Brian Aldiss

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Brian Aldiss

East Dereham, Norfolk, England
Died19 August 2017(2017-08-19) (aged 92)
Oxford, England
Pen name
  • Jael Cracken
  • Dr. Peristyle
  • C. C. Shackleton
Occupation
  • Writer
  • editor
  • artist
Period1954–2017
GenreScience fiction
Notable works
Website
brianaldiss.co.uk

Brian Wilson Aldiss

OBE (/ˈɔːldɪs/; 18 August 1925 – 19 August 2017) was an English writer, artist and anthology editor, best known for science fiction
novels and short stories. His byline reads either Brian W. Aldiss or simply Brian Aldiss, except for occasional pseudonyms during the mid-1960s.

Greatly influenced by science fiction pioneer

British New Wave of science fiction.[2]

Life and career

Early life, education and military service

Brian Wilson Aldiss was born on 18 August 1925,[3] above his paternal grandfather's draper's shop in Dereham, Norfolk. When Aldiss's grandfather died, his father, Bill (the younger of two sons), sold his share in the shop and the family left Dereham. Aldiss's mother, Dot, was the daughter of a builder.[4] He had an older sister who was stillborn and a younger sister.[5] As a three-year-old, Aldiss started to write stories which his mother would bind and put on a shelf.[6]

At the age of 6, Aldiss went to

Royal Signals[8] and saw military action in Burma.[9]

Writing and publishing

His army experience inspired the novel Hothouse[10] and the Horatio Stubbs second and third books, A Soldier Erect and A Rude Awakening, respectively.[11]

After the war, he worked as a bookseller in

Faber and Faber.[13]
As a result, Faber and Faber published Aldiss's first book, The Brightfount Diaries (1955), a 200-page novel in diary form about the life of a sales assistant in a bookshop.

About this time he also began to write science fiction for various magazines. According to

ISFDB, his first speculative fiction in print was the short story Criminal Record, published by John Carnell in the July 1954 issue of Science Fantasy.[14] Several of his stories appeared in 1955, including three in monthly issues of New Worlds,[14]
also edited by Carnell.

In 1954, The Observer newspaper ran a competition for a short story set in the year 2500. Aldiss's story Not For An Age was ranked third following a reader vote.[15]

The Brightfount Diaries had been a minor success, and Faber asked Aldiss if he had any more writing they could look at with a view to publishing. Aldiss confessed to being a science fiction author, to the delight of the publishers, who had a number of science fiction fans in high places, and so his first science fiction book was published, a collection of short stories entitled Space, Time and Nathaniel (Faber, 1957). By this time, his earnings from writing matched his wages in the bookshop, and he made the decision to become a full-time writer.[citation needed]

In 2012

Aldiss led the voting for Most Promising New Author of 1958 at the next year's Worldcon, but finished behind "no award".[1] He was elected president of the British Science Fiction Association in 1960. He was the literary editor of the Oxford Mail newspaper from 1958 to 1969.[12] Around 1964, he and long-time collaborator Harry Harrison started the first ever journal of science fiction criticism, Science Fiction Horizons, which during its brief span of two issues published articles and reviews by such authors as James Blish, and featured a discussion among Aldiss, C. S. Lewis, and Kingsley Amis in the first issue[16] and an interview with William S. Burroughs in the second.[17] In 1967 Algis Budrys listed Aldiss, J. G. Ballard, Roger Zelazny and Samuel R. Delany as "an earthshaking new kind of" writers, and leaders of the New Wave.[18] Aldiss supported the New Wave movement, helping the magazine New Worlds to get financial backing from a 1967 Arts Council grant and publishing some of his more experimental work in the magazine.[19]

Besides his own writings, he edited a number of anthologies. For Faber he edited Introducing SF, a collection of stories typifying various themes of science fiction, and Best Fantasy Stories. In 1961, he edited an anthology of reprinted short science fiction for the British paperback publisher

pulps
.

In response to the results from the

Farewell, Fantastic Venus!, reprinting stories based on the pre-probe ideas of Venus. He also edited, with Harrison, a series of anthologies The Year's Best Science Fiction (Nos. 1–9, 1968–1976).[20]

Aldiss invented a form of extremely short story called the mini-saga. The Daily Telegraph hosted a competition for the best mini-saga for several years, and Aldiss was the judge.[21] He edited several anthologies of the best mini-sagas.

'Metropolis' limited edition print by Brian Aldiss

Aldiss travelled to Yugoslavia, where he met fans in

Ljubljana, Slovenia and published a travel book about Yugoslavia entitled Cities and Stones (1966), his only work in the genre.[22] He published an alternative-history fantasy story, "The Day of the Doomed King" (1968), about Serbian kings in the Middle Ages, and wrote a novel called The Malacia Tapestry
, about an alternative Dalmatia.

