Customer Reviews (4)

"Starship" and "Non-Stop" - the same book, different editions
There is a review on Amazon that says that Aldiss's "Non-Stop" is a SEQUEL to his "Starship". Au Contraire! They are the same book, different editions. Starship was written and copywrited in 1958. Non-Stop was copywrited in 2000, most recently published in 2005.

On the back cover of Non-Stop, it says that "This...[is] Starship...updated for the twenty-first century."

Here is what Brian Aldiss says about the two books:
"For this new edition of an old favorite, I have made some alterations here and there. These occur on 48 pages [193 remain the same]. The adventure remains the same; the characters remain the same; the theme of an idea gobbling up real life remains the same. Only a few words have been changed. But of course a few words make all the difference."
-B.W.A.

So, don't do like I did and get both expecting Non-Stop to be a sequel. My first clue was that the two Table of Contents were exactly the same. Just thought you'd like to know.

Not Aldiss at his best
I recently reread "Starship" and would recommend it as an interesting SF book, but not as a classic of the genre, or even Aldiss's best.

The concept of a self-sustaining starship on a multi-generational voyage where things go tragically awry is not a new one.Heinlein's "Universe" (reissued as "Orphans of the Sky") goes back to 1941, and Aldiss uses much of Heinlein's plot and even his terminology in "Starship".

Nevertheless, the story moves (although not always logically, and to an inconclusive ending), so it's a quick and entertaining read.

I would recommend the stories in "The Long Afternoon of Earth" and "Galaxies Like Grains of Sand", and the novel "Greybeard" as better Aldiss than "Starship"

Thought-provoking sf..
Brian Aldiss's "Starship" is a fine example of his early science fiction works.It follows a hunter named Roy Complain, who along with three others sets out from an area called "Quarters" to a mythical area called "Forwards".As he makes this journey, he begins to discover that he is on a moving starship(hence the title), and he and a few other companions he meets, try to find the control room, and stop the journey.In the book itself, you can see the consequences of an extra amino acid, and the consequences of losing the past.It also makes you wonder just what is human?Good work.

A sleeper
This book was written long before most readers of this review were born.Maybe that's the reason this great work of science fiction lies dormant and almost forgotten.The book is absorbing, fires the imagination, is both believable and original.I don't believe, of all the thousands of books of science fiction I've read over half a century, I've ever read one similar to this (and few better).

The basic story involves a starship the size of a small city on a voyage lasting hundreds of years.Many generations prior to the time of this plot a cataclysmic event and internal disruptions caused the crew to break into factions and isolate themselves.Thereafter the population forgot itself, what it was, and struggled to survive and understand, by the time of this plot, in a strange world.

If you'd like to discover a 'new' old one you'll treasure and read many times through your life this is a good shot at finding one, while it can still be obtained.Take good care of it. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (15)

A great tale of a Generation Ship
A generation ship!Science run amok!A brilliant work from the late 50s which must be read!Brian Aldiss' Non-Stop (published in the U.S. as Starship) is a relentlessly dark science fiction novel written in response to Robert Heinlein's revolutionary yet ultimately unsatisfying Orphans of the Sky. Although I'll read anything with a generation ship, I was completely blown away by Aldiss' first novel.Seldom have I come across anything written in the 50s so dark -- a ship filled with strangely disfigured men, oppressive hallways choked by layers of hydroponic plants, slowly moving primitive tribes who kill their mutated children, regimented rats with their caged partially telepathic animals, disturbing religions spawned from the tenants of various psychologists (Freud and the like), giants scurrying undetected along various hallways and passages stealing children... A nightmare.

A Brief Plot Summary (Limited spoilers)

Owing to the unfolding revelatory nature of this work's plot, I'll divulge only what is necessary to tempt prospective readers.Roy Complain is a member of the Greene tribe that hacks out a semi-nomadic existence in the overgrown hallways of the ship.The tribe knows little of its world.It protects its borders from renegade groups, moves slowly down the hallways, propagating, dying, killing each other in senseless combat, following an unusual religion, exploring the next rooms, burning what could potentially damage the existing power structures...Some members secretly collect shreds of paper, books, odd objects...Roy Complain, after his mate is lost (or killed) out hunting, agrees to head out on a suicidal mission to find the Forward section.This mission, headed by the power hungry priest Marapper, seeks to take over the ship.Complain, doesn't fully believe Marapper (who has found a schematic that proves the ship is a ship), slowly realizes the extent (and contents) of his disturbed world.

Final Thoughts

I really can't tell more of the plot without completely ruining the experience.Non-Stop is a breakneck ride filled with some truly disturbing and chaotic imagery.The ending (besides the last line or two) is well crafted and powerful.There's a strong female character -- sadly introduced around half-way through the novel -- and Roy Complain is pretty convincing as a singleminded primitive who slowly becomes a central figure.Some might find the concept of semi-intelligent rats hokey -- I agree.They only appear briefly in the novel.They are one of the very few minor reasons this is not a perfect 5/5!However, the rats and their caged animals do not detract overly from the Aldiss' fascinating premise and masterful delivery.The plot is fantastic -- however, if you've read other novels about generation ships, it might be somewhat predictable.Remember, this was written in the 50s and had only Heinlein's simplistic Orphans of the Sky to compare to (there might be another novel about a generation ship written between the two works but I haven't come across it yet).

Aldiss' world is visceral and powerful.One of the best works produced in the late 50s...Thankfully, it has been recently reprinted!Read it!

More than an adventure story
The plot of Non-Stop is ingenious:a generations ship travels on a seemingly non-stop journey through space, its mission long forgotten, carrying descendants of the original crew who now live in warring tribes, some foraging for food in the jungle that has overgrown the ship's aft corridors while guarding against those who live on the more organized "forward" decks. Legends tell them they are on a voyage through space, but lacking windows, they have no understanding of the meaning of space; they picture it as a darkness where distant lanterns burn. The concept of religion perseveres, but it is a religion based on the teachings of "Froyd":they pray for Consciousness to save them from the Subconscious and use "Expansion to your ego" as a ritualized greeting.Aldiss creates a clever and fully realized future for this lost ship:instead of saying "to hell with ...," for instance, inhabitants say "to the hull with ...."The story follows a small band of explorers who make their way from the aft region known as Quarters to the Forwards, where they hope to learn the truth about their environment.Apart from some "why would they do that?" moments, the novel works not only as a well-written adventure story, but also as sort of a Lord of the Flies commentary on how easily civilization can descend into chaos and superstition.

Great Sci-fi Novel
A great sci-fi book with a plot that seems plausible. The beginning of this novel was something of a chore--slow moving, little explanation, various speech/terms to get used to.But by the middle of the book, the pace really picks up, and many plot details are revealed. Highly recommended.

