Bury My Heart at W. H. Smith's
August 21, 2017 7:13 AM Subscribe
RIP Brian Aldiss, British science fiction writer, part of The New Wave. He wrote the novels Non-Stop, Hothouse, Greybeard and the Helliconia trilogy. He also wrote the short story 'Super-Toys Last All Summer Long' which the film A.I. Artificial Intelligence was partially based on
Neil Gaiman and Graham Coxon pay tribute to the sci-fi master
Brian Aldiss interview: 'there's too much snobbery about science fiction
A Life in Science Fiction - 'These days I don't read any science fiction. I only read Tolstoy'
My Secret Life
Master of the universes: Brian Aldiss
Brian Aldiss at USF's 4th Science Fiction Symposium
Web of Stories - Life Stories of Remarkable People
Neil Gaiman and Graham Coxon pay tribute to the sci-fi master
Brian Aldiss interview: 'there's too much snobbery about science fiction
A Life in Science Fiction - 'These days I don't read any science fiction. I only read Tolstoy'
My Secret Life
Master of the universes: Brian Aldiss
Brian Aldiss at USF's 4th Science Fiction Symposium
Web of Stories - Life Stories of Remarkable People
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posted by Kattullus at 7:19 AM on August 21, 2017 [1 favorite]
posted by Kattullus at 7:19 AM on August 21, 2017 [1 favorite]
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posted by Faint of Butt at 7:23 AM on August 21, 2017
posted by Faint of Butt at 7:23 AM on August 21, 2017
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I remember reading his short story "Manuscript Found in a Police State " in Scholastic Publishing anthology in fifth grade and being totally freaked out by it. It was definitely one of the works that got me to start reading Sci-fi in earnest.
posted by octothorpe at 7:27 AM on August 21, 2017 [4 favorites]
I remember reading his short story "Manuscript Found in a Police State " in Scholastic Publishing anthology in fifth grade and being totally freaked out by it. It was definitely one of the works that got me to start reading Sci-fi in earnest.
posted by octothorpe at 7:27 AM on August 21, 2017 [4 favorites]
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posted by mikelieman at 7:29 AM on August 21, 2017
posted by mikelieman at 7:29 AM on August 21, 2017
I was lucky enough to see him speak twice at different science fiction conventions. Even though he was getting quite elderly he was incredibly entertaining, especially when slagging off the publishing industry.
I remember one bit about his semi-autobiographic book A Hand Reared Boy which was a bit notorious at the time for being, as they would say 'a bit racy' - ie it had some sex in it. He found out that the publishers had thrown out a sack of fan mail they had been sent about it without even telling him. He concluded the anecdote with something like 'well obviously 99% of them would have been complete mad wankers but it would have been nice to have at least looked at them!'
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 7:29 AM on August 21, 2017 [2 favorites]
I remember one bit about his semi-autobiographic book A Hand Reared Boy which was a bit notorious at the time for being, as they would say 'a bit racy' - ie it had some sex in it. He found out that the publishers had thrown out a sack of fan mail they had been sent about it without even telling him. He concluded the anecdote with something like 'well obviously 99% of them would have been complete mad wankers but it would have been nice to have at least looked at them!'
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 7:29 AM on August 21, 2017 [2 favorites]
The Helliconia Trilogy stuck in my mind a long while after reading.
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posted by Wordshore at 7:31 AM on August 21, 2017 [2 favorites]
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posted by Wordshore at 7:31 AM on August 21, 2017 [2 favorites]
Reading Hothouse back in the day was a very trippy experience.