Art

In addition to a highly successful career as a writer, Aldiss was an accomplished artist. His first solo exhibition, The Other Hemisphere, was held in Oxford, August–September 2010, and the exhibition's centrepiece Metropolis (see figure) has since been released as a limited edition fine art print.[23] (The exhibition title denotes the writer/artist's notion, "words streaming from one side of his brain inspiring images in what he calls 'the other hemisphere'".)[23]

Personal life

In 1948, Aldiss married Olive Fortescue, secretary to the owner of Sanders' bookseller's in Oxford, where he had worked since 1947.[12] He had two children from his first marriage: Clive in 1955 and Caroline Wendy in 1959, but the marriage "finally collapsed" in 1959 and dissolved in 1965.[12][24]

In 1965, he married his second wife, Margaret Christie Manson (daughter of John Alexander Christie Manson, an aeronautical engineer),[25] a Scot and secretary to the editor of the Oxford Mail; Aldiss was 40, and she 31.[12] They lived in Oxford and had two children together, Tim and Charlotte.[12][24] She died in 1997.[12]

Death

Aldiss died on 19 August 2017, the day after his 92nd birthday.[26][27]

Awards and honours

In 2010

He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 1990.[28]

Aldiss was the "Permanent Special Guest" at the annual International Conference on the Fantastic in the Arts (ICFA) from 1989 through 2008. He was also the Guest of Honor at the conventions in 1986 and 1999.[29]

The

Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame inducted him in 2004.[31]

He was awarded the title of Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) for services to literature in the 2005 Birthday Honours list.[32]

In January 2007 he appeared on Desert Island Discs. His choice of record to 'save' was "Old Rivers" sung by Walter Brennan, his choice of book was John Heilpern's biography of John Osborne, and his luxury a banjo. The full selection of eight favourite records is on the BBC website.[33]

On 1 July 2008 he was awarded an honorary doctorate by the University of Liverpool in recognition of his contribution to literature.[34] The Brian W Aldiss Archive at the university holds manuscripts from the period 1943–1995.[35]

In 2013, Aldiss was recipient of the World Fantasy Convention Award[36] at the World Fantasy Convention in Brighton, England.

Aldiss sat on the Council of

the Society of Authors.[37]

He won two Hugo awards: in 1962 for the Hothouse series; and in 1987 for

Trillion Year Spree.[38][39] Aldiss also won a Nebula award in 1965 for "The Saliva Tree".[40]

Works

Aldiss was the author of over 80 books and 300 short stories, as well as several volumes of poetry.[5]

