Science Fiction Writer
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Brian Aldiss
Brian Aldiss at Interaction in Glasgow, 2005
Pseudonym(s):	Jael Cracken
Born:	August 18, 1925 East Dereham, Norfolk
Occupation(s):	Novelist
Genre(s):	Science fiction
Debut work(s):	The Brightfount Diaries
Influences:	H. G. Wells

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. Greatly influenced by the SF pioneer, H. G. Wells, Aldiss is a vice-president of the international H. G. Wells Society. Science fiction is a form of speculative fiction principally dealing with the impact of imagined science and technology, or both, upon society and persons as individuals. ... Some notable science fiction novels, in alphabetical order by title: Contents: Top - 0–9 A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z  - External links 0–9 1632 by Eric Flint 1633 by... Note that this partial list contains some authors whose works of fantastic fiction would today be called science fiction, even if they predate, or did not work in that genre. ... Poster for 2001: A Space Odyssey, an archetypal science fiction film Science fiction film is a film genre that uses speculative, science-based depictions of imaginary phenomena such as extra-terrestrial lifeforms, alien worlds, and time travel, often along with technological elements such as futuristic spacecraft, robots, or other technologies. ... Image File history File links Download high resolution version (960x1280, 131 KB) en: Brian Aldiss at Worldcon 2005 in Glasgow, August 2005. ... The Clyde Auditorium with the main SECC building behind it The 63rd World Science Fiction Convention (Worldcon) was Interaction, which was held in Glasgow, Scotland 4-8 August, 2005. ... For other uses, see Glasgow (disambiguation). ... 2005 (MMV) was a common year starting on Saturday of the Gregorian calendar. ... A pseudonym (Greek pseudo + -onym: false name) is an artificial, fictitious name, also known as an alias, used by an individual as an alternative to a persons true name. ... August 18 is the 230th day of the year (231st in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... 1925 (MCMXXV) was a common year starting on Thursday (link will display the full calendar). ... Map sources for East Dereham at grid reference TF9812 East Dereham, also known simply as Dereham, is a town (population 15659) in Norfolk, England. ... Norfolk (pronounced IPA: ) is a low-lying county in East Anglia in the east of southern England. ... Employment is a contract between two parties, one being the employer and the other being the employee. ... A literary genre is one of the divisions of literature into genres according to particular criteria such as literary technique, tone, or content. ... Science fiction is a form of speculative fiction principally dealing with the impact of imagined science and technology, or both, upon society and persons as individuals. ... Herbert George Wells (September 21, 1866 – August 13, 1946), better known as H. G. Wells, was an English writer best known for such science fiction novels as The Time Machine, The War of the Worlds, The Invisible Man and The Island of Doctor Moreau. ... Commanders Badge of the Order of the British Empire (Military division) The Most Excellent Order of the British Empire is a British order of chivalry established on 4 June 1917 by King George V. The Order includes five classes in civil and military divisions; in decreasing order of seniority... August 18 is the 230th day of the year (231st in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... 1925 (MCMXXV) was a common year starting on Thursday (link will display the full calendar). ... Map sources for East Dereham at grid reference TF9812 East Dereham, also known simply as Dereham, is a town (population 15659) in Norfolk, England. ... Norfolk (pronounced IPA: ) is a low-lying county in East Anglia in the east of southern England. ... Motto: (French for God and my right) Anthem: God Save the King/Queen Capital London (de facto) Largest city London Official language(s) English (de facto) Unification    - by Athelstan AD 927  Area    - Total 130,395 km² (1st in UK)   50,346 sq mi  Population    - 2006 est. ... Science fiction is a form of speculative fiction principally dealing with the impact of imagined science and technology, or both, upon society and persons as individuals. ... Herbert George Wells (September 21, 1866 – August 13, 1946), better known as H. G. Wells, was an English writer best known for such science fiction novels as The Time Machine, The War of the Worlds, The Invisible Man and The Island of Doctor Moreau. ... H. G. Wells in 1943. ...

Biography

Aldiss's father ran a department store which his grandfather had established, and the family lived above it. At 6 years old Brian was sent to boarding school which he attended until his late teens. In 1943, he joined the Royal Signals regiment, and saw action in Burma; his encounters with tropical rainforests at that time may have been at least a partial inspiration for Hothouse, as his Army experience inspired the Horatio Stubbs second and third books. Hothouse is a 1962 fantasy/science fiction novel by British author Brian Aldiss, composed of 5 novelettes that were originally serialized in a magazine. ...

