between science  ction and utopia should su<ce to 
see their combined and uneven development from the 16th-century to (post)modern times. 
Lastly, the interrelation between utopia and science  ction lies in the Blochian concept
25
 of 
utopian impulse, which is greatly emphasized by Marxist literary critics, e.g., Darko Suvin, Fredric 
Jameson, and Carl Freedman. Bloch did not speak directly of science  ction or the genre of 
utopia per se; he has reinterpreted utopia in general “as being any overstepping of the boundaries 
given to man, hence a quality inherent in all creative thought and action” (Suvin 1979, 39). It 
is essentially a characteristic of human nature, an omnipresent impulse. "e concept is much 
easier to connect to science  ction in general than the afore-mentioned rigorous formulations 
of Suvin. One could say that it is actually too abstract and de-politicized to be of any use, yet 
thinkers like Bloch saw that the only solution in reviving utopia amidst the disappointments of 
unsuccessful revolutions and oppressive political actions was to make it part of critical thinking
26
 
and artistic endeavours. As Jameson notes, there are “two distinct lines of descendency from 
More’s inaugural text: the one intent on the realization of the Utopian program, the other an 
obscure yet omnipresent Utopian impulse  nding its way to the surface in a variety of covert 
23
 Le Guin’s The Dispossessed is a great example of that, since the utopia of the arid planet Anarres is constantly the subject of self-
criticism and is posited against the conflicting nation-states of Urras.
24
 Utopian literature in general deals with social organisations: “There are no unorganized utopias” (Suvin 1979, 50).
25
 The primary source of the concept comes from Ernst Bloch’s Das Prinzip Hoffnung (3 vols.: 1938–1947).
26
 Similarly, Marxism in late-capitalism has been more successful in integrating itself into literary criticism than into parliamentary 
politics.
98 Janez Steble New Wave Science Fiction and the Exhaustion of the Utopian/Dystopian Dialectic
expressions and practices” (Jameson 2007, 3). It is not surprising to see Nazism in the “second 
line”; the concept of utopia has never been without its abuses and dangers,
27
 since what has been 
de-politicized can become fully political again. "is is indeed a paradox, and not the only one.
According to Bloch, utopia is always on the horizon, never a reachable and graspable topos, yet 
we have since time immemorial always felt at home with the concept; it is our  nal destination, 
an un-alienated space, yet without ontic reality. In the end, this unreachable goal is our purest 
motive for changing the status quo, striving to go beyond the con nes of one’s society. "is 
paradoxical twist of immanence and transcendence constitutes utopia, and what immediately 
concerns us here is that Bloch’s utopian hermeneutics directly provide the genre with a sense of 
critique. "e New Wave SF period, instead of exhausting the utopian content, revived it with 
an onslaught of critical utopias and dystopias, o+ering marginalized layers of society not just 
economic and political answers, but genuine utopian vistas of Blochian proportions. 
4. Transformations and Transvaluations
"e explosive, turbulent and proli c decades of the 1960s and 1970s saw the rise of a whole 
generation of genre authors trying – and most of the time, succeeding – in breaking down 
the barriers of the genre ghetto and, in e+ect, improving the overall status and reception of 
science  ction. "e inherent attractions between sci ence  ction and utopia, coupled with the 
bold enterprise of the New Wave aesthetics and conceptions, resulted in the intensi cation of 
the utopian/dystopian dialectic. "e authors, dealing with new epistemological and ontological  
issues “transformed [in the sense of aufheben] the traditional utopia in the triple sense of that 
term: that is, they … negated … [and] preserved … [as well as] transformed it” (Somay 1984, 
25). "is sublation engendered creativeness from both the utopian and the dystopian camp; it 
is, in fact, much easier and more correct to simply call the works of the period critical utopias 
and dystopias. "e main di+erence between these transformed sub-genres and the past forms of 
the utopian and dystopian literature is that the former include within themselves a dialectical 
opposition between the utopian and dystopian strivings – a tour de force of Blochian pulsation 
and Bakhtinian heteroglossia. As opposed to the ultimate pessimism or optimism in 1984 or 
News from Nowhere, respectively, the New Wave proposed a dialogue between the two.
"e dialogue can best be seen in  two of the most critically acclaimed works of science  ction of 
the 20th-century concerning the topic, namely Le Guin’s !e Dispossessed and Delany’s Trouble 
on Triton.