Novels

  • The Brightfount Diaries (1955, Faber)
  • Non-Stop (1958, Faber), (1959, Digit), (1976, Pan), (2000, Millennium), US title Starship (1960, Signet S1779), (1969, Avon V2321)
    On a massive generation ship whose inhabitants have descended into primitivism over 23 generations, a member of a culturally primordial tribe investigates the dark, jungle-filled corridors of the ship and slowly uncovers the true nature of the universe he inhabits.
  • The Interpreter (1960, Digit R506), (1967, Four Square 1970), US title Bow Down to Nul Ace D-443
    A short novel about the huge, old galactic empire of Nuls, a giant, three-limbed, civilised alien race. Earth is just a lesser-than-third-class colony ruled by a Nul tyrant whose deceiving devices together with good willing but ineffective attempts of a Nul Signatory (roughly equivalent to Prime Minister) to clarify the abuses and with the disorganised earthling resistance reflect the complex relationship existing between imperialists and subject races which Aldiss himself had the chance of seeing at first hand when serving in India and Indonesia in the forties.
  • The Male Response (1959, Beacon 45), (1961, Four Square 1623)
  • The Primal Urge (1961, Ballantine F555), (1967, Sphere), (1976, Panther). A satire on sexual reserve, it explores the effects on society of a forehead-mounted "Emotion Register" that glows when the wearer experiences sexual attraction. The book was banned in Ireland.
  • Hothouse (1962, Faber), (1965, Four Square 1147), (1979, Panther), published in abridged form in the American market as The Long Afternoon of Earth (1962, Signet D2018). A fix-up novel based on short stories "Hothouse", "Nomansland", "Undergrowth", "Timberline" and "Evergreen". This assemblage of stories won the Hugo Award for short fiction in 1962.[1]
    Set in a far future Earth, where the earth has stopped rotating, the Sun has increased output, and plants are engaged in a constant frenzy of growth and decay, like a tropical forest enhanced a thousandfold; a few small groups of elvish humans still live on the edge of extinction, beneath the giant banyan tree that covers the day side of the earth.
  • Greybeard (1964, Harcourt, Brace & World), (1964, Faber), (1965, Signet P2689), (1968, Panther)
    Set decades after the Earth's population has been sterilised as a result of nuclear bomb tests conducted in Earth's orbit, the book shows an emptying world, occupied by an aging, childless population.
  • The Dark Light Years (1964, Signet D2497), (1964, Faber), (1966, Four Square 1437), (1979, Panther)
    The encounter of humans with the utods, gentle aliens whose physical and mental health requires wallowing in mud and filth, and who – though they achieved interstellar space flight – are not even recognised as intelligent by the humans. The critic Fredric Jameson described The Dark Light Years as, along with Ursula K. Le Guin's The Word for World Is Forest, "one of the major SF denunciations of the American genocide in Vietnam."[41]
  • Earthworks (1965, Faber), (1966, Doubleday), (1967, Four Square), (1967, Signet P3116), (1979, Panther), (1980, Avon)
  • An Age (1967, Faber), (1969, Sphere), (1979, Panther), US title Cryptozoic! (1969, Avon), (1978, Panther), a dystopic time-travel novel
  • Report on Probability A (serialized 1967), (1968, Faber), (1969, Sphere). (1969, Doubleday), (1970, Lancer), (1980, Avon)
  • Barefoot in the Head (1969, Faber), (1970, Doubleday), (1972, Ace), (1974, Corgi), (1981, AVON), (1990, Gollancz VGSF Classics), a fix-up novel based on short stories: "Just Passing Through", "Multi-Value Motorway", "Still Trajectories", "The Serpent of Kundalini", "Drake-Man Route", and novelettes: "Auto-Ancestral Fracture", "Ouspenski's Astrabahn"
    Perhaps Aldiss's most experimental work, this first appeared in several parts as the Acid Head War series in
    crusade. The narration and dialogue reflects the shattering of language under the influence of the drugs, in mutating phrases and puns and allusions, in a deliberate echo of Finnegans Wake
    .
  • Horatio Stubbs series:
    1. The Hand-Reared Boy (1970, Weidenfeld & Nicolson),[19] (1971, Signet T4575), (1971, Corgi)
    2. A Soldier Erect (1971, Weidenfeld & Nicolson),[19] (1972, Corgi)
    3. A Rude Awakening (1978, Weidenfeld & Nicolson),[19] (1979, Corgi)
    Omnibus edition, The Horatio Stubbs Saga (1985, Panther)[19]
  • Frankenstein Unbound (1973, Jonathan Cape), (1974, Random House), (1975, Fawcett Crest), (1975, Pan)
    A 21st century politician is transported to 19th century Switzerland where he encounters Victor Frankenstein, the Frankenstein Monster and Mary Shelley.
  • The Eighty Minute Hour, or The 80 minute Hour (1974, Jonathan Cape), (1974, Doubleday), (1975, Leisure), (1975, Pan)
    A weird and ambitious "space opera" whose characters actually sing. The world is in chaos after nuclear war causes time slips and even those that believe they rule the world have trouble knowing where and when they are.
  • The Malacia Tapestry (1976, Jonathan Cape), (1977, Harper & Row), (1978, Panther), (1978, Ace), (1985, Berkley)
    A picaresque novel with fantasy elements, set in a city not unlike Venice. However, it is a Venice without Christianity or monotheism, existing within an alternate version of Renaissance or Early Baroque Italy.
  • Brothers of the Head (1977, Pierrot), (1979, Panther)
    A large-format book, illustrated by Ian Pollock, tells the strange story of the rock stars Tom and Barry Howe,
    Siamese twins
    with a third, dormant head that eventually starts to awaken.
  • Enemies of the System (1978, Jonathan Cape), (1978, Harper & Row), (1980, Panther), (1981, Avon)
  • Moreau's Other Island (1980, Jonathan Cape), (1982, Panther), or An Island Called Moreau (1981, Simon & Schuster), (1981, Timescape)
  • Squire Quartet series:
    1. Life in the West (1980, Weidenfeld & Nicolson), (1982, Corgi)
    2. Forgotten Life (1988, Gollancz), (1989, Atheneum / Macmillan), (1989, Mandarin)
    3. Remembrance Day (1993, HarperCollins UK), (1993, St. Martin's Press), (1994, Flamingo)
    4. Somewhere East of Life (1994, Carroll & Graf), (1994, Flamingo)
  • Helliconia Trilogy
    1. Helliconia Spring (1982, Atheneum), (1982, Jonathan Cape), (1983, Berkley), (1983, Granada)
      BSFA Award;
      Campbell Memorial Award;[43] Nebula Award finalist[1]
    2. Helliconia Summer (1983, Atheneum), (1983, Jonathan Cape), (1984, Berkley), (1985, Granada)
      BSFA finalist; Locus Award, fourth place[1]
    3. Helliconia Winter (1985, Atheneum), (1985, Jonathan Cape), (1986, Berkley), (1986, Granada)
      BSFA;[42] Nebula finalist; Locus, fifth place[1]
    Omnibus edition, Helliconia (2010, Gollancz SF Masterworks)
  • Ruins (1987), novella
  • The Year Before Yesterday, or Cracken at Critical (1987, Franklin Watts), (1987, Kerosina), (1988, St. Martin's), (1989, New English Library), a fix-up novel based on novelette "Equator" and novella "The Impossible Smile"
  • Dracula Unbound (1990, HarperCollins), (1991, Graftton)
  • White Mars or, the Mind Set Free (1999, Little, Brown UK), (2000, St. Martin's), with
    OCLC 905903045
  • Super-State (2002, Orbit)
  • The Cretan Teat (2002)
  • Affairs at Hampden Ferrers (2004)
  • Sanity and the Lady (2005, PS Publishing)
  • Jocasta (2006, Rose Press)
    A re-telling of Sophocles's Theban tragedies concerning Oedipus and Antigone.[44] In Aldiss's novel, myth and magic are vibrantly real, experienced through an evolving human consciousness. Amidst various competing interpretations of reality, including the appearance of a time-travelling Sophocles, Aldiss provides an alternative explanation of the Sphinx's riddle.
  • HARM (2007, del Rey), (2007, Duckworth)
    Campbell Award nominee[45]
  • Walcot (2010, Goldmark)[46]
    Family saga spanning the 20th century
  • Finches of Mars (2012)[47]
  • Comfort Zone (2013)[9]

Short stories

Collections:

Uncollected short stories:

  • "Index to Life" (1954)
  • "Ultimate Construction" (1967), as C. C. Shackleton
  • "The Hunter at His Ease" (1970)
  • "The Secret of Holman Hunt and the Crude Death Rate" (1970)
  • "The Weather on Demansky Island" (1970)
  • "The Day Equality Broke Out" (1971)
  • "Manuscript Found in a Police State" (1972)
  • "The Ergot Show" (1972)
  • "Strange in a Familiar Way" (1973)
  • "The Planet at the Bottom of the Garden" (1973)
  • "Serpent Burning on an Altar" (1973)
  • "The Young Soldier's Horoscope" (1973)
  • "Woman in Sunlight with Mandolin" (1973)
  • Enigma series:
    • Three Enigmas I:
      1. "The Enigma of Her Voyage" (1973)
      2. "I Ching, Who You?" (1973)
      3. "The Great Chain of Being What?" (1973)
    • Three Enigmas II: The Eternal Theme Of Exile:
      1. "The Eternal Theme of Exile" (1973)
      2. "All Those Enduring Old Charms" (1973)
      3. "Nobody Spoke Or Waved Goodbye" (1973)
    • Three Enigmas III: All in God's Mind:
      1. "The Unbearableness of Other Lives" (1974)
      2. "The Old Fleeing and Fleeting Images" (1974)
      3. "Looking on the Sunny Side of an Eclipse" (1974)
    • Diagrams For Three (Enigmatic) Stories:
      1. "The Girl in the Tau-Dream" (1974)
      2. "The Immobility Crew" (1974)
      3. "A Cultural Side-Effect" (1974)
    • Three Songs for Enigmatic Lovers:
      1. "A One-Man Expedition Through Life" (1974)
      2. "The Taste of Shrapnel" (1974)
      3. "40 Million Miles from the Nearest Blonde" (1974)
    • Three Enigmas IV: Three Coins in [Enigmatic|Clockwork] Fountain:
      1. "Carefully Observed Women" (1975)
      2. "The Daffodil Returns the Smile" (1975)
      3. "The Year of the Quiet Computer" (1975)
    • Three Deadly Enigmas: V: Year by Year the Evil Gains:
      1. "Within the Black Circle" (1975)
      2. "Killing Off the Big Animals" (1975)
      3. "What Are You Doing? Why Are You Doing It?" (1975)
    • The Aperture Moment:
      1. "Waiting for the Universe to Begin" (1975)
      2. "But Without Orifices" (1975)
      3. "Aimez-Vous Holman Hunt?" (1975)
    • Three Revolutionary Enigmas:
      1. "The Fall of Species B" (1980)
      2. "In the Halls of the Hereafter" (1980)
      3. "The Ancestral Home of Thought" (1980)
    • Her Toes Were Beautiful on the [Hilltops|Mountains]:
      1. "Another Way Than Death" (1992)
      2. "That Particular Green of Obsequies" (1992)
    • Three Moon Enigmas:
      1. "His Seventieth Heaven" (1995)
      2. "Rose in the Evening" (1995)
      3. "On the Inland Sea" (1995)
  • "I dreamed I was Jung last night" (1974)
  • "Melancholia has a Plastic Core" (1974)
  • "Always Somebody There" (1975)
  • "Excommunication" (1975)
  • "How Did the Dinosaurs Do It?" (1976)
  • "In the Mist of Life" (1977)
  • "The Bang-Bang" (1977), novelette
  • "My Lady of the Psychiatric Sorrows" (1977)
  • "Yin, Yang and Jung: Three Galactic Enigmas" (1978)
  • "Modernisation" (1980)
  • "End Game" (1981)
  • "Call Yourself a Christian" (1982)
  • "How the Boy Icarus Grew Up and, After a Legendary Disaster, Learnt New Things About Himself and the External World, Until He Was Able to Comprehend the Magic That Had Been His in His Earliest Years /or/ Second Flight" (1982)
  • "Parasites of Passion" (1982)
  • "The Captain's Analysis" (1982)
  • "An Admirer of Einstein" (1983)
  • "The Immortal Storm Strikes Again" (1983)
  • "Another Story on the Theme of the Last Man on Earth" (1985)
  • "Domestic Catastrophe" (1985)
  • "Operation Other Cheek" (1985)
  • "Possessed by Love" (1985)
  • "Silence After the Silence" (1985)
  • "The Greatest Saga of All Time" (1985), as C. C. Shackleton
  • "The Monster of Loch Awe" (1985)
  • "The Fatal Break" (1987)
  • "The Hero" (1987)
  • "The Merdeka Hotel" (1987)
  • "The Price of Cabbages" (1987)
  • "Thursday" (1987)
  • "Tourney" (1987)
  • "Conversation on Progress" (1988)
  • "Hess" (1988)
  • "Sex and the Black Machine" (1988)
  • "Wordsworth Halucinates" (1988)
  • "The Day the Earth Caught Fire" (1989)
  • "Adventures in the Fur Trade" (1990)
  • "People—Alone—Injury—Artwork" (1991)
  • "Kindred Blood in Kensington Gore" (1992)
  • "Softly – As in an Evening Sunrise" (1992)
  • "English Garden" (1993)
  • "Friendship Bridge" (1993), novelette
  • "The Servant Problem" (1994)
  • "The Monster of Everyday Life" (1994)
  • "The Madonna of Futurity" (1994), novella
  • "Into the Tunnel!" (1995)
  • "Compulsory Holidays For All" (1995)
  • "The Law Against Trivia" (1996)
  • "The Enigma of the Three Moons" (1997)
  • "Death, Shit, Love, Transfiguration" (1997)
  • "An Apollo Asteroid" (1999)
  • "The Rain Will Stop" (2000, The Pretentious Press), written in 1942
  • "A Single-Minded Artist" (2001)
  • "Happiness in Reverse" (2001)
  • "Talking Cubes" (2001)
  • Supertoys series:
    • "Supertoys: Play Can Be So Deadly" (2001)
    • "Supertoys: What Fun to Be Reborn" (2001)
  • "A New (governmental) Father Christmas", or "A New (governmental) Father Christmas: A Moral Tale for All in Headington" (2002)
  • "Near Earth Object" (2002)
  • "Ten Billion of Them" (2005)
  • "Pipeline" (2005), novelette
  • "Building Sixteen" (2006)
  • "Tiger in the Night" (2006)
  • "Safe!" (2006)
  • "Life, Learning, Leipzig and a Librarian" (2007)
  • "Four Ladies of the Apocalypse" (2007)
  • "Peculiar Bone, Unimaginable Key" (2008)
  • "Fandom at the Palace" (2008)
  • "The First-Born" (2010)
  • "Hapless Humanity" (2010)
  • Doctor Who series:
    • "Umwelts for Hire" (2010), Doctor Who Brilliant Book 2011 (2010, BBC Books,
      ISBN 978-1-84607-991-7
      )
  • "Benkoelen" (2011)
  • "Less Than Kin, More Than Kind" (2011)
  • "The Mighty Mi Tok of Beijing" (2013)
  • "Abundances Above" (2016)