A classic that still holds up well
For me, Brian Aldiss was one of a number of writers in the late fifties and early sixties who began remaking SF in response to what they correctly regarded as the low literary quality dominating the American SF magazines.Editor John W. Campbell, whose tastes dominated the aesthetics of the genre for decades, felt that strong literary qualities -- strong characterization, strong literary technique, and sophisticated dialogue -- detracted from the ideas that were supposed to be what SF was about, and only what it was about.Writers like John Brunner, Brian Aldiss, Keith Roberts, J. G. Ballard, and Michael Moorcock in Great Britain, Stanislaw Lem in Poland, and Philip K. Dick in the United States helped lift SF to something higher than it had been under the pioneering novels of Asimov, Clarke, and Heinlein.As others have noted, Aldiss wrote this in response to Heinlein's ORPHANS IN THE SKY, but in its ambitions it was a rejection of the entire American school under Campbell's direction.

Not a great deal happens in this novel.The plot is rather simple, but it is a simple tale told well. The story focuses on Complain, who lives in a tribal structure on what we gradually learn is a spaceship.He and others break away from the tribal group to see what else there is outside the decks upon which they live.I won't ruin any of the story for those who have not yet to read it, but it is sufficient that what they discover is not what they anticipated.There are a host of wonderful twists and turns, marred only by an unconvincingly, unnecessary, and probably obligatory love story.

There are a couple of editions of this book, not just with different titles (STARSHIP versus NON-STOP).I've been able to look at both editions and there is actually very little difference between the two.Virtually all the differences between the two are alterations in proper names of minor characters, especially those in the captain's log that is read at one point in the book.I don't think that anyone wanting to read this should worry in the least about which edition they are reading.There are simply no substantive differences between the various versions.

Arboreal overrun corridors with deformed green humans
Among my favorite science fiction books are two books published this decade- The Algebraist by Iain M. Banks and The Prefect by Alastair Reynolds. Also in my shortlist are paperback novels from years when even my dad was in his youth, such as Voyage of the Space Beagle by A.E. van Vogt and Tau Zero by Poul Anderson. These have been amongst the most satisfying of novels in my sequence of 250+ sci-fi books in the last three years, when I've started to read the genre. My top seven remains fairly stagnant, but Non-stop found a place for itself in my personal elite selections.

Knowledge that the entire novel takes place in a generation ship isn't made clear until then end, however, it is widely known that Non-stop is in fact one of the few `generation ship' novels. It's obvious from the start that the humans in the Quarters aren't very human at all- they are shrunken, green, time-skewed and deformed. Living in the same world but not in the same region are the mysterious Outsiders, the mythical Giants and the majestic Forwards. Visualize this: cramped corridors run over by exotic arboreal growths paralleled by yet-to-open chambers containing mementos of generations past. That's how the reader is introduced to the world in which these mutated humans live- in squalor, in poverty where they know no difference, in the seemingly wilderness. It's all very fascinating to imagine that feral human mutants running amok in the bowels of an ancient spaceship. If that doesn't interest you, maybe you shouldn't be reading sci-fi?

After the initial introduction to the world they live in, the plot becomes bogged down a bit by internal happenings in the Quarters. Perhaps I was just anxious to delve straight into the rest of the ship to discover what wonders or horrors it held. Much to my satisfaction, the plot proceeded to do just that. Later, I could appreciate the early lull in plot as it helped to characterize the village mutants as individuals and as a whole.

Further along, there is a romantic subplot, which some reviews don't seem to fancy. However, when taken into the context that the relationship is being carried on by a village mutant and a beauty (as described by the mutant) it's unsettling to the reader as the reader doesn't know the intentions of the beauty. Is she using the mutant for her own purposes or is she honestly in love with him? Aldiss throws that massive wrench into the works as the reader attempts to figure out what is going on- it ain't easy. Through some guesswork, I figured out about half the ending while halfway through the novel. Perhaps it read predictably or perhaps it was my intuition. Either way, I was still on seats edge awaiting every page, paying strict attention to every nuance and reading into every word in every conversation. Just fantastic!

For further reading, I recommend Hothouse (aka Long Afternoon of Earth) where Aldiss writes of future mutated humans living on an earth overrun by earthly fauna and in which the rotation of the earth has stopped. For generation ship reading, I recommend Chasm City by Alastair Reynolds which has an excellent generation ship subplot. Learning the World by Ken MacLeod was an OK read. I haven't read the following novels, but they have been recommended by others as good generation ship novels: Book of the Long Sun by Gene Wolf, Dark Beyond the Stars by Frank M. Robinson and Nemesis by Isaac Asimov. ... Read more

Product Description
The Sun is about to go Nova. Earth and Moon have ceased their axial rotation and present one face continuously to the sun. The bright side of Earth is covered with carnivorous forest. This is the Age of vegetables. Gren and his lady - not to mention the tummybelly men - journey to the even more terrifying Dark side. One of Aldiss' most famous and long-enduring novels, fast moving, packed with brilliant imagery. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (10)

Science Fiction or Fantastic Fiction?
This whole world feels much more like Alice in Wonderland than Science Fiction. In fact, most of the science in this book is so implausible that I think this would have been a much better book without it. Although the story seems to be driven by the science, which weakens it, the setting more than makes up for it. So fantastic, beautiful and deadly, I kept yearning for a less epic story without getting disturbed by implausible explanations. But the setting was so powerful that nothing could take it away, so in the end I have to give it four stars.

How did this win the Hugo?
How did this win a Hugo? Was there no other competition? The prose in this book was rambling and the direction of the story was....Well, there was no direction to the story. It introduced some weird possible animals but for all intents and purposes, this book was a flop!

underscore underscore underscore
I spent the weekend reading the Kindle.I had a long wait in a Dr's surgery on Saturday and the Kindle meant I didn't have to rely on the supply of plague-ridden National Geographics that they leave festering on tables for patients to read.(isn't there a hygiene issue with sick people touching, coughing and sneezing onto these magazines that sit there for decades at a stretch????)

I did find one (funny) problem with a title purchased from Amazon.The ebook uses lots of _____ to separate chapters and headings at the start of the book.If you use the text to speach the Kindle reads out something along the lines of:

Hothouse underscore underscore underscore underscore underscore underscore underscore underscore underscore underscore underscore underscore underscore underscore underscore underscore underscore underscore underscore underscore underscore underscore
A Novel by Brian Aldiss underscore underscore underscore underscore underscore underscore underscore underscore underscore underscore underscore underscore underscore underscore underscore underscore underscore underscore underscore underscore underscore underscore
Chapter 1 underscore underscore underscore underscore underscore underscore underscore underscore underscore underscore underscore underscore underscore underscore underscore underscore underscore underscore underscore underscore underscore underscore

I hope the people behind this audio enhanced title have figured out how things work by now and will fix this issue with future releases.

Teenage adventure: the flora and fauna take mother Earth
It's the evening of humankind. The Earth is moaning as the Sun has expanded, and is nearly ready to go nova. Increased radiation has flourished the flora and fauna to take control and extinct all but few isolated human groups. The women are the hunters who lead and the men are untouchable, until breeding. A group of kids and adults face horrors of plantae and lose some of their kids. Their souls, wooden dummies, need to be lifted to the sky, up in the foliage of the trees and beyond: to the heaven.

