Easton Press Brian Aldiss books
Hothouse - Masterpieces of Science Fiction - 1987
Dracula Unbound - Signed First Edition of Science Fiction - 1991
Helliconia Spring - Masterpieces of Science Fiction - 1993
Somewhere East of Life - Signed First Editions of Science Fiction - 1994
Malacia Tapestry - Masterpieces of Fantasy - 1996
Harm - Signed First Editions of Science Fiction - 2007
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Writer Brian Aldiss
Aldiss's father ran a department store that his grandfather had established, and the family lived above it. At the age of 6, Brian was sent to board at West Buckland School in Devon, 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.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 novel in diary form about the life of a sales assistant in a bookshop.
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, a collection of short stories entitled 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.
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.
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.
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?)
He travelled to Yugoslavia, 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 has achieved the honor of "Permanent Special Guest" at ICFA, the conference for the International Association for the Fantastic in the Arts, which he attends annually.
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.
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.
On July 1st 2008 he was awarded an honorary doctorate by the University of Liverpool in recognition of his contribution to literature.
Death
Aldiss died at his home in Headington, Oxford, on 19 August 2017.
Brian Aldiss books in order
The Rain Will Stop (The Pretentious Press, 2000), written in 1942
The Brightfount Diaries (1955)
Space, Time and Nathaniel (1957)
Non-Stop (1958), US title Starship
The Canopy of Time (1959), The US title Galaxies like Grains of Sand (1960)
No Time Like Tomorrow (1959)
The Interpreter (1960); US title Bow down to Nul
The Male Response (US 1959, UK 1961)
The Primal Urge (1961)
Hothouse (1962)
The Airs of Earth (1963), US title Starswarm
The Dark Light Years (1964)
Greybeard (1964)
Best SF stories of Brian Aldiss (1965); US title But who can replace a Man?'
Earthworks (1965)
The Impossible Smile (1965) - pseudonym "Jael Cracken"
The Saliva Tree and other strange growths (1966)
An Age (1967), US title Cryptozoic!
Report on Probability A (1967)
Barefoot in the Head (1969)
Neanderthal Planet (1970)
Horatio Stubbs (omnibus edition, The Horace Stubbs Saga, 1985)
The Hand-Reared Boy (1970)
A Soldier Erect (1971)
A Rude Awakening (1978)
The Moment of Eclipse (1971)
The Book of Brian Aldiss (1972)
Frankenstein Unbound (1973)
The Eighty Minute Hour (1974)
The Malacia Tapestry (1976)
Brothers of the Head (1977)
Last Orders and Other Stories (1977)
Enemies of the System (1978)
Pile (1979) Poem
New Arrivals, Old Encounters (1979)
Moreau's Other Island (1980)
Squire Quartet
Life In The West (1980)
Forgotten Life (1988)
Remembrance Day (1993)
Somewhere East Of Life (1994)
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) — Fix-up of Equator (1958) and The Impossible Smile (1965)
Ruins (1987)
A Man in His Time (1988)
A Romance of the Equator: The Best Fantasy Stories (1989)
Dracula Unbound (1990)
A Tupolev too Far (1994)
Somewhere East of Life: Another European Fantasia (1994)
The Secret of This Book (1995), US title Common Clay
White Mars or, the Mind Set Free (1999), by Aldiss and Roger Penrose
Super-Toys Last All Summer Long and Other Stories of Future Time (2001)
Super-State (2002)
The Cretan Teat (2002)
Affairs at Hampden Ferrers (2004)
Cultural Breaks (2005)
Jocasta (2005)
Sanity and the Lady (2005)
HARM (2007)
Walcot (2010)
Finches of Mars (2012)
Comfort Zone (2013)
Poems
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)
A Prehistory of Mind (2008)
Mortal Morning (2011)
Nonfiction
Cities and Stones: A Traveller's Yugoslavia (1966)
The Shape of Further Things: Speculations on Change (1970)
Item Eighty Three (1972)
Billion Year Spree: The History of Science Fiction (1973)
Hell's Cartographers (1975)
This World and Nearer Ones: Essays Exploring the Familiar (1979).
Trillion Year Spree: The History of Science Fiction (1986)
The Pale Shadow Of Science (1985)
... And the Lurid Glare of the Comet (1986)
Bury My Heart at W.H. Smith's: A Writing Life (1990)
The Detached Retina: Aspects of SF and Fantasy (1995)
The Twinkling of an Eye, or My Life as an Englishman (1998)
When the Feast is Finished (1999)
Art After Apogee: The Relationships Between an Idea, a Story, a Painting (2000)
Source and additional information: Brian Aldiss