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Science Fiction, Fantasy & Horror Book Lists

The Defining Science Fiction Books of the 1960s

The Defining Science Fiction Books of the 1960s

The 1960s is infamous for its counter-culture, folk music, Beatles, rock music, civil rights, feminism, Watts and Stonewall riots, the Viet Nam war, radical youth, hippies, campus unrest, generation gap and to a special few, the dangerous visions of the New Wave in science fiction. Black and white SF mutated into 1960s psychedelic Sci-Fi with new writers like Samuel R. Delany and Roger Zelazny. Science fiction tuned in, turned on and detonated with Stranger in a Strange Land, Dune, The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch and The Left Hand of Darkness. As NASA rocketed upwards into the final frontier, science fiction warped through new territories of inner space and planet Gaia. Science fiction grew up in the 1960s and moved away from its pulp adventure adolescence, seeking to explore, experiment and radicalize.

This list comes from the essay The Defining Science Fiction of the 1960s by James Wallace Harris.

Twelve 1960s SF Books That Might Be Remembered in the 22nd Century



1960

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1961

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1962

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1963

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1964

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1965

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1966

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1967

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1968

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1969

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