ALDISS, Brian W(ilson)

(1925-)

   UK writer, anthologist and critic, educated at private schools, which he disliked. He served in the Royal Signals in Burma and Sumatra, was demobilized in 1948 and worked as an assistant in Oxford bookshops. BWA began his writing career by contributing fictionalized sketches about bookselling to the trade magazine The Bookseller; these were later assembled as his first book, The Brightfount Diaries (1955). BWA began publishing sf with Criminal Record for Science Fantasy in 1954. There followed such notable tales as Outside (1955), Not for an Age (1955), which was a prizewinner in an Observer sf competition), There is a Tide (1956) and Psyclops (1956), all of which appeared in BWA's first sf volume, Space, Time and Nathaniel (Presciences) (coll 1957). No Time Like Tomorrow (coll 1959 US) reprints 6 stories from the 14 in Space, Time and Nathaniel and adds another 6. These early stories were ingenious and lyrical but dark in mood. BWA remains a prolific writer of short stories (his total well exceeded 300 by 1995), almost all under his own name, though he has used the pseudonyms C.C.Shackleton, Jael Cracken and John Runciman for a few items. All the World's Tears (1957), Poor Little Warrior (1958), But Who Can Replace a Man? (1958), Old Hundredth (1960) and A Kind of Artistry (1962) are among the most memorable stories collected in The Canopy of Time (coll of linked stories 1959); of the stories listed, only All the World's Tears and But Who Can Replace a Man? appear, with expository passages that make the book into a loose future HISTORY, in the substantially different Galaxies like Grains of Sand (coll of linked stories 1960 US; with 1 story added rev 1979 UK). The Airs of Earth (coll 1963; with 2 stories omitted and 2 stories added, rev vt Starswarm 1964 US) and BEST SCIENCE FICTION STORIES OF BRIAN W.ALDISS (coll 1965; rev 1971; vt Who Can Replace a Man? 1966 US) also assemble early work. BWA received a 1959 award at the World SF CONVENTION as most promising new author, but his work was less well received in certain quarters where his emphasis on style and imagery, and his lack of an engineering mentality, were regarded with suspicion. His first novel, Non-Stop (1958; cut vt Starship 1959 US), is a brilliant treatment of the GENERATION STARSHIP and also the theme of CONCEPTUAL BREAKTHROUGH; it has become accepted as a classic of the field. Vanguard from Alpha (1959 dos US; with Segregation added, rev as coll vt Equator: A Human Time Bomb from the Moon! 1961 UK) - which became part of The Year Before Yesterday (1958-65; fixup 1987 US; rev vt Cracken at Critical: A Novel in Three Acts 1987 UK) - and Bow Down to Nul (1960 US dos; text restored vt The Interpreter 1961 UK) are much less successful, but The Primal Urge (1961 US) is an amusing treatment of SEX as an sf theme. Always ebullient in his approach to sexual morality, BWA was one of the authors who changed the attitudes of sf editors and publishers in this area during the 1960s. The Long Afternoon of Earth (fixup 1962 US; exp vt Hothouse 1962 UK) won him a 1962 HUGO award for its original appearance as a series of novelettes. It is one of his finest works. Set in the FAR FUTURE, when the Earth has ceased rotating, it involves the adventures of humanity's remnants, who live in the branches of a giant, continent-spanning tree (DEVOLUTION). Criticized for scientific implausibility by James BLISH and others, Hothouse (BWA's preferred title) nevertheless displays all his linguistic, comic and inventive talents. It also illustrates BWA's main thematic concerns, namely the conflict between fecundity and ENTROPY, between the rich variety of life and the silence of death. The Dark Light Years (1964) is a lesser work, though notable for the irony of its central dilemma - how one comes to terms with intelligent ALIENS who are physically disgusting. Greybeard (cut 1964 US; full version 1964 UK) is perhaps BWA's finest sf novel. It deals with a future in which humanity has become sterile due to an accident involving biological weapons. Almost all the characters are old people, and their reactions to the incipient death of the human race are well portrayed. Both a celebration of human life and a critique of civilization, it has been underrated, particularly in the USA. Earthworks (1965; rev 1966 US) is a minor novel about OVERPOPULATION. An Age (1967; vt Cryptozoic! 