Poems

Collections:

  • Farewell to a Child (1982), collection of 10 poems:
    "Found", "Lost", "The Commitment", "When We Were Four", "With Vacant Possession", "The Child Departs: a dialogue", "The Eternal Child", "The Frozen Boy", "The Haunting", "The Malediction"
  • Home Life With Cats (1992), collection of 34 poems:[56]
    "Out of the Night", "The Cats' Heaven", "Kittens (Two)", "Slaves", "Where Have You Been?", "Yum-Yum", "Heatwave", "Cats' Nerves", "Foxie", "Jackson", "Town-Life", "Nickie", "The Two-Kitten Problem", "Macramé's Lament", "Travelling Cats", "The Cat Improvement Company", "On a Favourite Goldfish Drowned in a Bowl of Cats", "Portrait of a Cat with Lady", "An Evening at Home", "Tatty's Tie-Shop", "Snacks", "Who Owns the House?", "A Riddle", "How I Swam Out to Sea with My Cat", "A Lion for Tea", "The Cat in the Cathedral", "The Poor Man's Cat", "Mutual Regard", "First Birthday", "Rules", "Relating to the Pet", "The Cat Speaks", "Michael, the Cycling Cat", "The Lost Grave"
  • At the Caligula Hotel and Other Poems (1995), collection of 74 poems, grouped in four sections:[57]
    I. Imagery?: "At the Caligula Hotel", Chinese Exercises ("Lu Tai", "Nocturne", "Interval", "Indecision", "Journeying", "Poems from a Later Dynasty III: Who Hears My Voice?"), "Exit Aquascutum", "While Feeding Parrots", "Winter Bites Deep", "Breughel's Hunters in the Snow", "Anau: The Well", "The Cynar, Istanbul", "Dawn in Kuala Lumpur", "Gauguin's Tahiti"
    II. Everyday?: "No, I was Never Deaf or Blind to Her Music", "Toledo: Three Ladies", "Government", "Moonglow: for Margaret", "Alfie Cogitates on Life", "Memories of Palic", "Boars Hill: the Sycamores and the Oaks", "All Things Transfigure", "Trapped in the Present", "The Path", "Suburban Sunday", "Nature Notes: Early September", "Willow Cottage", "Cold Snap", "Stoney Ground", "The Triumph of the Superficial", "The Twentieth Camp", "Good Fortune", "Communication", "A Summery Meditation on Money", "A Moment of Suspense", "Fragment of a Longer Poem"
    III. Literary?: "Short Stories", "What Did the Policeman Say?", "Hamlet Folk", "The Poor", "On Reading Poetry in Berkhamsted", "Poem Inspired by Scott Meredith", Two Painters ("I: Francis Bacon", "II: Fernand Khnopff"), "Light of Ancient Days", "Mary Shelley, 1916", "Victor Frankenstein on the Mer de Glace", "The Shelleys – To a Lady who spoke of their 'Mystery'", "The Created One Speaks", "Mary in Italy", "Looking It Up", "Rice Pudding", "Writer's Life"
    IV. Scientific?: "Greenhouse Sex", "Lunar Anatomy", "Monemvasia", "Found", "Destruction of the Fifth Planet", "Femalien", "Thomas Hardy Considers the Newly-Published Special Theory of Relativity", "'Rhine Locks are Closed in Battle Against Poison'", "The Cat Improvement Company", "The Expanding Universe", "To a Triceratops Skull in the British Museum", "The Light", "Flight 063", Precarious Passions ("I: A Brain Pursues its Vanished Dream", "II: A Woman Marries the Southern Ocean", "III: Ascension Island Courts a Whale", "IV: A Refrigerator Proposes to a Musk Ox", "V: A Book Falls in Love with its Reader", "VI: A Lamp Standard Courts the Stars"), "Alphabet of Ameliorating Hope"
  • Songs from the Steppes of Central Asia: The Collected Poems of Makhtumkuli: Eighteenth Century Poet-Hero of Turkmenistan (1995)
  • A Plutonian Monologue on His Wife's Death (2000,[36] The Frogmore Papers), collection of 7 poems
  • At a Bigger House (2002), collection of 48 poems:
    "Hazards of the Trail", "Perspectives", "Presentiments of Dawn", "Now Showing: 'Killing Father'", "The World of Lost Content", "Flight 063", "Railway Engine Pulling Slowly", "The Deceptive Truth", "Colour Contrasts", "Fairy Tales", "The Women", "They Who Waited", "The Bonfire of Time", "The Foot Speaks", "The Ghost Koi", "Rapide des Morts", "The Teeth of Time", "Elizabeth Jennings (Died October 2001)", "'War and Peace': A Song for Mathilde Mauguiere", "Her Beautiful Thing", "The Hunters in the Snow", "Aral Seasons", "Uzbecks in London", "Poem from Life in the West", "Many Mansions", "The Horse Unburied", "The Red Pavilion", "Blythborough Church, A Hardyesque Dialogue", "Insomnia", "Awake at Three A.M.", "The Start of Something", "Retrospection: At the Temple of Aphaia, on the Island of Aegina, Greece", "Hors d'Oeuvres for my Lady", "The Barney", "Dawn in KL", "A Funeral Service: Kingsley Amis, 31st October 1995", "On Passing a Roadside Auction of Featherbeds, Lake District, 1845", "City Scene", "The Prehistory of the Mind", "April in East Coker", "Seeking Love", "The New Wing", "Xenophilia", "Name-Dripping", "Dora/Dinah", "Volcano", "Monemvasia", "The Moment"
  • The Dark Sun Rises (2002), collection of 50 poems:
    "The Dark Sun Rises", "Venice and Istanbul", "Perspectives", "Monemvasia", "The Deceptive Truth", "The Moment", "On Passing a Roadside Auction of Featherbeds, Lake District, 1845", "Retrospection: At the Temple of Aphaia, on the Island of Aegina, Greece", "Rapide des Morts", "Flight 063", "Aral Seasons", "Uzbecks in London", "Poem from Life in the West", "Insomnia", "Meum Tuumque", "Partings from Oedipus on Mars", "The Barney", "Blythborough Church, A Hardyesque Dialogue", "Not Speaking of You", "The Silent Love", "'War and Peace': A Song for Mathilde Mauguiere", "Her Beautiful Thing", "Rondeau after Leigh Hunt", "Jocasta", "Jane Eyre at Elsinore", "The Carnivores", "The Garden at Number Thirty-Nine", "The Horse Unburied", "The Garden", "In the RA Friends' Room June '95", "They Who Waited", "Colour Contrasts", "The Red Pavilion", "The Women", "Hazards of the Trail", "Many Mansions", "The Start of Something", "The Prehistory of the Mind", "The World of Lost Content", "Volcano", "Dendrochronology", "The Foot Speaks", "Fairy Tales", "Now Showing: 'Killing Father'", "A Piece of Cleopatra", "Cliché Love", "'Eatin' Regular Again': A Pop Song", "The Cat Improvement Company", "At the Caligula Hotel", "untitled (re: myth of Santa Claus)"
  • Mortal Morning (2011)[58]