All the adults in this initial group die. The few left, young kinds and few teenagers, are left to survive at their best. Only to find out that they are trapped in a "bird" flying to the outer edge of earth where sea creatures and sand fiercely meet. The story succulently describes the mutated trees and willows that have developed octopus tentacles. A mold drips to one of the boys head. It's a thinking entity who promises to enhance the survival skills. But it is more interested in its own world domination. Through the dialogue of the fungus and the boy, Gren, the reader gets a chance to see brief history of mankind and its future: when they were still apes, when they conquered the technology and how did they fall. The rest of the book describes the adventures of Gren in this varied Earth.

Three (3) stars. Published separately in a SF magazine, the book won Hugo Award for Best Short Fiction 1962. The story is relatively thin as the reader follows groups of boys and girls from one adventure to another. In that sense, the target group is typical teenager: tales about encountered monsters. What makes the novel tickle adult reader is the side plot, only a few pages, where kilometer long worm ascends to the moon by using web where the remnants of the last survivals have taken the form of human bats. The ending returns to this side plot and gives sparkles of hope how to conquer stars. Truly unique novel.

Full of wonder...
This is a story about the end of the world and the many races of man.It is a story about the Sun nearing its final moments and the plants taking over the world.It is a story about the final days of the planet Earth.
The story revolves around Gren and the last of his kind, small people who live in the trees.They live in the middle, not too close to the ground and not to high up, near the tips.It is an adventure story, a story of exploration, as we follow Gren and his tribe as they try to survive.
This is not hard science fiction and, in fact, I would not call this normal science fiction.Maybe science fantasy?Or just plain fantasy?The Moon is linked to the Earth by giant webs and one side of the planet is locked towards the Sun, so I guess it is fantasy.I enjoyed the book but I just want to warn you, this is a weird novel about the end of life as we know it and don't know it. ... Read more

Product Description
The sombre story of a group of people in their fifties who face the fact that there is no younger generation coming to replace them; instead nature is rushing back to obliterate the disaster they have brought on theselves. Was slighty revised. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (5)

One of the worst books I've ever read
This is an absolutely horrid book.I had to read it for a science fiction literature class.After 20 pages, whenever I'd finish a page, I'd tear it out of the book.Absolutley horrible book.One book was worse in the course...the blatherings of an old indian druggie who a city twirp thought was nirvana's wisdom personified....Journey to Ixltan...the worst science fiction book.

very good post-apocalyptic novel
Elegantly written for a book of this type, Brian Aldiss creates a near future world in which nuclear testing has gone awry, temporarily allowing some hard radiation from the sun to saturate the earth, destroying the ability of larger mammals including humans to reproduce themselves.There are two parallel stories, one which takes place in a sad present when the youngest human beings are well into their fifties, and the other in three separate periods gradually ranging back in time to just after the initial accident.The reader therefore sees the present in light of the turbulent events of the previous fifty years when everything began to unravel.

The two main characters, Greybeard and his wife, are immensely likeable and realistic.Unlike some of Brian Aldiss's later works, this is an old fashioned book, easy to read and well plotted. The most interesting feature of the book is the immensely sad world created by the author; what's the point to life if you can't pass on your genes to another generation?
The characters must figure that out along the way.

If you like John Wyndham's and John Christopher's end of the world stories, you're bound to appreciate this one as well.

Ageing Population
It was a book of Tim White's fantasy art that led me to "Greybeard". An illustration of an abandoned town, weeds sprouting from cracks in the road, half-ruined buildings covered in ivy - a scene typical of the post-disaster genre. I was intrigued by the premise behind it.

The explosion of radioactive weapons in space has disrupted Earth's protective van Allen Belt, saturating the planet with massive doses of radiation. This has resulted in sickness, deformity and sterility for the human race. In the years following the "Accident" civilization has been in steady decline, as there will be no more future generations.

Algernon Timberlane (better known as Greybeard) was six years old at the time of the disaster. He has grown up in a world that has become increasingly primitive and quiet as people succumb to old age or cancers caused by the fallout. By the time Greybeard is in his mid fifties he is one of the youngest people left in the world. England has become a wilderness thinly populated by tribes of old people living with untreatable ailments. Savage animals, no longer afraid of man, roam the countryside in packs. Some people claim to have seen goblins lurking in the shadows. With each passing year people grow more frail and feeble-minded.

This is the first novel I've read by Brian Aldiss, the man who identified John Wyndham with the "Cosy Catastrophe". "Greybeard" is a novel John Wyndham would certainly have approved of. The catastrophe that shaped this decrepit future is, however, far from cosy. A book like "Greybeard" would be a good way to argue in favour of the need for human cloning. It could well save our species.

Generally slow read, touching at times.
The story follows the lives of a small group of human survivors of a nuclear accident. The "Accident", as it is referred to, has made male humans infertile. As the surviving population slowly dies off, theremaining groups of elderly people struggle to find hope in a bleakenvironment. One group, led by a man called Greybeard, have lived for manyyears in a small, isolated town along the river. They decide to venturedown the river, to seek out the truth of rumors spread by travelers thatchildren and fertile humans still survive in isolated pockets of the land.This is mostly a dark novel, with a few moving moments, and somebeautifully descriptive writing. It is short on action.

One of the great science fiction classics
One of the best of the "end of the world" books, written by one the select members of the group known as the "world destroyers" back in the fifties and sixties. I began reading science fiction before I was even in junior high, and for me, this was one of the most memorable.It is still one of the best (I can count those I would consider 'the best' on one hand).The atmosphere that Aldiss creates for us begins on the first page, in the first paragraph, in the first sentence.This book will stay with me for the rest of my life.(Several years ago, I managed to find a first edition.Now, if I could just get it signed...) ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Multi-faceted Reality
Yesterday is a dream; today and tomorrow have been shattered like mirrors reflecting endless distorted visions. Anything might be possible. This is because the world has been well-drenched with psychedelic nerve gas, and itnever wears off. Civilization has almost crumbled, and mankind stumblesthrough its daily grind by force of habit. Out of the wreckage of Europecomes Colin Charteris, self-named and losing his grip on reality by inches,driven by a sense of destiny to drive his red Banshee across thedeteriorating roads of Europe, searching for meaning in England. But inEngland he is hailed as a messiah for the message he brings, of uncertaintycelebrated, of open-endedness and freedom, and his idea of the new humanityas Man the Driver, choosing his destiny or doom at high speed. A wildmotorcade across Europe ensues, and something worse than mere anarchy isloosed upon the dazed world. Aldiss endows his work with a feel of grittyrealism, despite the fact that it reads like a Stephen King noveltranscribed by James Joyce. Will mankind survive? Will Charteris walk onwater and hang on a cross? Was that dog really wearing a tie? Maybe theanswer is yes, or no, or maybe; or perhaps all of those at once. There's anincredible feeling of impending doom in this book; all the charactersinhabit their own private worlds, unsure if they see the same thing theothers see. I finished it, scratched my head, and began to re-read it; andfound it almost a different book. Multi-faceted, multi-valued, and filledwith poetry and blazing worldplay; BAREFOOT IN THE HEAD is a difficult butrewarding read from a grandmaster of reality. ... Read more

Product Description
David is just a little boy, a little boy who loves his mother, and his teddy bear. David wants to make his Mummy happy, and tell her he loves her, but he can't quite seem to find the words.