1968 US) is an odd and original treatment of TIME TRAVEL, which sees time as running backwards with a consequent reversal of cause and effect, comparable but superior to Philip K.DICK's Counter-Clock World (1967), published in the same year. During the latter half of the 1960s BWA was closely identified with NEW-WAVE sf, and in particular with the innovative magazine NEW WORLDS, for which he helped obtain an Arts Council grant in 1967. Here BWA published increasingly unconventional fiction, notably his novel Report on Probability A (1968; written 1962 but unpublishable until the times changed), an sf transposition of the techniques of the French anti-novelists into a Surrealist story of enigmatic voyeurism, and his Acid-Head War stories, collected as Barefoot in the Head: A European Fantasia (fixup 1969). Set in the aftermath of a European war in which psychedelic drugs have been used as weapons, the latter is written in a dense, punning style reminiscent of James Joyce's Finnegans Wake (1939); it is an extraordinary tour de force. The novella The Saliva Tree (1965 FSF; 1988 chap dos US) won a NEBULA and featured in The Saliva Tree and Other Strange Growths (coll 1966). It is an entertaining tribute to H.G.WELLS, though the plot is reminiscent of The Colour out of Space (1927) by H.P.LOVECRAFT. Further volumes of short stories include Intangibles Inc. (coll 1969; with 2 stories omitted and 1 added, rev vt Neanderthal Planet 1970 US), The Moment of Eclipse (coll 1970), which won the BRITISH SCIENCE FICTION AWARD in 1972, and The Book of Brian Aldiss (coll 1972 US; vt Comic Inferno 1973 UK). Novels of this period include Frankenstein Unbound (1973), a time-travel fantasia which has Mary SHELLEY as a major character and presents in fictional form the myth-of-origin for sf he advocated in his history of the genre, Billion Year Spree (1973; rev and exp with David WINGROVE as Trillion Year Spree 1986, which won a Hugo); and The Eighty-Minute Hour: A Space Opera (1974 US), a comedy in which BWA's penchant for puns and extravagant invention is thought by some critics to be overindulged. His long fantasy novel The Malacia Tapestry (1976) is a much more balanced work. Set in a mysterious, never-changing city, it is a love story with fantastic elements. Beautifully imagined, it is a restatement of BWA's obsessions with entropy, fecundity and the role of the artist, and was perhaps his best novel since Greybeard. Brothers of the Head (1977), about Siamese-twin rock stars and their third, dormant head, was a minor exercise in Grand Guignol; with an additional story, it was also assembled as Brothers of the Head, and Where the Lines Converge (coll 1979). Enemies of the System: A Tale of Homo Uniformis (1978) was a somewhat disgruntled DYSTOPIAN novella. Moreau's Other Island (1980; vt An Island Called Moreau 1981 US) plays fruitfully with themes from H.G.Wells: during a nuclear war a US official discovers that bioengineering experiments performed on a deserted island are a secret project run by his own department. Stories collected in Last Orders and Other Stories (coll 1977; vt Last Orders 1989 US), New Arrivals, Old Encounters (coll 1979) and Seasons in Flight (coll 1984) were unwearied, though sometimes hasty. The 1970s also saw BWA beginning to publish non-sf fictions more substantial than his previous two, The Brightfount Diaries and The Male Response (1961 US). He gained his first bestseller and some notoriety with The Hand-Reared Boy (1970). This, with its two sequels, A Soldier Erect (1971) and A Rude Awakening (1978), deals with the education, growth to maturity and war experiences in Burma of a young man whose circumstances often recall the early life of the author; the three were assembled as The Horatio Stubbs Saga (omni 1985). More directly connected to his sf are four novels set in contemporary and near-future Europe, loosely connected through the sharing of some characters. The sequence comprises Life in the West (1980), listed by Anthony BURGESS in his Ninety-Nine Novels: The Best in English since 1939 (1984); Forgotten Life (1988); Remembrance Day (1993) and Somewhere East of Life: Another European Fantasia (1994). The four flirt brusquely with autobiography, but are of greatest interest for their tough-minded grasp of late 20th century European cultures. A novella, Ruins (1987 chap), also explores contemporary material. Some years had passed since his last popular success as an sf novelist when BWA suddenly reasserted his eminence in the field with the publication of the Helliconia books - HELLICONIA SPRING (1982), which