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The Dark Light Years
The Utods are a highly advanced alien species from whom the human race might learn much, with superior technology and a profound philosophy. But when they meet, their customs and conventions are far beneath what humankind considers to be civilized. Brian Aldiss's satirical depiction of the first encounter and subsequent violent conflict between mankind and a gentle, intelligent race which it cannot understand was first published in 1964, but its archly ironic message of cultural misunderstanding and the potential for catastrophe it entails resonates as strongly today. 'Flies straight to its mark with hardly a word a treat for the fans and required reading for anyone seriously interested in the fiction and ideas of today.' Kingsley Amis
152 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1964
31 people are currently reading
603 people want to read
About the author
Brian W. Aldiss
831 books668 followersPseudonyms: Jael Cracken, Peter Pica, John Runciman, C.C. Shackleton, Arch Mendicant, & "Doc" Peristyle.
Brian Wilson Aldiss was one of the most important voices in science fiction writing today. He wrote his first novel while working as a bookseller in Oxford. Shortly afterwards he wrote his first work of science fiction and soon gained international recognition. Adored for his innovative literary techniques, evocative plots and irresistible characters, he became a Grand Master of Science Fiction in 1999.
Brian Aldiss died on August 19, 2017, just after celebrating his 92nd birthday with his family and closest friends.
Brian W. Aldiss Group on Good Reads
Brian Wilson Aldiss was one of the most important voices in science fiction writing today. He wrote his first novel while working as a bookseller in Oxford. Shortly afterwards he wrote his first work of science fiction and soon gained international recognition. Adored for his innovative literary techniques, evocative plots and irresistible characters, he became a Grand Master of Science Fiction in 1999.
Brian Aldiss died on August 19, 2017, just after celebrating his 92nd birthday with his family and closest friends.
Brian W. Aldiss Group on Good Reads
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 76 reviews
December 18, 2017
The Dark Light Years by Brian Aldiss, first published in 1964, makes me realize what an important voice Aldiss is in the science fiction genre.
As I write this in May 2015, Mr. Aldiss is 89 years old and still writing. Named a Grand Master by the Science Fiction Writers of America in 2000 and inducted by the Science Fiction Hall of Fame in 2004, he has received two Hugo Awards, one Nebula Award, and one John W. Campbell Memorial Award.
The Dark Light Years, somewhat dated by today’s tech heavy literary standards, describes a first contact scenario where the peaceful and philosophical alien Utods, dubbed “rhino men” by unsophisticated spacers – because of their bulk and slovenly behavior (though Aldiss’ description seems more akin to a terrestrial hippopotamus) – make an important distinction from the warlike and destructive humans.
Representative of the best of science fiction, this work makes me think of Starship Troopers and The Forever War, with Aldiss’ evocative and profound narrative of our world grown bellicose and wasteful. His imaginative creation of the Utods and their unique society is reminiscent of Ursula Le Guin and also, to a lesser and more superficial degree, Heinlein’s 1954 juvenile work The Star Beast.
Finally, Aldiss’s conception of the Utods, and their hog-like behavior, is deliciously innovative and forms a dramatic irony with his subtle, though scathing indictment of the worst in our nature.
As I write this in May 2015, Mr. Aldiss is 89 years old and still writing. Named a Grand Master by the Science Fiction Writers of America in 2000 and inducted by the Science Fiction Hall of Fame in 2004, he has received two Hugo Awards, one Nebula Award, and one John W. Campbell Memorial Award.
The Dark Light Years, somewhat dated by today’s tech heavy literary standards, describes a first contact scenario where the peaceful and philosophical alien Utods, dubbed “rhino men” by unsophisticated spacers – because of their bulk and slovenly behavior (though Aldiss’ description seems more akin to a terrestrial hippopotamus) – make an important distinction from the warlike and destructive humans.
Representative of the best of science fiction, this work makes me think of Starship Troopers and The Forever War, with Aldiss’ evocative and profound narrative of our world grown bellicose and wasteful. His imaginative creation of the Utods and their unique society is reminiscent of Ursula Le Guin and also, to a lesser and more superficial degree, Heinlein’s 1954 juvenile work The Star Beast.
Finally, Aldiss’s conception of the Utods, and their hog-like behavior, is deliciously innovative and forms a dramatic irony with his subtle, though scathing indictment of the worst in our nature.
April 7, 2016
THE MILD PLEASURES OF ANTIQUE SCIENCE FICTION
What you get with 52-year-old science fiction novels is the past’s version of the future, which is fun. So in 1964 Brian Aldiss sets his story in 2035 and in this 2035 everyone is still smoking (but a derivative of mescaline, not tobacco), hardly anyone is still eating meat, but women are still an oddity in the professions and the space-faring crews. And there's war on between Britain and Brazil! Ah well, maybe in twenty years from now, that will turn out to be true.
