I usually say of the new wave that I was of it but not in it. As a young and raw writer I loved the propaganda from Mike Moorcock and his followers about doing your own thing, casting off the clichés of the past, taking inspiration not from the American science-fiction tradition but from poetry, rock music, painting, cinema, and much more. But I was also a prickly young man, determined to find my own way. The new wave idiom quickly became an orthodoxy of radican mannerism, a set of values which were deemed OK for a kind of sainted inner circle based around New Worlds, but which made everything else not-OK.

An extra problem was that although in those days Mike Moorcock and I always got along well in person, I did not admire what he wrote. He was a quick and clever writer, but his shallow and superficial skill won out every time over depth of feeling, and authentic voice, an opening up of heart. For me, it was the fatal flaw that tended to undermine the propaganda, and underlined my dislike of the new wave orthodoxy. However, Mike did occasionally buy a story from me, and I was always impressed by his editorial percipience, his loyalty to the writers around him. Grateful too.

After «The Head and the Hand» – Christopher Priest
Episodes, pág 32