STEPHEN KING (b.1947) is probably the first true science fiction I read. Aside from being a writer of the genre, he has contributed some articles on the topic of weird fiction: "I think that a generation's weird fiction, which has always been mainstream literature's first cousin (and sometimes its twin sister), gives us valuable information about the society in which it appears. If you show us what terrified a generation (the nightmares inside a national pillow), then nine times out of ten a great many other decisions that were made during the time that fiction was being published - legal, moral, economic, even military - come into perfect focus."

 

If fears and nightmares are barometers that define a generation's concerns, dreams, can perhaps become the measure of the collective as well.

 

link to W.BURROUGHS and B.GYSIN