28
 "e latter is a direct response to the former, which is already visible in Delany’s sly 
subtitle. Both works use science  ction tropes and the tools of social sciences to deal directly 
with the issues on utopia, eutopia,
29
 dystopia, and even heterotopia. In Le Guin’s work we follow 
the journey of the physicist Shevek from his home planet to the neighbouring moon of Urras 
and back again.
30
 "e whole novel can be seen as following the dialectical law of negation of 
the negation, whereby the utopia of Anarres is  rst ly negated by one of the capitalist societies of 
27
 If logical and consistent, utopia is essentially totalizing, but not intrinsically leaned towards totalitarianism. The danger, however, is 
always present (Levitas and Sargisson 2003, 18) .
28
 Full names of the novels are: The Dispossessed: An Ambiguous Utopia, Trouble on Triton: An Ambiguous Heterotopia.
29
 A good place (eu-topos), as opposed to the no-place of u-topos.
30
 He is essentially materializing the Taoist saying of Odo, the founder of the anarcho-communism of Annares: “true journey is return”.
99 LITERATURE
Urras, and the latter negated by the new realizations and experiences of Shevek, thus con rming 
the utopia of his home planet, but on a more profound level. "e subtitle “ambiguous utopia” 
refers, of course, to the spartan conditions of Shevek’s birthplace. Le Guin was certainly not 
naive when constructing this  ctional topos; she knew the historical lessons of capitalism, fascism, 
and Stalinism,
31
 and opted for a combination between anarchism and communism
32
 to be her 
model society, against which we can see the merits and demerits of both our own empirical socio-
political system and that of the novel. "e society of Anarres is #awed: the planet is almost arid, 
the ecological conditions alone cannot yield a community of superabundance,
33
 the technology 
is crude, the communication between Anarres and Urras and other regions of the desert planet is 
limited, and, worst of all, there is a hidden authority pervading every pore of Anarresti existence;
34
 
in other words, it is a far cry from what is considered utopia proper. 
"erein lies the critical capacity of the novel. Shevek, as the protagonist, realizes the #awed nature 
of materializing Odonian principles on a barren planet, but nevertheless strives to better the 
community which bore and raised him. "e  rst chapte r starts with Shevek #eeing from Anarres, 
which is literally enclosed by a wall
35
 ‒ the enclosed utopian space is broken through, and thus 
the  rst step towards the genuine utopian horizon
36
 is taken. What Shevek brings from his ordeal 
on Urras is the hope for the future of Anarres and “the self-critique of anarchism” (Freedman 
2000, 122). "e novel is a critical utopia because of its auto-referentiality,
37
 its self-awareness of 
the genuine utopian vocation; the society of Anarres becomes an open-ended utopia. Samuel 
Delany, on the other hand, e+aces the utopian horizon entirely (Somay 1984, 33). Trouble on 
Triton is focused on the inviolability of subjectivity and the possibility of heterotopian spaces 
existing side by side in a non-hegemonic totality. "e journey of the protagonist Bron Helstrom 
is essentially the movement from one community to the next, from T riton to Earth and back 
again, following the similar path of Shevek, yet this time Bron’s spaces of T riton, Mars and Earth 
o+er no places presenting themselves as utopian; they are just spaces with a wide variety of choices 
and life-styles. Delany does not hide the fact that the concept of heterotopia is borrowed from 
Michel Foucault,
38
 and the novel’s unique space of “unlicensed sector” can be easily compared 
31
 However, she chose to equate it with Marxism.
32
 To be precise, this is anarchist communism (anarcho-communism), whereby communist goals, i.e., abolition of private property and 
the institution of communal ownership, are achieved via direct democracy, rather than political parties/representatives.
33
 A society of superabundance is one of the main goals of the socialist revolution; however: “The socialist project under conditions of 
economic underdevelopment must, in fine, be a decidedly ambiguous one” (Freedman 2000, 123).
34
 Shevek and the few around him realize that the absence of an official government and authority on Anarres does not negate repres-
sion, but only confirms it on a different level: “Public opinion! That’s the power structure he’s part of, and knows how to use. The 
unadmitted, inadmissible government that rules the Odonian society by stifling the individual mind” (Le Guin 2004, 138).
35
 The wall is a leitmotif of the novel, representing the limitations of the objective conditions of Anarres and Urras and the critical capaci-
ties of their peoples.