His verbal communication center is giving him trouble again. He may have to go back to the factory.

For more than four decades Brian Aldiss has been confounding the limits of satire, poetry, and science fiction, creating stories from the well of dreamscapes that come up sharp against the cutting edge of our technological society.Amazon.com Review
Blame it on taxes. According to SFWA Grand Master Brian Aldiss, that's the main reason he sold the movie rights to thePinocchio-android tale "Supertoys Last All Summer Long" to Stanley Kubrickback in 1982. Bound here along with two followup short stories and nineunrelated short pieces from more recent years, "Supertoys" was to be thesource material for Kubrick's last movie. Of course, Kubrick died, and thenSteven Spielberg inherited the rights, intending to follow through on Kubrick's original vision.

In fairness, Aldiss has never seen his original story--nor the two piecesadded later, "Supertoys When Winter Comes" and "Supertoys in OtherSeasons"--as a Pinocchio fable at all. As he recounts in the wry, revealingforeword to this collection, "I could not or would not see the parallelsbetween David, my five-year-old android, and the wooden creature who becomes human.... Never consciously rewrite old fairystories." But the interpretation of the stubbornly eccentric Kubrickprevailed until Aldiss was "wheeled out of the picture."

These three excellent stories occupy just the first 35 pages of thiscompilation, but they accurately capture one of the great voices of BritishSF at his prime, with a plaintive, thoughtfully nuanced story aboutexistence and the meaning of being human. The remaining tales range fromintriguing to distractingly strident to borderline mawkish, but make nomistake about what's the main attraction here. In fact, the foreword alone,with Kubrick exposed at his curmudgeonly worst ("[To Aldiss:] You seem to have two modes of writing--brilliant and not so damned good"), makes this a collection worth picking up. --Paul Hughes ... Read more

Customer Reviews (16)

A fascinating but somewhat cold collection of stories
Way back in the mid-1970s director Stanley Kubrick was looking for a new project and ran across Brian Aldiss' short story, 'Supertoys Last All Summer Long', in which a childless couple create their own android son, who tries to understand if he is real or not. Kubrick was moved by the story and started trying to mould it into a film with Aldiss' help. Their work on the project went on for more than a decade (including the full gestation periods for Kubrick's movies The Shining and Full Metal Jacket) before Aldiss eventually left, exhausted by Kubrick's demanding work schedule and his insistence on drawing parallels to Pinocchio that Aldiss had never intended. Kubrick died in 1999 and Stephen Spielberg picked up the project, released it as the moderately successful A.I. in 2001. Aldiss sold several additional ideas to Spielberg which made it into the movie, and expanded these ideas into two sequels to the original short story.


The short story collection Supertoys Last All Summer Long and Other Tales of Future Time was released in 2001 to tie in with the film's release. As well as the original 1969 short story, it features the two sequels: 'Supertoys When Winter Comes' and 'Supertoys in Other Seasons'. These very short stories (each is 2,000 words or less) depict the story of David, an android who is created for a childless couple, but whose quest for self-identity proves problematic and he eventually leaves to wander the city. These stories are masterfully economical, transmitting much of the same story and concepts as the movie with Spielberg's sugar-coated schmaltz and Kubrick's worrying Blue Fairy fixation removed in a very small number of pages. You can read all three in considerably less than a single lunch break, as compared to the movie's sometimes bum-numbing two-hour running time.

Obviously, 6,000 words do not make a full collection, so an additional sixteen stories are included. They are united by the themes of dislocation and loneliness, which are approached from different angles. Many of the stories are ambiguous and few have any solid resolution. Aldiss' goal here is to raise issues and questions and see what the reader makes of them, not provide pat answers. Interestingly many of the stories are prototypes or condensed versions of other stories he has written: the lengthy seasonal cycle of 'Apogee Again' feels like Aldiss' epic Helliconia Trilogy on extreme fast-forward, whilst 'A Whiter Mars' is a direct tie-in to his stand-alone SF novel, White Mars. Some of the stories are obvious - 'III' is a simple commentary on humanity's fixation of exploiting natural resources, whilst 'Dark Society's twist ending will likely be spotted by experienced genre readers but remains haunting nonetheless - but others are more inventive, such as the Lord of Light-esque 'Becoming the Full Butterfly' and the judgmental 'Galaxy Zee'.


This is a fine collection of stories reflecting Aldiss' impressive writing range. There is a feeling of distance and coldness in many of the works - possibly an attraction for the likewise non-sentimental Kubrick (Blue Fairy obsession aside) - which may be offputting for some, but overall this is an intelligent and thought-provoking book and well worth seeking out.

Supertoys Last All Summer Long (***½) is published in the UK by Orbit (out of print but copies seem available on Amazon) and by St. Martin's Griffin in the USA.

Not worth the price
I bought this book because I wanted to read the stories that formed the basis for the film "A.I.: Artificial Intelligence."I knew that they were short vignettes, so I expected most of the book to be unrelated stories, which was true.I did expect at least to enjoy the stories that were related to the films, which I did not, not did I care for any of the other stories.I didn't finish the book, and likely never will.Unless you're an Aldiss fan already, don't bother with this collection.

Didactic, Hippy Tripe
Since these stories of future time really aren't stories but are instead poorly penned tracts attacking Western civilization and its Catholic roots, allow me to save you the few hours it will take to read its 232 pages.Aldiss's rant condensed is:"Trees are cool, sex is cool, and contraception is super cool as is making up cutesy names for private parts; chicks are hot, plants are hot and sometimes dudes are hot too; hippy sensuality and sentimentality totally rocks as does empiricism; but patriarchal Western civilization is icky, religion is icky, and virtue is totally nasty as is meat-eating (well, some meat at least) and the military."There you have it.The entire book in one overly long and poorly drafted (an homage to Aldiss's work) sentence.

Read any other book ever written by anyone other than Aldiss and your time will be better spent.Fortunately, the pseudo-intellectual skepticism mixed with new age spiritualism that Aldiss represents has, mostly, gone out of fashion.I can't say that I like the vulgar, cynical, and anti-intellectual secularism that has taken its place, but at least it's more honest.

s e r i o u s dissapointment. DO NOT BUY
this book is more than dissapointing. the book never says anywhere that the first three "stories" or chapters are only 23 pages in legenth.

the main story is fairly good, adds a new element to movie, but other than that, DONT BUY THIS BOOK, only get it at the library if you insist

