Introduction Andrew Milner and J.R

Introduction Andrew Milner and J.R. Burgmann: An Interview JRB: You chose Again, Dangerous Visions as the title for this collection. Obvi- ously this is a reference to Harlan Ellison’s collection. Can I ask why you opted for this specific title? AM: Well, one obvious reason is because many of the essays are concerned with science fiction [henceforth SF]. Ellison actually edited two collections, Danger- ousVisions in 1967 and Again, DangerousVisions in 1972.They were the key plat- forms for American New Wave SF. We in Britain were actually less impressed by them than were people in the States – because, of course, we already had our own New Wave, New Worlds, Moorcock and Ballard, and so on. But I do really like the two Ellison collections. I didn’t begin writing about SF until much later, but I’d been an enthusiastic reader ever since childhood. So, yes, I was very interested in what was going on around the New Wave. I chose the second of the Ellison titles simply because many of these essays are being reprinted, that is, published again. But there were two further reasons for choosing Dangerous Visions itself.When I first began work as a graduate student and as an academic, I was strongly influenced by Lucien Goldmann’s sociology of literature, which was essentially a sociology of the world vision. So my early work was all about visions, albeit mainly seventeenth-century ones. Also, at this time I was very actively involved as a socialist militant – I’d been in the Young Socialists1 from 1965 until about 1973, and then in the International Socialists2 until I moved to Melbourne in 1980 – and I thought of my academic work as running in tan- dem with this political activism. In short, I wanted my writing to be politically dangerous. JRB: Why did you leave the Labour Party to join the International Socialists? AM: In retrospect, I’m rather surprised I did. But I was by no means alone, there were literally thousands of us. The IS was still inside the Labour Party when I first encountered them during the mid-’60s – I used to sell their paper, Rebel, at Young Socialist meetings. I didn’t leave along with them, but I did share in the 1 The Labour Party Young Socialists (LPYS) was the British Labour Party’s youth section from 1960 until 1993, when it was relaunched as Young Labour. 2 The International Socialists (IS) was a Luxemburgist/neo-Trotskyist British socialist organisa- tion from 1962 until 1977, when it became the Socialist Workers Party. © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2018 | doi:10.1163/9789004314153_002 2 introduction general sense of disillusion with the Wilson governments, which had promp- ted their exit. All of this now rather puzzles me. In many respects, those ’60s Labour governments were astonishingly successful and astonishingly radical: they kept us out of Vietnam; they refused to recognise the racist regime in Rhodesia; they nationalised the buses, iron and steel; they legalised homosexu- ality and abortion; they abolished theatre censorship. The contrast with the Blair3 governments, which achieved virtually nothing, is very striking. But the Left had expected Wilson4 to scrap British nuclear weapons. He’d been the left- wing candidate for the leadership, the Left believed strongly in the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament – CND – and Party Conference had voted for unilat- eral disarmament on two successive occasions. We felt betrayed, but with the benefit of hindsight I have to concede how much theWilson governments actually delivered. JRB: Considering that you’ve written so extensively about SF over the last dozen years, what was preventing you from doing so in the last century, as it were? AM: Good question. I’m ashamed to say the real reason is almost certainly the appalling condescension with which academia tended – and perhaps still tends – to regard SF. It was much more respectable to write about John Milton than about John Wyndham. But as I grew older – and tenured – I was increas- ingly able to ignore that kind of prejudice. It’s a good thing, academic tenure; which is why Thatcher got rid of it.5 JRB: You mentioned Goldmann. What was the appeal of his sociology of literature? AM: First of all, you have to remember that I was trained in sociology at the Lon- don School of Economics – the LSE – both as an undergraduate and as a post- graduate. So, there’s a sense in which all my work has necessarily been informed by that sociological training. And in the 1970s Lukács and Goldmann were key points of reference for sociologically-inclined literary critics, especially those who were wary of Althusserianism – as I most certainly was. Secondly, it really did seem to me a powerful way into reading Milton, both in my PhD thesis and in my first book. 3 Tony Blair, Labour Prime Minister of Britain, 1997–2007. 4 Harold Wilson, Labour Prime Minister of Britain, 1964–70, 1974–6. 5 Margaret Thatcher, Conservative Prime Minister of Britain, 1979–90..

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