36
 “The utopian horizon in The Dispossessed is a horizon in the true sense of the word: it is there and approachable; but ever extending 
upwards to a totality which is infinite, it can never be reached” (Somay 1984, 35).
37
 We should take cognizance of the fact that auto-referentiality and self-reflexivity are one of the main literary techniques the New Wave 
adapted from the “mainstream” of modernism and postmodernism.  
38
 “Heterotopias are disturbing, probably because they make it impossible to name this and that, because they shatter or tangle com-
mon names, because they destroy ‘syntax’ in advance, and not only the syntax with which we construct sentences but also that less 
apparent syntax which causes words and things (next to and also opposite one another ) to ‘hold together’ … heterotopias … desiccate 
speech, stop words in their tracks, contest the very possibility of grammar at its source; they dissolve our myths and sterilize the 
lyricism of our sentences” (qtd. in Delany 1996, 292).
100 Janez Steble New Wave Science Fiction and the Exhaustion of the Utopian/Dystopian Dialectic
to Foucault’s “heterotopia of deviation.”
39
 U-l sectors provide relative freedom and safety in the 
form of a combination between lawlessness, criminality, and deviant communities, something 
unseen either on Mars or Earth. 
"e problem with Bron is that none of these spaces provide a happy and reasonable existence 
for him; he even undergoes a sex change to attempt to achieve that, yet  nds no stability and 
meaning in either heterosexuality, homosexuality or transsexuality. "e background of the 
novel revolves around the political tensions between T riton and Earth, leading to interstellar 
war. T riton  ghts to “to make the subjective reality of each of its citizens as politically inviolable 
as possible” (Delany 1996, 225‒6); it should be a perfect place for Bron, considering he was 
born and raised in the sti#ing atmosphere of Mars, but it seems he only has the negative 
capacity for utopia,
40
 rather than Shevek’s critical one. In the end, Delany presents us with a 
set of heterotopian spaces, some more favourable than others, and if T riton is utopia at all,
41
 
it is not only ambiguous and transformed, but transvaluated. Delany in Trouble on Triton 
“couples science  ction with modernist poetics, exploiting science  ction’s ontological motifs 
yet holding them in check by means of a modernist epistemological frame” (McHale 2003, 
70). "e same can be said of !e Dispossessed and the New Wave period in general. While Le 
Guin gave us, through a “modernist epistemological frame,” the critical capacity for utopia, 
Delany seems to have moved into yet another category, that of negative capacity. Bron is stuck 
somewhere between utopia and dystopia, in some heterotopian space
42
 where the di+erence 
between happiness and misery is blurred and unrecognizable, or simply given a di+erent value. 
What if Delany’s contribution to the utopian/dystopian dialectic brought us to another realm 
entirely? "ere is certainly no answer to that. If Le Guin wrote an open-ended utopia with a 
clear and positive horizon, Delany can be said to have written an open-ended heterotopia with 
an unrecognizable horizon. However, there is another author who tried to transvaluate the 
utopian strivings, one far more bizarre and extreme.
J. G. Ballard’s #irtings with the apocalypse and entropy, starting with his debut !e Drowned 
World (published 1962), immediately negated the optimism of the 1950s. In his whole opus both 
technocrats and tycoons are out of place in the surrealist landscapes of physical and psychological 
decay, the protagonists consistently proceed into their own demise. "e afore-mentioned critic 
Fred Pfeil took Ballard as the main example of the New Wave exhaustion of “the real”, especially 
the utopian/dystopian dialectic. So far, we have shown that the New Wave authors in general 
found the enclaves of happiness and meaningful existence in even the bleakest possible scenarios. 
And what of Ballard? Trouble on Triton demonstrates how the issue on utopias and dystopias can 
be further expanded by moving to di+erent categories and values, i.e., heterotopia and negative 
39
 See “Of Other Spaces” (1967). Full text available here: <http://foucault.info/documents/heteroTopia/foucault.heteroTopia.en.html>
40
 For Bron the meaning of a happy place is related to realizing one’s personal preferences; he, however, can only dwell in personal 
dislikes and troubles: “Somewhere, in your sector or in mine, in this unit or in that one, there it is: pleasure, community, respect – all 
you have to do is know the kind, and how much of it … But what happens to those of us who don’t know? What happens to those of 
us who have problems and don’t know why we have the problems we do? What happens to the ones of us in whom even the part 
that wants has lost, through atrophy, all connection with articulate reason. Decide what you like and go get it? Well, what about the 
ones of us who only know what we don’t like?” (Delany 1996, 104).