Mythmaking?
The first three stories have obvious parallels (which Aldiss apparently denied) with Pinnochio (and also the Tin Man in Wizard of Oz and Pygmalion and seal-wife and fairy-wife legends). Maybe I'm reading too much into this (making me guilty of deconstructionism) but I saw a pattern of recreation of old stories. "Nothing in Life is Ever Enough" tells the story of Shakespeares "Tempest" from Caliban's angle. "The Old Mythology" is what its title suggests; a visitor from a future age is present at events (told with a sharp sense of humor) that precapitulate (if that's a word) Greek and Hebrew creation myths. "Headless" is a version of the sacrificed hero described in Fraser's "Golden Bough." "A Matter of Mathematics" is about Plato's cave. In "Becoming the Full Butterfly" the breaking of a divine law results in the destruction of a world by flooding. "Talking Cubes"= "The Picture of Dorian Grey." "Steppenpferd"=the Temptation of St Anthony (I couldn't make a connection to Hesse's "Steppenwolf").
Most of the stories have down-beat endings. Whenever anybody has a good time they get their come-uppance, so it's a pessimistic view of the future. Even "The Marvels of Utopia" is dystopic - at least it's far from Thomas More. In spite of they're enjoyable because of Aldiss's sheer good writing,excellent jokes, wild imagination and page-turning action.I ... Read more

Product Description
From one of science fiction’s greatest living writers comes an unforgettable near-future novel in the hortatory tradition of Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451, Orwell’s 1984, and Dick’s A Scanner Darkly. Both a searing indictment of a fear-drenched political climate and a visionary allegory that shines a piercing light on timeless human verities, HARM is a powerfully compact masterwork that is sure to be one of the most passionately discussed books of the year.

The time is today or tomorrow–or perhaps the day after tomorrow. Paul Fadhil Abbas Ali, a young British citizen of Muslim descent, has written a satirical novel in which two characters joke about the assassination of the prime minister. Arrested by agents of HARM–the Hostile Activities Research Ministry–Paul is thrown into a nameless Abu Ghraib-like prison, possibly located in Syria, where he is held incommunicado and brutally interrogated by jailers to whom his Muslim heritage is itself a crime meriting the harshest punishment. Under this sadistic regime, Paul’s personality begins to show signs of radical fragmentation. . . .

On the remote planet of Stygia, a man named Fremant, haunted by memories of torture that seem drawn from Paul’s mind, is one of a small group of colonists struggling for survival on a harsh but weirdly beautiful world whose dominant life-forms are insects. The sole humanoid race on the planet has been hunted to extinction by the human settlers, whose long journey to Stygia has left them unable to understand their own history and technology.

Thrown back to a more primitive state, they seem destined to repeat all the sins of the world they fled to Stygia to escape.

Is Paul dreaming Fremant as a way of escaping the horrors of his imprisonment? Or is there a stronger–and far stranger–connection between the two men, whose very different circumstances begin to take on uncanny parallels?

As aspects of their identities blur and, finally, merge, astonishing answers take shape–and profound new questions arise. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (7)

Less than the sum of its parts
Paul Fadhil Abbas Ali, a British citizen and Muslim, innocently captures the attention of the Hostile Activities Research Ministry (HARM) by publishing a volume of silliness that includes a threat to the Prime Minister.His civil rights notwithstanding, he is brutally interrogated by men who have no higher priority than finding out who his theoretical co-conspirators are.The unending ordeal triggers in Paul's mind a tendency towards dissociative personality.Locked in solitary confinement, he imagines himself living on a far-off planet Stygia where an austere authoritarian government practices genocide against the "doglovers", people who are actually the pets of a race of intelligent "dogs".The novel flips back and forth between Britain and Stygia, as Paul's tormentors continue their brutal questioning over the course of days and even weeks.Will Paul's innocence ever be proven?Will he survive his ordeal with his mind intact?Or will he spend the rest of his days fighting battles in a fantasy world of his own imagination?

It's easy enough to see why Aldiss wrote this novel; recent world events have made us all very aware of the dangers of a government that sets security above the rights of individuals, and Aldiss (never one to shy away from a political statement) wanted to address that.Yet heavy-handed as the Earth-side story is, most of the pages focus on the sci-fi/fantasy sub-story, which is more imaginative, has better characters, and shows more plot movement. In a more fully realized novel, the episodes on Stygia would have been better integrated, serving to inform the story that is taking place in the real world, and vice versa.As it stands, it's easy to forget about HARM altogether, and like Paul, get completely lost in the fantasy.Unfortunately, neither story is especially compelling on its own, and due to the lack of connection between the two, the whole is less than the sum of its parts.

A firery, intelligent and formidable novel
Paul Ali, a young British writer with Muslim parents but who calls himself a secularist, has written and published a comic novel in the tradition of P.G. Wodehouse. The book attracted some minor attention and made him a very small amount of money. One passage, in which the protagonists joke about what would happen if the Prime Minister was assassinated, has attracted the attention of the Hostile Activities Research Ministry. After learning that Ali visited Saudi Arabia on holiday recently, HARM arrests Ali as a suspected terrorist and sets about finding the truth from him...by any means necessary.

As Ali is interrogated, he escapes from the degradation and torture by constructing a fantasy world, Stygia, where in the distant future humans have sent a colonisation ship from Earth. The passengers were molecularly disassembled for transit, but their reconstitution did not go as planned and now the people are confused, or brain-damaged, or have problems with language. In this world Ali is Fremant, a bodyguard for the colony's deranged leader, Astaroth. As Astaroth prosecutes a genocidal war against the native inhabitants, the Dogovers, Fremant's loyalties are torn. There is upheaval in Stygia, war and revolution are coming, and what happens in the real world and in Ali's mind starts to reflect more and more on one another.

Brian Aldiss may be in his 80s now, but HARM (published in 2007) shows that his formidable powers as a writer have not diminished with age. In this novel Aldiss is clearly angry over what Britain and her allies did and became in the 'war on terror', but pulls himself back from a kneejerk polemical attack on the policies of the Bush-Blair axis. Instead he analyses the situation through the lens of SF, making the point that the brutal and oppressive measures that had been adopted were the result of fear and ignorance, an urgent need to distill complex issues down to a hopelessly naive black-and-white, us-and-them situation. At the same time, he also points out the reality of the threats that do exist and threaten us, and in the end offers no neat or pat answers because they simply do not exist.

All of this may make HARM sound like a tiresome political treatise rather than as a novel, but nothing could be further from the truth. Aldiss' engagement with the issues does not detract from the story, which is a dizzying multi-stranded narrative occupying two different levels of reality and how the state of Ali's mind in the 'real' world impacts on that of Fremant on Stygia. Aldiss' formidable powers of SF worldbuilding are again on display here, with the hostile insects and fauna of Stygia recalling the grotesque genius of Hothouse, whilst descriptions of the journey through space from Earth echo elements in Non-Stop. But HARM is its own, dizzyingly intelligent book.

The novel concludes with both an author's note and a fascinating interview between the author and his publisher in which analyses his motives in writing the book and where it sits compared to some of his other novels.

HARM (****½) is firey, smart and compelling (I read the book in one sitting), urgent in tone and convincing in argument. It is available now in the UK and USA.