After World War II, he worked as a bookseller in Oxford. Besides short science fiction for various magazines, he wrote a number of short pieces for a booksellers trade journal about life in a fictitious bookshop, and this attracted the attention of Charles Monteith, an editor at the British publishers Faber and Faber. As a result of this, Aldiss's first book was The Brightfount Diaries (1955), a collection of the bookshop pieces. Combatants Allied powers: China France Great Britain Soviet Union United States and others Axis powers: Germany Italy Japan and others Commanders Chiang Kai-shek Charles de Gaulle Winston Churchill Joseph Stalin Franklin Roosevelt Adolf Hitler Benito Mussolini Hideki Tōjō Casualties Military dead: 17,000,000 Civilian dead: 33,000... Oxford is a city and local government district in Oxfordshire, England, with a population of 134,248 (2001 census). ... Faber and Faber is a celebrated publishing house in the UK, notable in particular for publishing the poetry of T. S. Eliot. ...

In 1955, The Observer newspaper ran a competition for a short story set in the year 2500, which Aldiss won with a story entitled "Not For An Age". The Brightfount Diaries had been a minor success, and Faber asked Aldiss if he had any more writing that 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, Space, Time and Nathaniel was published. By this time, his earnings from writing equalled the wages he got in the bookshop, so he made the decision to become a full-time writer. Wikipedia does not yet have an article with this exact name. ...

He was voted the Most Promising New Author at the World Science Fiction Convention in 1958, and elected President of the British Science Fiction Association in 1960. He was the literary editor of the Oxford Mail newspaper during the 1960s. Around 1964 he and his 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 issues, and an interview with William S. Burroughs in the second. It has been suggested that World Science Fiction Society be merged into this article or section. ... The British Science Fiction Society was founded in 1958 by a group of authors, publishers, booksellers and fans in order to encourage science fiction in every form. ... At the 63rd World Science Fiction Convention in Glasgow, August 2005 Harry Harrison (born Henry Maxwell Dempsey, March 12, 1925 in Stamford, Connecticut) is an American science fiction author who has lived in many parts of the world including Mexico, England, Denmark and Italy. ... James Benjamin Blish (East Orange, New Jersey, May 23, 1921 - Henley-on-Thames, July 29, 1975) was an American author of fantasy and science fiction. ... Clive Staples Lewis (November 29, 1898 – November 22, 1963), commonly referred to as C. S. Lewis, was an author and scholar. ... Sir Kingsley William Amis (April 16, 1922 – October 22, 1995) was an English novelist, poet, critic, and teacher. ... William Seward Burroughs II (1914 – August 2, 1997), more commonly known as William S. Burroughs, was an American novelist, essayist, social critic, painter and spoken word performer. ...

The Penguin Science Fiction Omnibus - 1975 paperback edition. 36 stories - 616 pages

Besides his own writings, he has had great success as an anthologist. 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 Penguin Books under the title Penguin Science Fiction. This was remarkably successful, going into numerous reprints, and was followed up by two further anthologies, More Penguin Science Fiction (1963), and Yet More Penguin Science Fiction (1964). The later anthologies enjoyed the same success as the first, and all three were eventually published together as The Penguin Science Fiction Omnibus (1973), which also went into a number of reprints. In the 1970s, he produced several large collections of classic grand-scale science fiction, under the titles Space Opera (1974), Space Odysseys (1975), Galactic Empires (1976), Evil Earths (1976), and Perilous Planets (1978) which were quite successful. Around this time, he edited a large format volume Science Fiction Art (1975), with selections of artwork from the magazines and pulps. Image File history File links Scifi_omnibus. ... Image File history File links Scifi_omnibus. ... Penguin Books is a British publisher founded in 1935 by Allen Lane. ... Pulp magazines, often called simply the pulps, were inexpensive text fiction magazines widely published in the 1920s through the 1950s. ...

In response to the results from the planetary probes of the 1960s and 1970s, which showed that Venus was completely unlike the hot, tropical jungle usually depicted in science fiction, he and Harry Harrison edited an anthology 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 (1968-1976?) A space probe is an unmanned space mission in which a spacecraft leaves Earths orbit. ... (*min temperature refers to cloud tops only) Atmospheric characteristics Atmospheric pressure 9. ...