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 7:32 AM on August 21, 2017 [3 favorites]
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 7:32 AM on August 21, 2017 [3 favorites]
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I've only ever read The Malacia Tapestry, but it had a really interesting mood to it that I still remember.
posted by selfnoise at 7:37 AM on August 21, 2017
I've only ever read The Malacia Tapestry, but it had a really interesting mood to it that I still remember.
posted by selfnoise at 7:37 AM on August 21, 2017
Also one of the key literary historians of SF, as author of The Billion Year Spree (1973) and its 1986 update The Trillion Year Spree. He argued for Frankenstein to be considered the first SF novel.
posted by rory at 7:42 AM on August 21, 2017 [7 favorites]
posted by rory at 7:42 AM on August 21, 2017 [7 favorites]
So who's left from the 60s Sci-fi New Wave? Delany, Moorcock, Ellison, LeGuin, Spinrad, Silverberg?
posted by octothorpe at 7:52 AM on August 21, 2017
posted by octothorpe at 7:52 AM on August 21, 2017
"Super-Toys Last All Summer Long" is well worth a read. It's so much better than Spielberg's mega-schlocky adaptation might lead you to believe. Hothouse is also full of great, creepy imagery.
Aldiss also wrote a story called Greybeard, which is set in the UK, in a future where everyone is sterile and the last generation is beginning to get old. What I remember most about it, however, is that the countryside is infested with man-eating stoats! Beware the stoats!
I'll have to track some more of his work down.
posted by picea at 7:53 AM on August 21, 2017 [3 favorites]
Aldiss also wrote a story called Greybeard, which is set in the UK, in a future where everyone is sterile and the last generation is beginning to get old. What I remember most about it, however, is that the countryside is infested with man-eating stoats! Beware the stoats!
I'll have to track some more of his work down.
posted by picea at 7:53 AM on August 21, 2017 [3 favorites]
I think Helliconia Spring was the first book I ever bought for myself.
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posted by misteraitch at 7:59 AM on August 21, 2017 [2 favorites]
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posted by misteraitch at 7:59 AM on August 21, 2017 [2 favorites]
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posted by skyscraper at 8:00 AM on August 21, 2017
posted by skyscraper at 8:00 AM on August 21, 2017
I guess I'm still a true-blue SF fan -- this shocked me in a way that the deaths of Gregory and Lewis didn't.
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posted by languagehat at 8:11 AM on August 21, 2017 [3 favorites]
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posted by languagehat at 8:11 AM on August 21, 2017 [3 favorites]
I read "Report on Probability A" earlier this year, likely on a recommendation via MeFi. Wild stuff.
RIP
posted by chavenet at 8:19 AM on August 21, 2017 [1 favorite]
RIP
posted by chavenet at 8:19 AM on August 21, 2017 [1 favorite]
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posted by Malingering Hector at 8:45 AM on August 21, 2017
posted by Malingering Hector at 8:45 AM on August 21, 2017
Oh no. :( He was a giant in the field and such an evocative, clever writer. Greybeard. Hothouse. The Thomas Squire series. The Hellenica trilogy. And countless others.
Aldiss had been working on a scifi novel based in Russia in the 1700's for several years. I wonder how far he had progressed.
posted by zarq at 8:50 AM on August 21, 2017
Aldiss had been working on a scifi novel based in Russia in the 1700's for several years. I wonder how far he had progressed.
posted by zarq at 8:50 AM on August 21, 2017
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posted by supermedusa at 9:23 AM on August 21, 2017
posted by supermedusa at 9:23 AM on August 21, 2017
Sometime in the early 1970s - I wasn't quite into double digits - my parents went away on a trip and left me with local friends for a couple of nights, the first time I can remember sleeping away from home by myself. Said friends had (as seemed to me at the time) a very big old house with lots of creaky corridors, a basement with interesting bits and pieces, and plenty of dark corners. They also had a taste for rather weird contemporary classical music, which echoed of an evening around the place.
I'd taken with me as my bedtime reading, Hothouse.
Immersive VR doesn't begin to cover it. In retrospect, I think it was one of the first times I learned that one could have one's perceptions altered not just while reading, but for some time afterwards, and lay down ways of thinking and seeing that persisted. (And persist,..)