A split-personality Muslim's torture
Writer Paul Fadhil Abbas Ali is arrested by agents of the Hostile Activities Research Ministry because (HARM) because his novel, Pied Piper of Hament, contains a joke about the assassination of a British prime minister. As a British citizen of Muslim Heritage, Paul is suspected of connections with Islamic terrorists. Paul is swept up on the flimsiest, then subjected to torture that is made even more abhorrent by the vile racism of his interlocutors. At the same time Paul is suffering from a personality disorder. He is being translated back and forth between two main realities: Earth and the insect-dominated world of Stygia. The colonists of Stygia have been transported to the planet with their brain functions and DNA stored in Life Process Reservoirs (LPRs) and then reconstituted upon arrival. The new Stygians become virtually computer compositions; given this treatment, most of the colonists have suffered degrees of brain damage. The reality of Paul fluctuates between this imagined Stygian and his prison cell.

Paul being both a Muslim and British can't help the paranoid West that persecutes Muslim minorities. As in Fahrenheit 451 it doesn't matter if Paul is not a threat and that it is a waste of time to hold on to him for his written comedy. The stab on insights into human nature are what they are; Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib. The novel makes it clear that treatment of a political prisoner has nothing to do with counterterrorism.

Two (2) stars. Written in 2007 in the shadows of post 9/11, the novel depicts totalitarian near-future dystopia. This is a serious, non-technical sci-fi which contains unpleasant dark torture scenes. A modern hunt for those that are different. Unfortunately the insect world of Paul's alter-ego does not resonate too well in this ultra-realistic tale. The allegoric remarks on political commentary are too upfront. This is experimental Aldiss, playing with an idea of jailed personality; jailed nations. A blurring read.

A good Read
In my opinion this book was a fairly good read. I picked it for a project in English class, and I finished the book in just one weekend. The book was a true page turner, and being an avid Science Fiction reader, I found it interesting. My only complaint would be that the dual storyline is somewhat confusing at times. Basically, I was more interested in Paul's story, than the Stygia storyline. By the end of the book, the story had become quite confusing. Still its a good read for science fiction fans.

HARM by Brian W. Aldiss
Brian W. Aldiss is a living legend in the science fiction genre--he has won the Hugo Award, the Nebula, the British Science Fiction Association Award, and the John W. Campbell Memorial Award. He has been a progressive voice in the genre for decades, and his latest novel, HARM, has all the life, voice and thought provocation of anything he has ever produced.

HARM--an acronym for Hostile Activities Research Ministry--is a satirical novel based in the near future. It is the story of Paul Ali, a writer and British citizen of Islamic heritage, who is being held as a political prisoner in a terrorist detention camp. Inside the prison he is known only as Prisoner B. His crime: a few characters in his comic novel "The Pied Piper of Hament," drunkenly joke about the assassination of the British Prime Minister. His only human contact is with his interrogators, who practice torture and violence with a particularly frightening glee.

When Paul is not in interrogation he is sequestered in a solitary cell where he suffers visions and vivid imaginings due to a mental illness. He lives in two separate and distinct worlds. The first is the world of torture and pain, and the second is a distant world where insects are dominant, and the local human population has been transplanted with extreme difficulty. They were transported in Life-Process Reservoirs, which contained their brain functions and DNA and then were reconstituted on arrival. Unfortunately the reconstitution did not work perfectly, and many of them have lost significant verbal skills, a vast amount of their intelligence, and their cultural identities.

HARM is a disjointed novel that is effective for the simple reason that when all of the storylines are connected and examined as a whole, they become something more than their parts. It is a story that casts a cynical eye at our post September 11th society. Mr. Aldiss cleverly unmasks the tightrope that many British Muslims are walking--they must embrace the British culture without losing their own--and he also casts a shadow against the methods used by Britain and the United States in the war on terror.

HARM is a novel that is both enlightening and demanding. It is very much a novel of our time, and it captures many relevant themes--immigration, identity, racism, torture--but it also examines the obscurities and nuances of what has happened to our culture since the September 11th terrorist attacks. It translates the hate and anger with a perfect pitch, all while telling a compelling and entertaining story. I recommend HARM wholeheartedly.

-Gravetapping ... Read more

Product Description
Thomas C Squire, founder of the Society for Popular Aesthetics, one-time secret agent and successful hedonist faces a midlife crisis. That undermines the stability of his ancestral home in Norfolk. Following the creation of his TV documentary series, FRANKENSTEIN AMONG THE ARTS, Squire attends a conference of academics in Sicily. There, against a background of international rivalry, he becomes involved with the lovely if calculating Selina and the Russian Vasily. In counterpoint to the drama of the conference runs the story of Squire's private life: the horrifying circumstances of his father's death; his many affairs with women; and his fifteen-month separation from his wife. This brilliant novel, sometimes violent and always compassionate, moves from England to Sicily, from Singapore to the former Yugoslavia. LIFE IN THE WEST embodies the best characteristics of Brian Aldiss's writing: wit, human understanding, a fine turn of phrase and consummate storytelling. ... Read more

Product Description
The second volume of the trilogy spanning several generations on a planet with centuries-long seasons. During the long summer, the king of Borlien, beset by enemies who would overthrow him, struggles to divorce his queen in order to marry a young princess. Meanwhile, the forests of the planet burn. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (5)

A good book that fails to match up to "Helliconia Spring"
"Helliconia Summer" is the second book in Brian Aldiss' Helliconia Trilogy, a story about the evolution of a human society upon a harsh world beset by centuries' long "Great Seasons". It is a solid entry, but fails to quite live up to the standard set by "Helliconia Spring".

"Helliconia Summer" is set in the flowering of human civilization - the point when the planet Helliconia is nearing the closest point it gets to the more prominent of its two suns. It is a period of renaissance and technological advancement for Helliconian humanity, but also one of conflict, both with each other and with the ancient inhabitants of the planet - the minotaur-like Phagors. In this setting, Aldiss sets the story of the trials and travails of King JandolAnganol of Borlien, as he attempts to secure his position and nation amidst the politics of Helliconia.

This book is very different from its predecessor, in two primary ways. Whereas "Helliconia Spring" was largely a narrative of the development of humanity as Spring occurred, and featured succeeding generations of human characters, "Helliconia Summer" takes place over a much more limited period of time, and focuses largely on the same cast for most of the novel. This creates a fairly rich plot in terms of character development, but loses some of the unique exploration of the setting that was such a major part of "Helliconia Spring".

Unfortunately, the second difference does not work well. "Helliconia Summer" has a rather bizarre chronological structure, with events near the beginning, followed by a series of disconnected flashbacks. The result is incoherent and irritating to try and puzzle out, and came across as highly unnecessary.

If you are seeking more exploration of the world itself, then you're in for a bit of disappointment. If, however, you are looking for a good story and characters in Aldiss's setting, then this book will be a good, but not great, read for you.

An excellent continuation of the trilogy
Helliconia basks in the glow of the Great Summer. The continent of Campannlat is now dominated by the Holy Empire, a loose religious affiliation between the three great kingdoms of Pannoval, Oldorando and Borlien. These nations find themselves threatened by the far less technologically-advanced but considerably more populous jungle and desert nations to the west and the even more savage tribes to the east. When King JandolAnganol suffers a humiliating defeat to tribesmen using firearms (bought at great cost from the progressive nations of Sibornal far to the north), he divorces his wife so he might seek a more favourable alliance by marrying a princess of Oldorando. However, the queen is a greatly popular figure in Borlien and by divorcing her the king enrages the native population, triggering political turmoil and military action that will have great ramifications for all of Helliconia.