41
 There are certainly people of various interests and life-styles on Triton who have a more reasonable and happier existence than Bron.
42
 Perhaps we can designate it as an ambiguous heterotopian space.
101 LITERATURE
capacity. In Ballard’s case, it is essentially the same – the transvaluation occurs.
43
 In !e Drowned 
World the entire planet is undergoing a regressive ecological and geographic transformation – 
Earth is reliving its prehistoric era, reptilian life-forms and hot temperatures are on the rise. 
Simply put, human existence as we know it has no place in such a world. Ballard then proceeds 
to show that re-establishing enclaves of capitalism or  ghting against the dying world is irrelevant 
– “the environmental change has rendered the values of the 20th-century urban civilization 
meaningless” (Firsching 1985, 302). "e protagonist Kerans gradually realizes his dreams and 
visions are preparing him for a new reality.
44
 His southward odyssey, in the end, bestows upon 
him a solitary paradise, the identity of “a new Adam” at the expense of his old physical self. 
Other characters around him more or less experience the same odyssey, yet this is all achieved 
on a solitary level. 
!e High-Rise shows a similar path towards new values and selves, yet this time it involves the 
entire apartment complex. We should bear in mind that “many utopian visions are grounded in 
such members of the idealist family of world-views as Platonism, mysticism, orthodox religious 
piety, and modern and postmodern irrationalism” (Wagar 1991, 56). Indeed, in Ballard’s  ction 
we should forego the rational Western view towards utopia; his is simply an irrationalist world-
view (Firsching 1985, 302). New world order arising out of the prehistoric waters of !e New 
World or the dissolutions of capitalist social roles is incomprehensible, Ballard has to resort to 
the language of surrealism and mysticism to convey messages of irrational utopianism. “Ballard’s 
higher social order has no discernible political, economic, or social structure. It is not a kingdom 
of this world at all. Its laws are the laws of spirit, of psychic transcendence, wholly above and 
beyond ordinary waking reason” (Wagar 1991, 58). For him, it is all about transcending the 
limitations of the late-capitalist self. In the end, the utopian goal for Ballard is “the repossession 
of man of authentic and absolute being” (qtd. in Wagar 1991, 55), at one point named as “the 
forgotten paradises of the reborn sun” and at the other as “new Jerusalem”, but never wholly 
comprehensible and totalizing à la More’s Utopia.
5. Conclusion
"e New Wave aesthetics proved to be more than a baroque addition for the genre. "e 
movement was comprised of various authors with various interests, and it was inevitable that 
the ever-present enterprise of utopian and dystopian constructions would be touched upon. As 
it turns out, almost every single author, especially a great many contributing to New Worlds or 
Dangerous Visions, either directly or indirectly dealt seriously with the growth of the utopian/
dystopian dialectic, resulting in some of the most fascinating works of utopian science  ction of 
the 20th-century – works such as !e Dispossessed and Trouble on Triton. "e new form of science 
 ction was accompanied by the transformed and trans valued categories, e.g., Le Guin’s critical 
utopia and Ballard’s irrational one. "e monologism of the pre-science  ctional utopias was in 
this process discarded; in actuality, there was no genuine “exhaustion of the content”, but merely 
43
 Furthermore, Ballard is even more proficient in the use of a modernist epistemological frame.
44
 New reality begets new (unknown) categories: “Sometimes he wondered what zone of transit he himself was entering, sure that his 
own withdrawal was symptomatic not of a dormant schizophrenia, but of a careful preparation for a radically new environment, with 
its own internal landscape and logic, where old categories of thought would merely be an encumbrance” (Ballard 2008, 14).
102 Janez Steble New Wave Science Fiction and the Exhaustion of the Utopian/Dystopian Dialectic
the sublation of the utopian concept. "e New Wave romances of entropy, featured mostly in the 
apocalyptic  ction of the famous trio of the period – Moorcock, Aldiss, Ballard, upon detailed 
reading provide readers with pleasure, hope, and also utopian longings. Finally, the bizarre and 
extreme case of J. G. Ballard tells us that contrary to super cial readings of his surrealist post-
apocalyptic landscapes, the stories are actually endowed with the humanist value of  nding 
authentic being amidst the ever-changing and decadent environments. His transvalued utopias  
are extremely di+erent from the classic secular kingdoms of heaven, but there can be no doubt 
that the search for eu-topos is explicit.