He traveled to Yugoslavia (while it existed), met Yugoslav fans in Ljubljana, Slovenia, published a travel book about Yugoslavia, published an alternative-history fantasy story about Serbian kings in the Middle Ages, and, most importantly, wrote a novel, perhaps in one way his best, or most accomplished as a work of literature: a dreamy, visionary, atmospheric work of fantasy, but with many SF elements, The Malacia Tapestry,about an alternative Dalmatia, stopped in time, where some of the people are genetically related to dinosaurs (who still exist), some are winged, progress is sometimes attempted but never really achieved, and Turks may attack in the hope of enslaving Venice or Zadar at any time. The book gives you a feeling that, in Aldiss’s words, “we all stand condemned in the terrible forests of the Universe”, but it is, above all, beautiful.

He was awarded the title of Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) for services to literature in HM Queen Elizabeth II's Birthday Honours list, announced on 11 June 2005. Commanders Badge of the Order of the British Empire (Military division) The Most Excellent Order of the British Empire is a British order of chivalry established on 4 June 1917 by King George V. The Order includes five classes in civil and military divisions; in decreasing order of seniority... Elizabeth II (Elizabeth Alexandra Mary Windsor; born 21 April 1926) is Queen of sixteen sovereign states, holding each crown and title equally. ... June 11 is the 162nd day of the year in the Gregorian calendar (163rd in leap years), with 203 days remaining. ... 2005 (MMV) was a common year starting on Saturday of the Gregorian calendar. ...

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 Halpern’s biography of John Osborne, and his luxury a banjo. The full selection of eight favourite records is on the BBC website [1]. Desert Island Discs is a long-running BBC Radio 4 programme. ... Walter Brennan (July 25, 1894 – September 21, 1974) was a three time Academy Award winning American actor. ... John James Osborne (December 12, 1929 – December 24, 1994) was an English playwright, screenwriter, and critic of the Establishment. ... The British Broadcasting Corporation, usually known as the BBC (and also informally known as the Beeb or Auntie) is the largest broadcasting corporation in the world in terms of audience numbers, employing 26,000 staff in the United Kingdom alone and with a budget of more than GB£4 billion...

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.
• The Airs of Earth (1963 - short story collection; American title Starswarm)
• The Dark Light Years (1964): the encounter of humans with the utods, gentle aliens whose physical and mental health requires wallowing in mud and flith, 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's birth, and received the 1965 Nebula award for the best short novel
• An Age (1967: also published in the US as Cryptozoic!) a dystopic time-travel novel.
• 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 a character called "Domoladossa'", 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.

note: Holman Hunt's paintings also feature in Aldiss's short story The Secret of Holman Hunt and the Crude Death Rate (1975).

• Barefoot in the Head (1969) Perhaps Aldiss's 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) A 21st century scientist, a creator of a technological monster himself, is transported to 19th century Switzerland where he encounters both Frankenstein and Mary Shelley. It was the basis for the somewhat flawed 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. Also adapted for film by Keith Fulton and Lou Pepe, released in 2006.
• Last Orders and Other Stories (1977)
• Pile (1979; Poem)
• New Arrivals, Old Encounters (1979)
• Moreau's Other Island (1980)
• The Helliconia Trilogy
  

  Book cover of Helliconia Summer
  • 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)
• Dracula Unbound (1990)
• A Tupolev too Far (1994)
• Somewhere East of Life: Another European Fantasia (1994)
• The Secret of This Book (1995)
• When the Feast is Finished (with Margaret Aldiss) (1999)
• White Mars Or, The Mind Set Free (1999)
• Super-Toys Last All Summer Long and Other Stories of Future Time (2001) The title story was the basis for the Steven Spielberg film A.I.
• Super-State (2002)
• The Cretan Teat (2002)
• Affairs at Hampden Ferrers (2004)
• Jocasta (2005)