Meanwhile, the crew of the Earth Observation Station Avernus have fallen into internal dissent and debate over the nature of reality and their own orders from distant Earth not to interfere with life on Helliconia. Rejecting this order from a world they can never see or return to, the crew hold a lottery with a grand prize: to allow the winner to visit Helliconia, so for the brief few months it will take for the planet's viruses and bacteria to kill him he can live under a real sky. The arrival of Billy Xiao Pin in Borlien's capital likewise triggers events that will have unforeseen consequences.

Helliconia Summer picks up the story of the world of Helliconia some 355 local years - more than 500 Earth years - after the conclusion of Helliconia Spring. The planet is not far from its time of closest approach to the supergiant star Freyr and humanity rules supreme over the planet, the phagor population reduced to slavery or forced to hide in remote mountain valleys. It is a time of great technological innovation, with firearms, gunpowder and cannons flowing south from Sibornal, but also of turmoil, with the doctrines of the Pannovalan Church stifling the advance of technology and science within Campannlat itself. Like its forebear, the novel mixes thematic elements such as the rise and fall of civilisations, the advance of science and the uneasy union of progress and religion, with a more traditional action and character-driven narrative.

Helliconia Summer, appropriately, sprawls luxuriantly where its forebear was more focused and constrained in narrative scope and geographical area. It is in this novel that Aldiss' achievement in creating Helliconia is best-realised, with lush descriptions of the world and its myriad animal life and human cultures in full flower. The main storyline is compelling, combining intriguing politics and well-realised (if not particularly likable) characters clashing over the fate of their kingdoms in the face of warfare, religious turmoil and arguments over the fate of the phagors, the dominant nonhuman species of Helliconia reduced by the heat into docile soldier-slaves. The relevance of having an observation station from Earth is also made clearer in this novel, with one of the Avernus crewmembers becoming an important character. There are also some intriguing mysteries, such as a murder mystery whose conclusion is ambiguous and a deeper one surrounding the changes in pauk, the bizarre ability of the Helliconian people to commune with the spirits of their ancestors after death, which provide much food-for-thought going into the third and final novel.

On the negative side, the book suffers slightly from its lack of focus compared to the first volume and also from a somewhat clumsy chronological structure, where the first several chapters take place in the present and then we rewind a year and move forward to where the first part began, then skip to after it. The story doesn't really require this structure and would perhaps have benefited from a more linear progression.

In Helliconia Summer (****½) Aldiss' grand ambition, nothing less than a history of an entire world and its peoples across vast chasms of time, becomes clearer and more impressive. The book is available now (albeit somewhat expensively) in the USA and will form part of the new UK Helliconia omnibus due on 12 August this year.

Best book in the series
This is by far the best book in the series - not quite great, but an interesting book to read. The characters are vibrant, their motivations understandable, the plot at least somewhat plausible. As with all the Helliconia books, there are many loose ends and the author never quite made me care about his characters, but it does a reasonable job of delivering on the "grand sweep of history" motif that Aldiss apparently intended for Helliconia.

Almost as good as Spring
I have already stated somewhere my disgust over the translation of this book that is avaliable in my country, better to say of the translation of the volume one. The volume two didn't get any better in that sence.

But that is beside the point. As much as I enjoyed Helliconia Spring, finding myself able to feel on the top of the planet surface which was torchured by the immense cold climate and hostile enviroment, I have found something lacking in the Summer part of trilogy.

Summer part much resembles Renaissance and the birth of the modern age on our planet and in our own history. Struggle between dogma and numerous religions, scientific approach and explorationmixed with political struggle of all kinds, all of that seems much to familiar, and in sa sense, boring.

It is not that I do not enjoy history, and that I cannot perceive weird and almost twisted loggic (or better to say illogic) behind it all, but problem can be placed in an inadequate, lets call it,effort from the side of the author, who felt much more confident in rewriting and adapting humankind history than to create one of his own.

It is still amazingly interesting (and fun) book, but for me it lacked that feeling of new world being created in front of my eyes. Thus the four stars though I am aware that that rate is of questionable value.

One of the best
Continuing his very successful (critcally at least I have no idea how well it sold, though the book trumpets that it's an "international best seller") Helliconia series about a planet with a two thousand yearlong revolution and two hundred year seasons (give or take), he expands andclarifies all the stuff that happened in the first book, which you don'teven need to read to understand.So much time has passed since the firstbook that everything that happened is mostly the stuff of distorted legendif they even remember it at all. This time around he chooses to focus onone group of people over a period of maybe ten years or so instead of themassive scope of the first book and he proves he can pull off both withease.Court intrigue, suspense, the slow heating of the planet amidst thepolitics of the planet, it's all there.And just so you remember thatAldiss is a science-fiction writer, he expands on the notion of Earthwatching the planet and shows that they'll have more of a role in theseries than you would expect.All in all, incredibly detailedplanetbuilding by someone not normally known for that sort of stuff, thisis the type of book that people label a "classic" and for goodreason.Everything works, even the plot technique of showing us theaftermath of something and then bouncing back in the narrative to show uswhat happened before (and they passing it at some point, it can getconfusing if you're not paying attention) works.Even with the heat andwhatnot, Helliconia becomes a place you want to live.I know I do. Criminally this book is out of print, something that should be recitifiedby someone (listening publishers, this series should not only be availablein Britian!) but if you ever find it used, snap it up, it might be hard tofind but definitely worth the time spent searching for it. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Not Free SF Reader
A good year for science fiction, claim the editors.Not particularly, going by this group that only averages 3.25.Only the final Silverberg story I would tag with that descriptor.

This also includes multiple reviews of 2001.

Harrison Aldiss 02 : Budget Planet - Robert Sheckley
Harrison Aldiss 02 : Appointment on Prila - Bob Shaw
Harrison Aldiss 02 : Lost Ground - David I. Masson
Harrison Aldiss 02 : The Annex - John D. MacDonald
Harrison Aldiss 02 : Segregationist - Isaac Asimov
Harrison Aldiss 02 : Final War - K. M. O'Donnell
Harrison Aldiss 02 : The Serpent of Kundalini - Brian W. Aldiss
Harrison Aldiss 02 : Golden Acres - Kit Reed
Harrison Aldiss 02 : Criminal in Utopia - Mack Reynolds
Harrison Aldiss 02 : One Station of the Way - Fritz Leiber
Harrison Aldiss 02 : Sweet Dreams Melissa - Stephen Goldin
Harrison Aldiss 02 : To the Dark Star - Robert Silverberg



3.5 out of 5

Not Free SF Reader
A good year for science fiction, claim the editors.Not particularly, going by this group that only averages 3.25.Only the final Silverberg story I would tag with that descriptor.

This also includes multiple reviews of 2001.