Uncollected poems:

  • "There Are No More Good Stories About Mars Because We Need No More Good Stories About Mars" (1963)
  • "Bridging Hours in Wesciv" (1969)
  • "Drama on the River Cherwell" (1974)
  • "Epitaph for a Writer" (1974)
  • "In Another Town: Bologna" (1974)
  • "Innovation in the Arts" (1974)
  • "Mon Frère" (1974)
  • "Taking Leave of a Cold Country" (1974)
  • "The Lady Literary Agent" (1974)
  • "Verse in a Country Garden" (1974)
  • "Summer: 1773" (1976)
  • "Pile: Petals from St. Klaed's Computer" (1979)
  • "Sleep" (1983)
  • "Tra La" (1994)

Plays

  • Patagonia's Delicious Filling Station: Three One-act Plays (1975), collection
  • Enigma series:
    • The Bones of Bertrand Russell: A Tryptich of Absurd Enigmatic Plays:
      1. "Futurity Takes a Hand" (1976)
      2. "Through a Galaxy Backwards" (1976)
      3. "Where Walls Are Hung with Multi-Media Portraits" (1976)
  • Distant Encounters (1978)

Not categorised fiction

  • Courageous New Planet (c. 1984)

Non-fiction

Autobiographies
  • ... And the Lurid Glare of the Comet (1986), articles and autobiography
  • Bury My Heart at W.H. Smith's: A Writing Life (1990)[36]
  • The Twinkling of an Eye, or My Life as an Englishman (1998)[36]
  • When the Feast is Finished (1999),[36] with Margaret Aldiss
  • An Exile on Planet Earth: Articles and Reflections (2012), articles and autobiography
Science fiction
  • The Shape of Further Things, or The Shape of Further Things: Speculation on Change (1970)
  • Billion Year Spree series:
    1. Billion Year Spree: The History of Science Fiction (1973)
      BSFA special award[42]
    2. Trillion Year Spree: The History of Science Fiction (1986), with David Wingrove, a revised and expanded version of Billion Year Spree
      Winner of the 1987
      Hugo Award for Best Non-Fiction Book.[1] At the awards ceremony, Aldiss began his acceptance speech by holding the Hugo aloft and proclaiming, to general approbation, "It's been a long time since you've given me one of these, you bastards!"[59]
  • SF Horizons (1975), with Harry Harrison
  • Science Fiction as Science Fiction (1978)
  • Science Fiction Quiz (1983)
  • The Pale Shadow of Science, or Pale Shadow of Science (1985), collected essays
  • The Detached Retina: Aspects of SF and Fantasy (1995)[36]
Others
  • Cities and Stones: A Traveller's Yugoslavia (1966)
  • Item Eighty-Three: Brian W. Aldiss – A Bibliography 1954–1972 (1972), with Margaret Aldiss, a bibliography of Aldiss's published works, this book being number 83
  • Science Fiction Art (1975)
  • This World and Nearer Ones: Essays Exploring the Familiar (1979)
  • Art After Apogee (2000), with Rosemary Phipps, essays
  • Researches and Churches in Serbia (2002), collection of 9 articles