So after some years of space exploration and around 300 Earth-type planets, humans have not yet found any life form worth writing home about. Then they land on the next planet and find the utods, who are like these 30 ton hippo-ish two-headed six-retractable-limbs-with-opposing-claws creatures who appear to have come to the said planet in a spaceship of their own crafted from a very large wooden pod, so their spaceship is made of wood, how ecological is that, suck it up metal-obsessed earthlings. The utods do not wear no clothes and they appear not to have no written script and also have as their prime recreational pursuit, instead of tv, mud and shit baths where they make this loverly stenchy filth and pour it over each other out of pure joy. Well, but naturally the first reaction of the Earth soldiers is to shoot them. But strangely enough, they don’t take umbrage.
So one profound question asked by The Dark light Years is as follows :
Is space travel necessarily a sign of intelligence?
Brian Aldiss is one of the greats of British SF but in this early novel he is still writing dialogue like this:
“Get knotted, Duffield, you ruddy trouble-maker!”
Which I can’t think anyone will be saying in the year 2035 and I doubt were still saying in 1964, although, come to think of it, that could be a line said by Norm (Norman Rossington) to John Lennon in A Hard Day’s Night.
Anyway, this is a wry comedy with the usual depressing things to say about the human race and one especially shocking dissection scene which Bret Easton Ellis would have appreciated. I want to read all of Mr Aldiss’s stuff eventually (he is still with us, coming up to his 91st birthday in August) and this was a good place to start.
What you get with 52-year-old science fiction novels is the past’s version of the future, which is fun. So in 1964 Brian Aldiss sets his story in 2035 and in this 2035 everyone is still smoking (but a derivative of mescaline, not tobacco), hardly anyone is still eating meat, but women are still an oddity in the professions and the space-faring crews. And there's war on between Britain and Brazil! Ah well, maybe in twenty years from now, that will turn out to be true.
So after some years of space exploration and around 300 Earth-type planets, humans have not yet found any life form worth writing home about. Then they land on the next planet and find the utods, who are like these 30 ton hippo-ish two-headed six-retractable-limbs-with-opposing-claws creatures who appear to have come to the said planet in a spaceship of their own crafted from a very large wooden pod, so their spaceship is made of wood, how ecological is that, suck it up metal-obsessed earthlings. The utods do not wear no clothes and they appear not to have no written script and also have as their prime recreational pursuit, instead of tv, mud and shit baths where they make this loverly stenchy filth and pour it over each other out of pure joy. Well, but naturally the first reaction of the Earth soldiers is to shoot them. But strangely enough, they don’t take umbrage.
So one profound question asked by The Dark light Years is as follows :
Is space travel necessarily a sign of intelligence?
Brian Aldiss is one of the greats of British SF but in this early novel he is still writing dialogue like this:
“Get knotted, Duffield, you ruddy trouble-maker!”
Which I can’t think anyone will be saying in the year 2035 and I doubt were still saying in 1964, although, come to think of it, that could be a line said by Norm (Norman Rossington) to John Lennon in A Hard Day’s Night.
Anyway, this is a wry comedy with the usual depressing things to say about the human race and one especially shocking dissection scene which Bret Easton Ellis would have appreciated. I want to read all of Mr Aldiss’s stuff eventually (he is still with us, coming up to his 91st birthday in August) and this was a good place to start.
September 6, 2010
4.0 to 4.5 stars. Another excellent science fiction novel by Mr. Aldiss. Better than Non-Stop but not as good as Hothouse (my favorite Aldiss novel), this is a darkly humorous and satirical look at the darker side of humanity and horribly we get it wrong when we come across a peaceful alien species that evolved differently from us. Smart, well written, at times funny and leaves you with much to think about. Highly Recommended!!!
March 2, 2017
Civilization is a distance the man has placed between him and his excreta. What an idea, though, of course, not without its limitations. Conceptually this is precisely the sort of scifi I enjoy. The sort that uses fictional constructs to address serious topics. The sort that uses aliens to talk about humanity. In this case the fictional construct is an alien race found and found offensive by earth explorers. Offense in the form of not subscribing to standard humanoid measures of hygiene. It matters not, of course, that Utods are in fact a sophisticated race with advanced technology and philosophy, the men (confined by their impregnable anthropomorphism and galvanized by narrow minded prejudice) see their wallowing in mud habit and their excretions as appalling, thus rendering the entire race as inferior, thus making it ok to slaughter, imprison and torture. So this really is a sociopolitical satire about humankind's rationalization for violence through their inability to understand another culture and thus perceiving it as lesser. A lesson in xenophobia and quite a timely one. The gentle intelligent Utods didn't stand a chance. The novel was written in 1964 and occasionally reads as such, particularly when it comes to visions of distant future which to us is more or less now. Funny how the present time is both infinitely more and infinitely less stranger than once imagined. The writing was good and so, for the most part, was the pacing. If read purely as entertainment without consideration for its meaning, this may be considered slightly lackluster, but at nay rate...why not read smartly. Served as a worthy introduction to a new author, I've never experienced before outside of cinematic adaptation. Certainly makes you think, which is really what books ought to do. After all, Epictetus was right...books are the training weights of the mind. Recommended.