won the 1983 JOHN W.CAMPBELL MEMORIAL AWARD, Helliconia Summer (1983) and Helliconia Winter (1985) - three massive, thoroughly researched, deeply through-composed tales set on a planet whose primary sun is in an eccentric orbit around another star, so that the planet experiences both small seasons and an eon-long Great Year, during the course of which radical changes afflict the human-like inhabitants. Cultures are born in spring, flourish over the summer, and die with the onset of the generations-long winter. A team from an exhausted Terran civilization observes the spectacle from orbit. Throughout all three volumes, BWA pays homage to various high moments of pulp sf, rewriting several classic action climaxes into a dark idiom that befits Helliconia. As an exercise in world-building, the Helliconia books lie unassailably at the heart of modern sf; as a demonstration of the complexities inherent in the mode of the PLANETARY ROMANCE when taken seriously, they are exemplary; as a Heraclitean revery upon the implications of the Great Year for human pretensions, they are (as is usual with BWA's work) heterodox. Dracula Unbound (1991) continues through a similar time-travel plot the explorations of Frankenstein Unbound, although this time in a lighter vein. Two summatory collections - Best SF Stories of Brian W.Aldiss (coll 1988; vt Man in his Time: Best SF Stories 1989), not to be confused with the similarly titled 1965 collection, and A Romance of the Equator: Best Fantasy Stories (coll 1989), not to be confused with A Romance of the Equator (1980 chap), which publishes the title story only - closed off the 1980s, along with Science Fiction Blues (coll 1988). This latter collects materials used by BWA in Dickensian stage readings he began to give in the 1980s at conventions and other venues; these readings have reflected something of the vast, exuberant, melancholy, protean corpus of one of the sf field's two or three most prolific authors of substance, and perhaps its most exploratory; this impatient expansiveness is also reflected in the stories assembled as A Tupolev Too Far (coll 1993). Kindred Blood in Kensington Gore (1992 chap), a short play, gave BWA the opportunity to conduct on stage an imaginary conversation in similar terms with the posthumous Philip K.DICK. BWA has been an indefatigable anthologist and critic of sf. His anthologies (most of which contain stimulating introductions and other matter) include Penguin Science Fiction (anth 1961), Best Fantasy Stories (anth 1962), More Penguin Science Fiction (anth 1963), Introducing SF (anth 1964), Yet More Penguin Science Fiction (anth 1964) - assembled with his earlier two Penguin anths as The Penguin Science Fiction Omnibus (omni 1973 - and The Penguin World Omnibus of Science Fiction (anth 1986) with Sam J.LUNDWALL. The Book of Mini-Sagas I (anth 1985) and The Book of Mini-Sagas II (anth 1988) are associational collections of 50-word stories. The Space Opera series of anthologies comprises Space Opera (anth 1974), Space Odysseys (anth 1975), Evil Earths (anth 1975), Galactic Empires (anth in 2 vols 1976) and Perilous Planets (anth 1978). Anthologies ed in collaboration with Harry HARRISON are: Nebula Award Stories II (1967); the Year's Best SF series comprising Best SF: 1967 (1968 US; vt The Year's Best Science Fiction No 1 1968 UK), The Year's Best Science Fiction No 2 (anth 1969; exp vt Best SF: 1968 1969 US), The Year's Best Science Fiction No 3 (anth 1970; vt Best SF: 1969 1970 US), The Year's Best Science Fiction No 4 (anth 1971; vt Best SF: 1970 1971 US), The Year's Best Science Fiction No 5 (anth 1972; vt Best SF: 1971 1972 US), Best SF: 1972 (anth 1973 US; vt The Year's Best Science Fiction No 6 1973 UK), Best SF: 1973 (anth 1974 US; cut vt The Year's Best Science Fiction No 7 1974 UK), Best SF 1974 (anth 1975 US; cut vt The Year's Best Science Fiction No 8 1975 UK) and The Year's Best Science Fiction No 9 (anth 1976; vt Best SF: 1975 1976 US); All About Venus (anth 1968 US; exp vt Farewell, Fantastic Venus! A History of the Planet Venus in Fact and Fiction 1968 UK); The Astounding-Analog Reader (anth in 2 vols 1968 UK paperback of 1973 divided Vol 1 into 2 vols, and Vol 2 did not appear at all from this publisher); and the Decade series comprising Decade: The 1940s (1975), The 1950s (1976) and The 1960s (1977). Also with Harrison, with whom BWA has had a long and, considering the wide gulf between their two styles of fiction, amazingly successful working