Later, I found him a bit too... well-mannered? Constrained? Nuanced? None is right; I'd have to go back and re-read things from a long time ago to remind myself why his writing fell away from my favourites list as I started to dig in seriously to SF. But those dark and haunted nights in the treetops of the jungle Earth - and beyond - are still there in the bedrock of my mind, like huge fossil trees breaking through the basement floor and entwining into organic vaults of stone...
posted by Devonian at 10:30 AM on August 21, 2017 [7 favorites]
I'd taken with me as my bedtime reading, Hothouse.
Immersive VR doesn't begin to cover it. In retrospect, I think it was one of the first times I learned that one could have one's perceptions altered not just while reading, but for some time afterwards, and lay down ways of thinking and seeing that persisted. (And persist,..)
Later, I found him a bit too... well-mannered? Constrained? Nuanced? None is right; I'd have to go back and re-read things from a long time ago to remind myself why his writing fell away from my favourites list as I started to dig in seriously to SF. But those dark and haunted nights in the treetops of the jungle Earth - and beyond - are still there in the bedrock of my mind, like huge fossil trees breaking through the basement floor and entwining into organic vaults of stone...
posted by Devonian at 10:30 AM on August 21, 2017 [7 favorites]
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Among the best. Never found one who writes as well of failure, doom, futility.
posted by ead at 11:29 AM on August 21, 2017
Among the best. Never found one who writes as well of failure, doom, futility.
posted by ead at 11:29 AM on August 21, 2017
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posted by lalochezia at 11:35 AM on August 21, 2017
posted by lalochezia at 11:35 AM on August 21, 2017
Meant to add earlier that Bury My Heart at W. H. Smith's was the title of a book of memoirs he wrote. For the none-Brits WH Smiths is a chain of shops that sells books, magazines, stationary etc. They've gone a bit down-hill/market since the internet's come a long, but in the past - when I was kid and teenager - I probably bought half my books from them (the rest from independents)
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 12:28 PM on August 21, 2017
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 12:28 PM on August 21, 2017
Also, if you've not noticed, he died on the day of his 92 birthday.
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 12:34 PM on August 21, 2017
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 12:34 PM on August 21, 2017
Ah, this saddens me deeply. I've read his stories and novels my entire life.
posted by doctornemo at 1:14 PM on August 21, 2017
posted by doctornemo at 1:14 PM on August 21, 2017
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Last night after the deeply flawed next-to-last episode of the season aired, I tried to explain to my mostly-non-SF-reading wife how Silverberg's Majipoor and Aldiss' Helliconia books helped to shape GoT.
posted by mwhybark at 1:50 PM on August 21, 2017 [3 favorites]
Last night after the deeply flawed next-to-last episode of the season aired, I tried to explain to my mostly-non-SF-reading wife how Silverberg's Majipoor and Aldiss' Helliconia books helped to shape GoT.
posted by mwhybark at 1:50 PM on August 21, 2017 [3 favorites]
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To think of Aldiss as just an important writer, one of the Big Three, with Moorcock and Ballard of the British New Wave, is to do him an injustice.
As important was his work as an editor in the seventies, both creating classic theme anthologies like Galactic Empires as well as, with Harry Harrison, doing one of those Year's Best series science fiction always has one or two going off.
Furthermore, there was also his work as a critic and historian of the genre, most importantly in The Billion Year Spree -- it was that book that introduced me to the idea of Mary Shelley as the first science fiction writer and Frankenstein as the first sf novel.
I was fortunate enough to meet him once, at the London Worldcon or perhaps the Eastercon the year after.
posted by MartinWisse at 2:08 PM on August 21, 2017 [4 favorites]
To think of Aldiss as just an important writer, one of the Big Three, with Moorcock and Ballard of the British New Wave, is to do him an injustice.
As important was his work as an editor in the seventies, both creating classic theme anthologies like Galactic Empires as well as, with Harry Harrison, doing one of those Year's Best series science fiction always has one or two going off.
Furthermore, there was also his work as a critic and historian of the genre, most importantly in The Billion Year Spree -- it was that book that introduced me to the idea of Mary Shelley as the first science fiction writer and Frankenstein as the first sf novel.