Anthologies edited

  • Penguin Science Fiction series:
    1. Penguin Science Fiction (1961)
    2. More Penguin Science Fiction (1963)
    3. Yet More Penguin Science Fiction (1964)
    Omnibus edition, The Penguin Science Fiction Omnibus (1973)
  • Best Fantasy Stories (1962)
  • Introducing SF (1964)
  • Nebula Award Stories Two (1967), with Harry Harrison
  • Farewell, Fantastic Venus (1968)
  • The Year's Best Science Fiction series, with Harry Harrison:
    1. The Year's Best Science Fiction No. 1 (1968)
    2. The Year's Best Science Fiction No. 2, or Best SF: 1968 (1969)
    3. The Year's Best Science Fiction No. 3, or Best SF: 1969 (1970)
    4. The Year's Best Science Fiction No. 4 (1971)
    5. The Year's Best Science Fiction No. 5 (1972)
    6. The Year's Best Science Fiction No. 6, or Best SF: 1972 (1973)
    7. The Year's Best Science Fiction No. 7, or Best SF: 1973 (1974)
    8. The Year's Best Science Fiction No. 8 (1976)
    9. The Year's Best Science Fiction No. 9, or The Year's Best SF 9 (1976)
  • Space Opera (1974)
  • Space Odysseys (1975)
  • Hell's Cartographers: Some Personal Histories of Science Fiction Writers (1975), with Harry Harrison, a collection of short autobiographical pieces by a number of science fiction writers, including Aldiss. The title is a reference to Kingsley Amis's survey of science fiction, New Maps of Hell.
  • Decade series, with Harry Harrison:
    1. Decade: the 1940s (1975)
    2. Decade: the 1950s (1976)
    3. Decade: the 1960s (1979)
  • Evil Earths (1976)
  • Galactic Empires series:
    1. Galactic Empires. Volume One (1976)
    2. Galactic Empires. Volume Two (1976)
  • Perilous Planets (1978)
  • Mini Sagas: From The Daily Telegraph Competition series:
  • A Science Fiction Omnibus (2007)
    ISBN 978-0-14-118892-8
  • The Folio Science Fiction Anthology (2016)