relationship, he edited two issues of SF Horizons (1964-5), a short-lived but excellent critical journal, and Hell's Cartographers (anth 1975), a collection of six autobiographical essays by sf writers, including the two editors. Most of BWA's nonfiction has a critical relation to the genre, though Cities and Stones: A Traveller's Jugoslavia (1966) is a travel book. The Shape of Further Things (1970) is autobiography-cum-criticism. Billion Year Spree (1973), a large and enthusiastic survey of sf, is BWA's most important nonfiction work (HISTORY OF SF); its argument that sf is a child of the intersection of Gothic romance with the Industrial Revolution gives profound pleasure as a myth of origin, though it fails circumstantially to be altogether convincing; the book was much expanded and, perhaps inevitably, somewhat diluted in effect as Trillion Year Spree (1986) with David WINGROVE. Science Fiction Art (1975) is an attractively produced selection of sf ILLUSTRATION with commentary, mostly from the years of the PULP MAGAZINES, and Science Fiction Art (1976) - note identical title - presents a portfolio of Chris FOSS's art. Science Fiction as Science Fiction (1978 chap), This World and Nearer Ones (coll 1979), The Pale Shadow of Science (coll 1985 US) and.. And the Lurid Glare of the Comet (coll 1986 US) assemble some of his reviews and speculative essays. As literary editor of the Oxford Mail for many years, BWA reviewed hundreds of sf books; his later reviews have appeared in the Times Literary Supplement, the Guardian, the Washington Post and elsewhere. BWA is a regular attender of sf conventions all over the world, a passionate supporter of internationalism in sf and all other spheres of life, and a consistent attacker of UK-US parochialism. Like Harlan ELLISON in the USA, BWA is an energetic and charismatic speaker and lecturer. He was guest of honour at the 23rd World SF Convention in 1965 (and at several since) and received the BSFA vote for Britain's most popular sf writer in 1969. In 1977 he won the first James Blish Award (AWARDS) and in 1978 a PILGRIM AWARD, both for excellence in SF criticism. He was a founding Trustee of WORLD SF in 1982, and its president from 1983. Bury My Heart at W.H.Smith's: A Writing Life (1990; trade edition cut by 6 chapters 1990), a memoir, reflects on the public life of a man of letters in the modern world. Other works: A Brian Aldiss Omnibus (omni 1969); Brian Aldiss Omnibus 2 (omni 1971); Pile: Petals from St Klaed's Computer (graph 1979) with Mike Wilks, an illustrated narrative poem; Foreign Bodies (coll 1981 Singapore); Farewell to a Child (1982 chap), poem; Science Fiction Quiz (1983); Best of Aldiss (coll 1983 chap); My Country 'Tis Not Only of Thee (1986 chap); The Magic of the Past (coll 1987 chap); Sex and the Black Machine (1990 chap), a collaged jeu d'esprit; Bodily Functions: Stories, Poems, and a Letter on the Subject of Bowel Movement Addressed to Sam J.Lundwall on the Occasion of His Birthday February 24th, A.D.1991 (coll 1991); Journey to the Goat Star (1982 The Quarto as The Captain's Analysis; 1991 chap US); Home Life with Cats (coll 1992 chap), poetry.

   About the author: Aldiss Unbound: The Science Fiction of Brian W.Aldiss (1977) by Richard Matthews; The Entropy Exhibition: Michael Moorcock and the British New Wave in Science Fiction (1983) by Colin GREENLAND; Apertures: A Study of the Writings of Brian Aldiss (1984) by Brian GRIFFIN and David Wingrove; Brian W.Aldiss (1986) by M.R.COLLINGS; Brian Wilson Aldiss: A Working Bibliography (1988 chap) by Phil STEPHENSEN-PAYNE; A is for Brian (anth 1990) edited by Frank Hatherley, a 65th-birthday tribute; The Work of Brian W.Aldiss: An Annotated Bibliography and Guide (1992) by Margaret Aldiss (1933-).

   See also: ABSURDIST SF; ADAM AND EVE; ANTHOLOGIES; ANTI-INTELLECTUALISM IN SF; ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION; BLACK HOLES; BOYS' PAPERS; BRITISH SCIENCE FICTION ASSOCIATION; CLICHES; COSY CATASTROPHE; CRITICAL AND HISTORICAL WORKS ABOUT SF; DEFINITIONS OF SF; DISASTER; ECOLOGY; ESP; EVOLUTION; FANTASTIC VOYAGES; GENETIC ENGINEERING; GODS AND DEMONS; GOLDEN AGE OF SF; GOTHIC SF; HIVE-MINDS; HOLOCAUST AND AFTER; HORROR IN SF; IMMORTALITY; ISLANDS; The MAGAZINE OF FANTASY AND SCIENCE FICTION; METAPHYSICS; MUSIC; NEW WRITINGS IN SF; OPTIMISM AND PESSIMISM; PARALLEL WORLDS; PASTORAL; PERCEPTION; POCKET UNIVERSE; POETRY; PROTO SCIENCE FICTION; PSYCHOLOGY; RADIO; RECURSIVE SF; ROBOTS; SOCIOLOGY; SPACE HABITATS.