Brian Aldiss

Brian Wilson Aldiss (OBE) (born August 18, 1925 in East Dereham, Norfolk) is a prolific English author of both general fiction and science fiction. His byline reads either Brian W. Aldiss or simply Brian Aldiss.

Books

Fiction

• The Brightfount Diaries (1955)
• Space, Time and Nathaniel (1957) Short story collection; all his published science fiction to that date, including "T", his first published story, and "Not For an Age". Aldiss had only had thirteen stories published at that time, and a fourteenth was hurriedly written to make up the numbers.
• Non-stop (1958) A story of a small tribe in a very strange jungle, who make unsettling discoveries about the nature of their world. This was published in the US under a different title, which gives away the basic plot premise, so that title will not be quoted here...
• Equator (1958)
• The Canopy of Time (1959) Short story collection: published in slightly different format in the US as Galaxies like Grains of Sand
• The Interpreter (1960; US title Bow down to Nul) A short novel about the huge, old galactic empire of Nuls, a giant, three-limbed, civilized 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 to clarify the abuses and with the disorganized 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 (US: 1959, UK 1961)
• The Primal Urge (1961)
• Hothouse (1962) 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 humans still live, on the edge of extinction, beneath the giant banyan tree that covers the day side of the earth. Originally published in the Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, the magazine editor actually sought scientific advice about one aspect of the book. He was told that the orbital dynamics involved meant that it was nonsense, but the image of the earth and moon side by side in orbit, shrouded with cobwebs woven by giant vegetable spiders, was so outrageous and appealing that he published it anyway. Science fiction fans endorsed this decision, voting it a Hugo Award The original (and substantially abridged) American edition was titled The Long Afternoon of Earth; according to Aldiss' account, the publisher insisted on this so that the book wouldn't be put amongst the horticulture books in bookshops.
• The Airs of Earth (1963 - short story collection; American title Starswarm)
• The Dark Light Years (1964): the encounter of humans with the utod, gentle aliens whose physical and mental health requires wallowing in mud and dung, who are not even recognised as intelligent by the humans.
• Greybeard (1964) Set decades after the Earth's population has been sterilised by a burst of radiation from an astronomical event, the book shows an emptying world, occupied by an ageing, childless population.
• Best SF stories of Brian Aldiss (1965); Published in the US as But who can replace a Man?
• Earthworks (1965)
• The Impossible Smile (1965); Serial in Science Fantasy magazine, under the pseudonym "Jael Cracken"
• The Saliva Tree and other strange growths (1966) Story collection. The title story of the collection, The Saliva Tree was written to mark the centenary of H.G. Wells' birth, and received the 1965 Nebula award for the best short novel
• An Age (1967: also published in the US as Cryptozoic!)
• Report On Probability A (1968) Described by Aldiss as an 'anti-novel', this book had its origins some years earlier, before being serialised in New Worlds under Michael Moorcock's editorship. The bulk of the book is the Report, describing in minute, obsessive and often repetitive detail, three characters G, S, and C as they secretly watch a house, each from a separate outbuilding with peripheral views of the house's windows, catching occasional glimpses of its occupant, Mrs. Mary. As the Report is being read by an unnamed character, he is secretly being observed from other universes, and these observers in their turn are being observed, all of them engaged in futile speculation about the exact nature of Probability A, and the exact meaning of the Victorian painting, The Hireling Shepherd (by Pre-Raphaelite William Holman Hunt), which occurs in the Report... Later we learn that Mrs. Mary is watching a screen of her own, although this may just be a television set, and it is suggested that the painting may be a window into a world where time is standing still.
• Barefoot in the Head (1969) Perhaps Aldiss' most experimental work, this first appeared in several parts as the 'Acid Head War' series in New Worlds. Set in a Europe some years after a flare-up in the Middle East led to Europe being attacked with bombs releasing huge quantities of long-lived hallucinogenic drugs. Into an England with a population barely maintaining a grip on reality comes a young Serb, who himself starts coming under the influence of the ambient aerosols, and finds himself leading a messianic 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.
• The Horatio Stubbs saga
• The Hand-Reared Boy (1970)
• A Soldier Erect (1970)
• A Rude Awakening (1978)
• The Moment of Eclipse (1971: short story collection)
• Frankenstein Unbound (1973) This was the basis for the 1990 film of the same title, directed by Roger Corman.
• The 80 minute Hour (1974)
• The Malacia Tapestry (1976)
• Brothers of the Head (1977) This was a large-format book, illustrated by Ian Pollock, telling the strange story of the rock stars Tom and Barry Howe, Siamese twins with a third, dormant head, which eventually starts to awaken.
• Last Orders and Other Stories (1977)
• Pile (1979; Poem)
• New Arrivals, Old Encounters (1979)
• The Helliconia Trilogy
• Helliconia Spring (1982)
• Helliconia Summer (1983)
• Helliconia Winter (1985)
• Seasons in Flight (1984)
• Courageous New Planet (c. 1984)
• The Year before Yesterday (1987); A fix-up of Equator from 1958 combined with The Impossible Smile from 1965.
• Ruins (1987)
• Forgotten Life (1988)
• A Tupolev too Far (1994)
• Supertoys Last All Summer Long Story collection: the title story was the basis for the film A.I., planned by Stanley Kubrick and later directed by Steven Spielberg after Kubrick's death

Non-Fiction

• Cities and Stones - A Traveller's Yugoslavia (1966)
• The Shape of Further Things (1970)
• Item Eighty Three (with Margaret Aldiss) (1972): a comprehensive bibliography of all books and short works published to that date. (The book is number 83 in its own list).
• Billion Year Spree: The History of Science Fiction (1973) in which he argues that Mary Shelley's Frankenstein was the first true science fiction novel. Revised and expanded as Trillion Year Spree (with David Wingrove)(1986)
• Hell's Cartographers (1975, edited 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' book about science fiction, New Maps of Hell
• The Pale Shadow Of Science, Serconia Press, 1986
• This World and Nearer Ones: Essays exploring the familiar (1979)
• Bury My Heart in W.H. Smith's - A Writing Life - an autobiography