Adaptations

See also

References

  1. ^ a b c d e f g h "Aldiss, Brian W." Archived 5 August 2011 at the
    Locus Publications
    . Retrieved 2 April 2013.
  2. ISBN 978-0-19-502174-5
    .
  3. ^ "Obit: Brian Aldiss". The New York Times. EU: Britain. Associated Press. 22 August 2017.
  4. ^ a b Brown, Andrew (16 June 2001). "Profile: Brian Aldiss". The Guardian. London.
  5. ^ a b Roberts, Sam (24 August 2017). "Brian Aldiss, Author of Science Fiction and Much More, Dies at 92". The New York Times. Retrieved 6 September 2017.
  6. ^ Cooper, Charlie (13 April 2013). "My Secret Life: Brian Aldiss, 87, author". The Independent. London.
  7. ISSN 0362-4331
    . Retrieved 27 January 2022.
  8. ^ Kelly, Guy (31 October 2015). "Brian Aldiss at 90: 'British readers had a prejudice against science fiction'". The Telegraph. Archived from the original on 12 January 2022. Retrieved 21 August 2017.
  9. ^ a b Kelly, Stuart (13 December 2013). "Brian Aldiss: 'These days I don't read any science fiction. I only read Tolstoy'". The Guardian. Retrieved 21 August 2017.
  10. S2CID 5161949
    .
  11. ^ Clute, John; Pringle, David (22 August 2017). "Aldiss, Brian W". SFE: The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction. Retrieved 22 August 2017.
  12. ^ a b c d e f g Brown, Andrew (15 June 2001). "Master of the universes: Brian Aldiss". The Guardian. Retrieved 21 August 2017.
  13. ^ Brian Aldiss (15 May 2003). Brian Aldiss – Creating 'The Brightfount Diaries' (37/79) (Motion picture). Web of Stories. Archived from the original on 23 November 2021. So finally, I wrote to the Editor and said, you know you don't have a comic column. Don't you think that 'The Bookseller' would do better if it had a comic column every week? I would like to write such a column for you. He wrote back and said, come and see me. Bring some of your comic columns. I wrote six of them, and since I was working, in fact, for Blackwells, Blackwell became Brightfount and my bookshop was Brightfounts... The Brightfount Diaries, and my pseudonym was not Aldiss, but Pica, a small type. OK. ... I received a very nice letter from Faber & Faber, saying, 'Dear Mr Aldiss, We all enjoy 'The Brightfount Diaries'. We wondered if you'd care to make them into a book'. Make them into a book! You know, I didn't have to submit anything – they asked me! Well, I mean, there's the root of arrogance for you.
  14. ^ a b Brian Aldiss at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database (ISFDB). Retrieved 22 April 2013.
  15. ^ "Short Story, Ballot". The Observer. 16 January 1955. p. 9.
  16. ^ "SF Horizons, No. 1". isfdb.org. Al von Ruff. Retrieved 24 August 2017.
  17. ^ "SF Horizons, No. 2". isfdb.org. Al von Ruff. Retrieved 24 August 2017.
  18. ^ Budrys, Algis (October 1967). "Galaxy Bookshelf". Galaxy Science Fiction. pp. 188–194.
  19. ^ a b c d e "Authors : Aldiss, Brian W : SFE : Science Fiction Encyclopedia".
  20. ^ "Locus Online: Brian Aldiss interview (excerpts)". locusmag.com. Retrieved 21 August 2017.
  21. ^ "Your chance to enter the Daily Telegraph Mini-saga Competition 1999". The Daily Telegraph. London. 27 April 1999. Archived from the original on 16 April 2015.
  22. ^ "Brian Aldiss – Cities & Stones". brianaldiss.co.uk. 7 May 2011. Retrieved 21 August 2017.
  23. ^ a b "wire-frame • giclée prints". Wire-frame fine art publishing (wire-frame.net). Archived from the original on 27 December 2012. Retrieved 18 April 2013.
  24. ^ a b "HOW WE MET: BRIAN ALDISS AND ANTHONY STORR". The Independent. 22 October 1995. Retrieved 21 August 2017.
  25. ^ Science Fiction and Fantasy Literature, vol. 2, R. Reginald, 1979, p. 793
  26. ^ @brianaldiss (21 August 2017). "It is with great sadness we announce the death of our beloved father & grandfather. Brian died peacefully at home on his 92nd birthday ^TA" (Tweet). Retrieved 21 August 2017 – via Twitter.[non-primary source needed]
  27. ^ "Science fiction author Brian Aldiss dies aged 92". The Guardian. 21 August 2017. Retrieved 27 January 2022.
  28. ^ "Royal Society of Literature". Retrieved 14 February 2023.
  29. ^ "Past ICFA Guests". International Association for the Fantastic in the Arts. Archived from the original on 25 February 2014. Retrieved 24 January 2013.
  30. ^ "Damon Knight Memorial Grand Master" Archived 1 July 2011 at the Wayback Machine. Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA). Retrieved 26 March 2013.
  31. ^ "Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame" Archived 21 May 2013 at the Wayback Machine. Mid American Science Fiction and Fantasy Conventions, Inc. Retrieved 25 April 2012. This was the official website of the hall of fame to 2004.
  32. ^ "The London Gazette". 11 June 2005. Retrieved 3 May 2014.
  33. ^ "Desert Island Discs – Castaway : Brian Aldiss". BBC. Retrieved 18 April 2013.
  34. ^ "Special Collections & Archives : Brian Aldiss Archive". University of Liverpool. Retrieved 15 February 2023.
  35. ^ "Visions of the Future: Brian Aldiss – Archives Hub". archiveshub.ac.uk. Retrieved 21 August 2017.
  36. ^ a b c d e f "Brian Aldiss – Literature".
  37. ^ "About – The Society of Authors". societyofauthors.org. Archived from the original on 19 October 2015. Retrieved 21 August 2017.
  38. ^ "Brian Aldiss – Literature". literature.britishcouncil.org. Retrieved 6 September 2017.
  39. ^ Thomson, Iain (21 August 2017). "Science fiction great Brian Aldiss, 92, dies at his Oxford home". The Register. Retrieved 6 September 2017.
  40. ^ "Nebula Award Winners: 1965–2011". SFWA. Retrieved 6 September 2017.
  41. ^ Jameson, Fredric (2000) [1975]. "World-reduction in Le Guin: The Emergence of Utopian Narrative". In Hardt, Michael; Weeks, Kathi (eds.). The Jameson Reader. Blackwell. p. 375.
  42. ^ a b c d "BSFA Awards: Past Awards". Archived from the original on 19 May 2011. Retrieved 17 October 2012.. British Science Fiction Association. Archived 2011-05-19. Retrieved 2013-04-25.
  43. ^ "Brian Aldiss – Literature". literature.britishcouncil.org. Retrieved 21 August 2017.
  44. ^ "Brian Aldiss unpicks the Jocasta complex | the Spectator". 22 January 2015.
  45. ^ "John W. Campbell Memorial Award Finalists". Gunn Center for the Study of Science Fiction (sfcenter.ku.edu). Archived from the original on 30 August 2018. Retrieved 18 April 2013.
    The Award recognises second and third-place runners-up. Recent lists of finalists are long, 14 in 2008.
  46. ^ Greenland, Colin (7 August 2010). "Walcot by Brian Aldiss". Retrieved 12 September 2017.
  47. ^ "Finches of Mars : Brian Aldiss – HarperCollins". Archived from the original on 14 December 2013.
  48. ISBN 9780007482290
    .
  49. ISBN 9780007586394
    .
  50. ISBN 9780008148959
    .
  51. ISBN 9780008148973
    .
  52. ISBN 9780007482504
    .
  53. ISBN 9780008174033
    .
  54. ISBN 9780007482733
    .
  55. ISBN 9780008113162
    .
  56. ISBN 0-586-21428-3
    .
  57. ISBN 1-85619-568-6
    .
  58. ^ "Mortal Morning by Brian Aldiss". Flambard Press. Archived from the original on 10 August 2013. Retrieved 18 April 2013.
  59. ^ David Langford, The Sex Column and Other Misprints, Cosmos Books, 2005, p. 82. The quotation may not be reported exactly.

External links

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