Non-Stop is a 1958 Science-Fiction novel by Brian Aldiss. ... The Primal Urge is a science-fiction novel by Brian Aldiss. ... Hothouse is a 1962 fantasy/science fiction novel by British author Brian Aldiss, composed of 5 novelettes that were originally serialized in a magazine. ... Species Many; see text for examples Banyan (genus Ficus, subgenus Urostigma) is a subgenus of many species of tropical figs with an unusual growth habit. ... Earthworks is a 1965 dystopian novel by prolific British science fiction author Brian Aldiss. ... H. G. Wells at the door of his house at Sandgate Herbert George Wells (September 21, 1866 - August 13, 1946) was an English writer best known for his science fiction novels such as The War of the Worlds and The Time Machine. ... The Nebula is an award given each year by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA), for the best science fiction/fantasy fiction published in the United States during the two previous years (see rolling eligibility below). ... An Age (published in the US as Cryptozoic!) is a 1967 science fiction novel by Brian Aldiss. ... New Worlds was a British Science Fiction Magazine which was first published professionally in 1946. ... Michael John Moorcock (born December 18, 1939, in London, England) is a prolific English writer primarily of science fiction and fantasy who has also published a number of literary novels. ... For building painting, see painter and decorator. ... The Hireling Shepherd, 1851 The Hireling Shepherd (1851) is a painting by the Pre-Raphaelite artist William Holman Hunt. ... The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood was a group of English painters, poets and critics, founded in 1848 by John Everett Millais, Dante Gabriel Rossetti and William Holman Hunt. ... William Holman Hunt - Self-Portrait. ... Languages Serbian Religions Predominantly Serbian Orthodox Christian Related ethnic groups Other Slavic peoples, especially South Slavs See Cognate peoples below Serbs (Serbian: Срби or Srbi) are a South Slavic people who live mainly in Serbia, Montenegro, Bosnia-Herzegovina, and, to a lesser extent, in Croatia. ... This article is about the medieval crusades. ... Finnegans Wake, published in 1939, is James Joyces final novel. ... Victor Frankenstein is the protagonist of the 1818 novel Frankenstein, written by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley. ... Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (30 August 1797 – 1 February 1851) was an English romantic/gothic novelist, the author of Frankenstein, or The Modern Prometheus. ... Frankenstein Unbound is a 1990 horror movie based on Brian Aldiss novel of the same name. ... Roger Corman. ... A painting of Chang and Eng Bunker, circa 1836 Conjoined human fetuses Conjoined twins can occur in non-human animal species. ... The Helliconia Trilogy is a science fiction series of three books by Brian Aldiss, set on the planet Helliconia. ... Image File history File links Helliconiasummer. ... Super-Toys Last All Summer Long was the literary basis for the feature-film Artificial Intelligence. ... Steven Allan Spielberg (born December 18, 1946), more commonly known as Steven Spielberg, is a highly famous, highly influential, three-time Academy Award winning American film director and producer whose very name has become synonymous with the word film director around the world. ... A.I.: Artificial Intelligence (actual on-screen title: Artificial Intelligence: A.I.) (2001) was the last project that filmmaker Stanley Kubrick worked on. ...

Poetry

• Home Life With Cats (1992)
• At The Caligula Hotel (1995)
• Songs From The Steppes Of Central Asia (1995)
• A Plutonian Monologue on His Wife's Death (2000)
• At A Bigger House (2002)
• The Dark Sun Rises (2002)

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's book about science fiction, New Maps of Hell
• The Pale Shadow Of Science (1986)
• This World and Nearer Ones: Essays exploring the familiar (1979)
• The Detached Retina: Aspects of SF and Fantasy (1995)
• The Twinkling of an Eye or My Life as an Englishman (1998)
• Art after Apogee: The Relationships between an Idea, a Story, a Painting (with Rosemary Phipps) (2000)
• Bury My Heart in W.H. Smith's - A Writing Life - an autobiography

Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (30 August 1797 – 1 February 1851) was an English romantic/gothic novelist, the author of Frankenstein, or The Modern Prometheus. ... This article is about the 1818 novel. ... David Wingrove (born September 1954 in North Battersea, London) is a British science fiction writer. ...

External links

• Brian W. Aldiss - his official site
• Supertoys Last All Summer Long story
• Brian W. Aldiss at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database
• Brian Aldiss at www.contemporarywriters.com
• Brian Aldiss at the Internet Book List
• Brian Aldiss's online fiction at Free Speculative Fiction Online
• Guardian newspaper profile
• Two Audio Interviews with Brian Aldiss from 1984 (26 min. 25 sec.) and 1986 (44 min. 14 sec.), RealAudio
• Brian W. Aldiss - two strange books by Aldiss