Harrison Aldiss 02 : Budget Planet - Robert Sheckley
Harrison Aldiss 02 : Appointment on Prila - Bob Shaw
Harrison Aldiss 02 : Lost Ground - David I. Masson
Harrison Aldiss 02 : The Annex - John D. MacDonald
Harrison Aldiss 02 : Segregationist - Isaac Asimov
Harrison Aldiss 02 : Final War - K. M. O'Donnell
Harrison Aldiss 02 : The Serpent of Kundalini - Brian W. Aldiss
Harrison Aldiss 02 : Golden Acres - Kit Reed
Harrison Aldiss 02 : Criminal in Utopia - Mack Reynolds
Harrison Aldiss 02 : One Station of the Way - Fritz Leiber
Harrison Aldiss 02 : Sweet Dreams Melissa - Stephen Goldin
Harrison Aldiss 02 : To the Dark Star - Robert Silverberg

Solar engineering.

3.5 out of 5


Gray Man patience.

3 out of 5


Micromood time.

3.5 out of 5


Hard to find lack of heart.

3.5 out of 5


Metallo wannabes.

3 out of 5


Girlybum company.

2.5 out of 5


Psychochemical perv.

2.5 out of 5


Old age resources finish.

3.5 out of 5


Credit card crime.

3 out of 5


Peace seed mockery.

3.5 out of 5


Not a real girl.

3.5 out of 5


Big adapted black hole confrontation.

4 out of 5




3.5 out of 5 ... Read more

Customer Reviews (17)

A masterpiece of science fiction
Yuli is a child of a hunter-gatherer family living under the light of two suns on the northern plains of Campannlat on the frigid, ice-wrapped planet of Helliconia. When his father is enslaved by the vicious phagors, Yuli is left alone. He finds his way to the subterranean city of Pannoval, where he prospers as a member of the priesthood. Tiring of torturing heretics and punishing renegades, he elects to flee the oppressive city with some like-minded allies, eventually founding the settlement of Oldorando some distance away.

Fifty years later, Yuli's descendants have conquered a larger town, renaming it Oldorando as well, and are prospering. Game is becoming more plentiful, the river is thawing and warmer winds are rising, even as the smaller sun, Freyr, grows larger in the sky. But with peace and plenty comes indolence and corruption, and the people of Oldorando find themselves bickering and feuding for power, even as a great crusade of phagors leaves their icy homes in the eastern mountains on a quest to slaughter as many humans as possible.

The great drama of life on Helliconia is observed from an orbiting Earth space station, the Avernus, the crew of which watch as Helliconia and its sun, Batalix, draw closer to the great white supergiant about which they revolve and the centuries-long winter comes to a violent end.

Helliconia Spring (originally published in 1982) is the first volume in Brian Aldiss' masterpiece, The Helliconia Trilogy. In this work, Aldiss has constructed the supreme achievement of science fiction worldbuilding: Helliconia, a planet located in a binary star system a thousand light-years distant from Earth. Batalix and Helliconia take 2,592 years to orbit Freyr in a highly elliptical orbit (Helliconia is three times further from Freyr at its most distant point than nearest), which results in seasons that last for centuries apiece. Helliconia's plants, animal and sentient lifeforms have all biologically adapted to this unusual arrangement (in a manner that prevents colonisation by Earthlings, who would be killed quickly by the planet's bacteria), but its civilisations have not adapted satisfactorily: humanity rises in the spring and becomes dominant in the summer before being toppled by the phagors in the autumn and enslaved in the winter. However, more evidence has survived of the previous cycle than normal, and this time around those humans who have discovered the truth have vowed to ensure that humanity will survive the next Great Winter triumphant over its ancestral enemy.

Helliconia Spring is a complex novel working on a literal storytelling level - the factional battles for control over Oldorando and Pannoval, the phagor crusade flooding across the continent and the search for truth and understanding of the Helliconian star system by Oldorando's scientists - and also on thematic ones, with Aldiss examining the struggles between religion and science, between those who thrive in peace and those who thrive in war and the duality of winter and summer, humanity and phagor, and though the religious ritual of pauk, between the living and the dead.

Having the orbital Earth platform is a good idea, as it gives us a literal scientific understanding of the Helliconia system which those on the surface are struggling to understand, even if it does feel a little removed from the storyline at this time. Amongst other criticisms are a lack of character closure: whilst the grand history of Helliconia and the thematic elements continue to be explored in Helliconia Summer, the story itself moves on several hundred years, leaving the main characters of this book long dead. But these are outweighed by the strengths: the effective and impressive prose, the fantastic descriptions of a near-frozen planet thawing into life with its millions of species of plant and animal life waking up under the two suns and the impressive melding of cold, impersonal scientific worldbuilding with a satisfying plot and vividly-described characters.

Helliconia Spring (*****) is a masterpiece of science fiction and features the single most impressive work of SF worldbuilding to date. The novel is available now in the USA. A new omnibus edition of the entire trilogy will be published by Gollancz as part of the SF Masterworks collection on 12 August 2010.

What an interesting world, what a boring story
The idea of the world is a very interesting stage but the actual story being told isn't much of a story.The following books aren't much better, skip this series.

It all develops pretty quick!
It held my attention and kept me reading, but didn't convince me.The main reason is that Embruddock is simply too small to be as specialised as Aldiss insists - it's only about a hundred people at the start of the story, and yet it has guilds of tanners, metalworkers and god knows what else.In a couple of years this hamlet has expanded to being called a 'city' - these things do happen, I know, but only with processes that Aldiss's work can't contain.Also, his poetry is embarrassingly bad.

A Different kind of Epic
I read this book in the late 90's when I was in high school.

To bring it into perspective today - makes a lot of sense.

The book is a collection of science, astronomy, society ,physical/human geography and a touch of Science fiction.

Most important to potential buyers is the fact that this book (part of a trilogy) is not something that is similar to more fantasy/character driven Lord of the Rings or works by Robert Jordan, JK Rowling etc.

This is more of study, scripted in prose form, of an evolving planet and its ensuing effects on the living beings and geography.

It is also painfully slow and does not give 'closure' to many things. Humour is also missing from the entire series!

The satisfaction the reader will get from this book (and the following two) is that in the end - it's a fascinating read.

It allows us to wonder about other life forms in the universe similar to us.
It gives us a pretty good idea on how civilizations probably came to be on planet earth itself.
It describes how the flora and fauna must have also developed on earth.

The fact that it is setup on such a good scientific platform makes it a great read!

Cheers

Okay, but could've been a lot better
I bought this book five years ago, since it sounds like a really interesting idea and has neat cover art.I read about 20 pages, and put it down due to lack of interest.I recently picked it up again and finished it, but found myself pushing through most of it.It gets a little better than the prologue, but I just didn't care too much about the people of Oldorando (or even keep them straight, since their names all sound the same).A few chapters could've adequately told the story that takes several hundred here.It would be nice to know more about the Earth Station that's observing the planet, since they seemed a lot more interesting than any of the inhabitants of Helliconia.I'm all for blending genres, but this particular blend (almost Conan-style fantasy mixed with splashes of hard sci-fi), just doesn't work very well.It will be a long time, if ever, before I pick up the second volume. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Very fast delivery!
Book was in good condition as advertised. Delivery was very prompt. Very happy with the seller and would have no hesitation buying from them again. ... Read more