Customer Reviews (1)

Excellent graphics depicting old (50's era) sci-fi
This book is most excellent and a "must-have" for any sci-fi buff.I would be interested in selling this book if someone would be interested in purchasing it. ... Read more

Product Description
Burnell, a culture preservationist, travels throughout the world appealing to the masses to consider the detriment of war and human folly, and trying to locate a ten-year piece of his memory that has been stolen and sold as soft porn. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (4)

Illuminating
I should say up front that Brian Aldiss connects with me in a way that no other author does. His observations seem to me sharper and his conclusions spot-on. In his Squire Quartet he takes a far more meandering approach which I found most rewarding in this novel. The action is sparse and rarely truly exciting and yet it is a real page-turner. As usual, Aldiss paints an all-too familiar picture of all our lives and hopes and dreams amidst a selfish, uncaring world yet manages to make us feel profoundly good to be a part of it. I've read most of his numerous works and find this to be right near the top of my favourites list, despite being altogether different from the kind of science fiction I generally enjoy.

He still has it
Generally when you go to read books by authors who are years past their absolute peak works you're not expecting much.Thus far Aldiss has wowed me with NonStop and the Helliconia Trilogy and while this book didn't make me proclaim it as the savior of literature, it's a darn fine novel and can easily go toe to toe with most of the new authors that show up every year or so.The idea here is that poor Roy lives in a very near future in a world much like ours, where he acts as a preserver, taking pictures and documenting old churches and the like before the civil unrest in the area reaches it and it gets bombed into oblivion.In any event, Roy unfortunately gets ten years of his memory stolen by folks who package them into "bullets" and sell them to people who want to experience the lives of other people, currently the newest illegal craze.Roy, adrift and confused, now has to try and put his life back together while dealing with the fact that not only does he have an ex-wife but he doesn't even remember being married at all, while at the same time trying to find his memories so he can get them back.The plot takes a bit of an episodic spin at that point, which is probably the best way to go since it gives Aldiss a chance to show his world off and make some comments about the world we live in.Roy travels from danger spot to danger spot, running into violence and warlords, armies and relics, all the while trying to figure out just what effect the last ten years had on him and just what went wrong with his ex-wife.Definitely engaging, always thought-provoking, this is all too often overlooked in his list of decent books, don't make a mistake and miss this.

A bit disappointing from so great an author.
The New York Times Book Review said that "Mr. Aldiss is now in competition with nobody but himself." In Somewhere East of Life, Brian Aldiss does the impossible and loses.

What stands out is not thatSomewhere East of Life is a bad book (it's not), but that it's decidedly"eh". The chapters fall quickly into place; after the first fouror five, every other one is as bland as a flat 7-Up. Moreso than that,Aldiss fails to live up to the potential of the story; getting ten years ofyour life stolen and made into porn brings to mind several other storyideas that would have made Somewhere East of Life a much better book thanit is. Perhaps I should leave it at that; it's a decent story soured by thefact that it COULD and SHOULD be better.

The future as bleak uncaring wasteland
Having first read this book in December 1994 during a period of darknessin my life, I was pleased to find that upon re-reading it, my initialresponse to the book was not hampered by my (then) situation.The conceptof a man dealing with memory loss is interesting to say the least, and evenmore provoking when the possibility exists where it may be retrieved.RoyBurnell is a comlicated person, many friends, many possiblities, but manyregrets and losses as well (does this sound like you?me too), making hima well rounded, very real person. Through an act of his own kindness, tenyears of his life are removed, thus making him ignorant of his status inlife, and more importantly, his divorce, which preys upon him constantly. Narrowly escaping death more than a few times and in locales that are evenmore real today than they were when the book was published, Burnelltraveses the remains of former Soviet states hoping to catalogue churches,monastaries (where's my spell-checker?), or just about anyreligion-oriented artifact or structure.Reading the passage about Burnelltravelling by train made me think that perhaps the writer Paul Theroux hadjumped into the future to make sly observations.I sometimes felt that Ihad to plod through some descriptions just to make it to the next page, butI always felt rewarded in the end, for it was in Burnells' observationsthat I was able to see parts of myself.A highly enjoyable book that,while dark and truly depressing at times, will reward the reader literallyon the last page. ... Read more

Product Description
A selection of Brian Aldiss' best science fiction chosen by the author himself and representative of the full range of his 30-year career. His recent successes include the "Helliconia" trilogy and "Trillion Year Spree: The History of Science Fiction" which won the Hugo Award in 1987. ... Read more

Product Description
Twenty-four fantasy stories by Brian Aldiss, with an introduction in which he discusses the differences between this genre and pure science fiction. This volume is intended as a companion to "Man in His Time", which collects together the author's best science-fiction stories. Brian Aldiss has won numerous international awards including Hugo, Nebula, Kurd Lasswitz, Jules Verne and BSFA. ... Read more