Bibliography
Aldiss, B.W. 1985. Barefoot in the Head. London: Grafton Books.
‒‒‒ , and D. Wingrove. 1986. Trillion Year Spree: The History of Science Fiction. London: Victor Gollancz.
Ballard, J.G. 2008. The Drowned World. London: Harper Perennial.
‒‒‒. 2011. The High-Rise. London: Fourth Estate.
Bukatman, S. 2005. Terminal Identity: The Virtual Subject in Postmodern Science Fiction. Durham, North Carolina: Duke 
University Press.
Clute, J. 1977. The Repossession of Jerry Cornelius. In M. Moorcock, vii-xv. New York: Avon Books.
Delany, S.R. 1996. Trouble on Triton: An Ambiguous Heterotopia. Middletown: Wesleyan University Press.
Disch, T.M. 1974. 334. London: Sphere Books.
‒‒‒. 1996. Camp Concentration. New York: Vintage Books.
Firsching, L.J. 1985. J. G. Ballard’s Ambiguous Apocalypse (L’apocalypse ambiguë de J. G. Ballard). Translated and edited by R. 
M. P. Science Fiction Studies 12, no. 3 (November): 297 310. 
Franklin, H.B. 2009. What is Science Fiction – And How it Grew. In Reading Science Fiction, ed. J. Gunn, M.S. Barr, and M. 
Candelaria, 23 33. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Freedman, C. 2000. Critical Theory and Science Fiction. Hanover and London: Wesleyan University Press. 
‒‒‒. 2001. Science Fiction and Utopia: A Historico-Philosophical Overview. In Learning from Other Worlds: Estrangement, 
Cognition, and the Utopian Politics of Science Fiction and Utopia, ed. P. Parrinder, 72 98. Durham: Duke University Press.
Greenland, C. 1983. The Entropy Exhibition: Michael Moorcock and the British New Wave in Science Fiction. London: Routledge 
& Kegan Paul.
James, E. 2008. Utopias and Science Fiction. In The Cambridge Companion to Science Fiction, ed. E. James and F. Mendlesohn, 
219 230. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Jameson, F. 2007. Archeologies of the Future: The Desire Called Utopia and Other Science Fictions. New York: Verso.
Le Guin, U. 2004. The Dispossessed. London: Gollancz.
Levitas, R., and L. Sargisson. 2003. Utopia in Dark Times: Optimism/Pessimism and Utopia/Dystopia. In Dark Horizons: Science 
Fiction and the Dystopian Imagination, ed. R. Baccolini and T. Moylan, 13 29. New York: Routledge.
Miller, Jr., W.M. 2007. A Canticle for Leibowitz. New York: Bantam Dell.
McHale, B. 2003. Postmodernist Fiction. London and New York: Routledge. 
Moorcock, M., ed. 2004. New Worlds: An Anthology. New York: Thunder’s Mouth Press.
‒‒‒. 1977. The Cornelius Chronicles. New York: Avon Books.
103 LITERATURE
More, Sir Thomas. 1997. Utopia. New York: Dover Publications.
Parrinder, P. 2001. Introduction to Learning from Other Worlds: Estrangement, Cognition, and the Utopian Politics of Science 
Fiction and Utopia, ed. P. Parrinder, 1 18 Durham: Duke University Press.
Pfeil, F. 1990. Another Tale to Tell: Politics and Narrative in Postmodern Culture. New York: Verso.
Somay, B. 1984. Towards an Open-Ended Utopia (Vers une utopie ouverte). Translated and edited by R. M. P. Science Fiction 
Studies 11, no. 1 (March): 25 38.
Suvin, D. 1979. Metamorphoses of Science Fiction: On the Poetics and History of a Literary Genre. New Haven and London: Yale 
University Press.
‒‒‒. 1988. Positions and Presuppositions of Science Fiction. Ohio: Kent State University Press.
Wagar, W.W. 1991. J. G. Ballard and the Transvaluation of Utopia (J. G. Ballard et la transvaluation de l’utopie). Science Fiction 
Studies 18, no. 1 (March): 53 70.
Zoline, P. 2004. The Heat Death of the Universe. In New Worlds: An Anthology, ed. M. Moorcock, 131 45. New York: Thunder’s 
Mouth Press.