I was fortunate enough to meet him once, at the London Worldcon or perhaps the Eastercon the year after.
posted by MartinWisse at 2:08 PM on August 21, 2017 [4 favorites]
Here's a link to his story Super-Toys Last All Summer Long. It's very sparse, and I just got the significance of some details on re-reading it now. So many of his other stories stick in my mind as well. There was a very British, melancholic, last-days-of-the-Raj feel about them. Who can replace a man, indeed. indeed.
posted by Joe in Australia at 3:24 PM on August 21, 2017 [3 favorites]
posted by Joe in Australia at 3:24 PM on August 21, 2017 [3 favorites]
What can Replace a Man was one of my earliest SF memories.
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posted by xiw at 3:25 PM on August 21, 2017
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posted by xiw at 3:25 PM on August 21, 2017
I didn't realize that he originated the idea that Frankenstein was the first science fiction novel. By the time I took a SF as literature class in the 80s, it was presented as self-evident.
posted by octothorpe at 4:09 PM on August 21, 2017 [1 favorite]
posted by octothorpe at 4:09 PM on August 21, 2017 [1 favorite]
A towering figure in SF, indeed, and I'm sad he's left us. I did get to meet him once at ICFA (Intl. Conf. on the Fantastic in the Arts)—he was the Permanent GofH. I was heading for the open bar and a friend said, I'll introduce you to Brian; he'll consider you "fresh meat." And he did, but he was so charmingly British about it that no offense could be taken. A witty man, a fine writer. I'll miss him.
posted by MovableBookLady at 5:03 PM on August 21, 2017
posted by MovableBookLady at 5:03 PM on August 21, 2017
Constant Companion sent me the link to the Master of the Universes interview (by Metafliter's Own alloneword) which is particularly recommended if you haven't already read it - not only for the Kingsley Amis anecdotes.
Everyone I know who knew him, or even met him tangentially, has been saying nothing but lovely things about him all day. I don't regret that the one Eastercon I went to where he and Iain Banks were GOHing I fell into the latter's camp and was party to the mischief appertaining, but I do that there was never another chance.
posted by Devonian at 6:24 PM on August 21, 2017 [2 favorites]
Everyone I know who knew him, or even met him tangentially, has been saying nothing but lovely things about him all day. I don't regret that the one Eastercon I went to where he and Iain Banks were GOHing I fell into the latter's camp and was party to the mischief appertaining, but I do that there was never another chance.
posted by Devonian at 6:24 PM on August 21, 2017 [2 favorites]
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posted by Mister Moofoo at 10:58 PM on August 21, 2017
posted by Mister Moofoo at 10:58 PM on August 21, 2017
the helliconia books are a monument to human creativity, akin to dune.
abro hakmo astab!
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posted by j_curiouser at 11:04 PM on August 21, 2017
abro hakmo astab!
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posted by j_curiouser at 11:04 PM on August 21, 2017
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posted by crocomancer at 4:25 AM on August 22, 2017
posted by crocomancer at 4:25 AM on August 22, 2017
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Brian was one of the authors that shapped my SF preferences. Another was Ellison, but I was fortunate they didn't attend the same school.
I haven't read any of his works for years, but I still have a collection of his stories, saved after the Great SF Collection Purge of the '90s.
posted by arzakh at 4:52 AM on August 22, 2017
Brian was one of the authors that shapped my SF preferences. Another was Ellison, but I was fortunate they didn't attend the same school.
I haven't read any of his works for years, but I still have a collection of his stories, saved after the Great SF Collection Purge of the '90s.
posted by arzakh at 4:52 AM on August 22, 2017
Dave Langford has collected some reminiscences of Aldiss.
posted by Chrysostom at 10:19 PM on September 9, 2017 [2 favorites]
posted by Chrysostom at 10:19 PM on September 9, 2017 [2 favorites]
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posted by Ber at 7:19 AM on August 21, 2017