Product Description
An Ace "themed" double. Both novels involve the conquest of Earth by REALLY weird alien races. *Dark Destroyers* (formerly *Nuisance Value*) is abridged from the Avalon hardcover. The Aldiss title is a paperback original. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Remembrance Day
Remembrance Day is an intelligent and challenging novel on the concept of accidental death as a self fulfilling prophecy.Brian Aldiss, better known for his works of science fiction, steps out of his traditional category and presents a series of interrelated stories about the lives of those touched, both directly and indirectly , by a terrorist explosion in a quiet seaside village in the UK.Professor Hengist Morton Embry offers as his hypothesis that the lives of those killed in the explosion somehow had a predisposition to the final event.Aldiss then explores the lives of his characters with a richness that is compelling, in that the stories are interesting, and gives the reader a foundation upon which to draw their own conclusions regarding the professor's hypothesis. The links between the stories are a bit contrived, but the effect, nonetheless, is a good read of several novellas rolled into one. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Not Free SF Reader
In a 'Credo' piece at the start of the book, this is part of what James Blish has to say about a Year's Best:-

"1. Its contents should be science fiction which means that at the worst, every story ought to contain some trace of some science, and at best they ought to depend on it. This means no fantasies, nothing put in solely because the author wrote a best-selling mainstream novel in 1920, no political parables and no what-is-its.

2. Its contents should be science fiction meaning no cartoons, psuedoscientific articles, how-to-write-it pieces or bad verse.

3. It ought to be reasonably honest about what it is offering. Just to begin with, no such volume can hope to include the best SF of its year, regardless of length. Furthermore, not even all the best short fiction is available; some of it gets tied up in exclusive contracts by other anthologies or collections, and occasionally some of it is even priced too high. Both these limitations ought to be made known to the reader.

4. It ought to be responsible. If the editor is actually being overruled by another editor, or the publisher, that ought to be made known, too, naming names.

I am carefully not adding that within these limits its "bests" ought really to be the best; it isn't humanly possible for any such volume to satisfy everybody on that count. But it ought at least to try."

The editors then go on to disagree with him a bit, and of course put stories in outside this selection.

There is also an afterword that at times is a bit of an unrelated to the book rant.

For a 40 year old volume, or close enough, this is pretty reasonable, with a 3.43 average.


Harrison Aldiss 01 : Hawksbill Station [short story] - Robert Silverberg
Harrison Aldiss 01 : Ultimate Construction - C. C. Shackleton
Harrison Aldiss 01 : 1937 A.D.! - John T. Sladek
Harrison Aldiss 01 : Fifteen Miles - Ben Bova
Harrison Aldiss 01 : Blackmail - Fred Hoyle
Harrison Aldiss 01 : The Vine - Kit Reed
Harrison Aldiss 01 : Interview with a Lemming - James Thurber
Harrison Aldiss 01 : The Wreck of the Ship John B. - Frank M. Robinson
Harrison Aldiss 01 : The Left-Hand Way - A. Bertram Chandler
Harrison Aldiss 01 : The Forest of Zil - Kris Neville
Harrison Aldiss 01 : The A55a55ination of John Fitzgerald Kennedy Considered as a Downhill Motor Race - J. G. Ballard
Harrison Aldiss 01 : Answering Service - Fritz Leiber
Harrison Aldiss 01 : The Last Command - Keith Laumer
Harrison Aldiss 01 : Mirror of Ice - Gary Wright
Harrison Aldiss 01 : Pretty Maggie Moneyeyes - Harlan Ellison


The authorities have come up with an unconventional but effective way of controlling dissidents. Send them back a billion or so years into the past. A bit hard to escape from there, really.

When a new prisoner is sent back, the current top dog, an aging main with a recent serious injury has to try and hang onto his life, and work out what is up with the new guy.

3 out of 5


Deserted planet boy. With spade and bucket, luckily.

3.5 out of 5


Time Engine to look yourself up.

3 out of 5


"Wonder how many Jesuits have been carried home on their shields?"

3.5 out of 5


Only a bunch of monkeys would watch a lot of tv.

3.5 out of 5


Grape growers are wroth.

3.5 out of 5


Surprised humans don't off themselves.

3.5 out of 5


Spacegoing slum.

4 out of 5


Contemplative metal monks.

4 out of 5


Tree history.

3.5 out of 5


Finishing gun.

2.5 out of 5


Old style phone convo.

4 out of 5


A Bolo is a cybernetic supertank, basically. In this story, an old inactive one comes to life.

3 out of 5


Possible sledicide.

3.5 out of 5


Maggie, I wish I had something to say to you. But you're dead.

3.5 out of 5




4 out of 5 ... Read more

Product Description
A collection of inter-related short stories with the themes of life, death and transformation. The stories are sometimes domestic, sometimes startling or horrifying and sometimes telling of the disastrous human traits which make life hell. ... Read more