November 28, 2008
Brian Aldiss loved challenging the basic assumptions of Western civilisation. Here, it's cleanliness. Most SF writers it for granted that beings from any "advanced" culture will keep themselves clean and neat. So Aldiss introduces the Utods, who are sophisticated enough to have invented interstellar travel, but look vaguely like hippopotami and spend their time wallowing in their own dung. The idea's nice, and the ending is effective and generates suitable outrage, but unfortunately the rest of the book doesn't quite live up to its initial promise. Still worth reading though.
August 16, 2016
It had been a good 30 years since I last read anything by British sci-fi author Brian Aldiss. Back in the mid-'80s, spurred on by three highly laudatory articles in David Pringle's "Science Fiction: The 100 Best Novels," I had eagerly read Aldiss' classic novel of a generational starship, "Non-Stop" (1958); his equally classic tale of an Earth billions of years hence, "Hothouse" (1962); and his underrated novel of an Earth gone sterile due to fallout radiation, "Greybeard" (1964), back to back to back (as well as his volume of linked stories, 1959's "Galaxies Like Grains of Sand")...and had loved them all. But, between this and that, as I said, no Aldiss for me since then. On a whim, thus, I recently picked up the author's "The Dark Light Years," which had been patiently sitting on my bookshelf, unread, for a very long time. This novel, the author's sixth in the sci-fi realm, does not enjoy as good a reputation as those first three just mentioned; Pringle, in his "Ultimate Guide to Science Fiction," says that the book is "enjoyable but minor Aldiss," while "The Science Fiction Encyclopedia" refers to it as "a lesser work." Still, as might be expected from a multiple Hugo and Nebula Award winner, not to mention a future Science Fiction Grand Master, even lesser Aldiss has something to commend itself to the modern-day reader, now more than half a century since its release in 1964.
An extremely cynical novel of first contact, "The Dark Light Years" (the lack of a hyphen between those last two words is annoying) takes place in the year 2035, except for the opening and closing sections, which transpire 40 years later. The book, in essence, gives us the history of Earth's relationship with the so-called utods, a race that an Earth exploration ship had discovered on the planet Clementina, around 100 light-years distant. The utods, typically, are first found wallowing in a mudpit beside the banks of a river. Resembling two-headed hippopotami, the race is soon nicknamed "rhinomen" by the Terrans, who waste little time in slaughtering a half dozen of them and bringing a couple of others back to the Exozoo in London for study. Although the reader is made privy to the utods' conversation amongst themselves--a conversation that quickly assures us that the utods are both intelligent and the products of a sophisticated culture--the various investigators who we meet cannot crack their language at all, and are fairly well convinced that these rhinomen are little more than interesting beasts...despite the fact that a small, wooden (!) spaceship had been found near the utods' wallow on Clementina.
Another factor arguing against their intelligence: the fact that the utods love nothing so much as rolling around in the mud and in their own excrement. A race of coprophiles, the utods actually revel in their own dung, and their wooden star vessel is literally caked in it! Can such an ugly-looking race, with such unsanitary habits, possibly be one harboring intelligence? As might be expected, the answer is an unqualified yes; as might also be expected, things go as well for the utods here as they did for some other maltreated groups that Aldiss brings up ("the Polynesians, the Guanches, the American Indians, the Tasmanians..."), in this mordant look at Man's first interstellar dealings.
"The Dark Light Years" is a short novel, and one that is difficult to love. For one thing, there are hardly any Earth characters in it whom one can admire (with the possible exception of Aylmer Ainson, who is marooned on the utod homeworld of Dapdrof for 40 years to study the beasts, but who is only present in the novel briefly), and indeed, most of the characters--Aylmer's father Bruce, the weak-willed explorer who discovers the utods; Mihaly Pasztor , the wily head of the Exozoo; Hilary Warhoon, an attractive, middle-aged "cosmeclectic" with good intentions but who is, ultimately, easily led astray; and Hank Quilter, a trigger-happy crewman--are ultimately shown in a less-than-flattering light. As might also be expected, the only two characters who manage to arouse the reader's sympathy are the captured utods themselves, and their horrible treatment while here on Earth manages to both shock and offend.
Aldiss' book is a thoughtful one, raising questions regarding the nature of intelligence, beauty, and civilization, although it is a tad clinical and dry. Fortunately, the author manages to counterbalance the aridity with occasional, pleasing dollops of humor. I love it when he tells us that after a period of revolutionary cleanliness, hundreds of years earlier in utodian history, "law and ordure were restored." Also amusing: when Aldiss refers to the utods' habit of politely excreting on one another as "Do to others as you would be dung by"; when he refers to the three-times gravity on a utod planet as a "crippling tripling"; and when he mentions that one of the obscure utodian folk arts is called "blishing." (American sci-fi author James Blish, it will be remembered, famously criticized "Hothouse" for its scientific implausibilities.)
Aldiss accentuates the satirical nature of his work by giving his utods outrageous, borderline silly names (such as Blug Lugug, Snok Snok Karn and Quequo Kifful), and their home planets such appellations as Buskey, Clubshub and the previously mentioned Dapdrof. He also throws in made-up words that he never bothers to elucidate ("grokkies," an apparent homage to Robert A. Heinlein's 1961 classic "Stranger in a Strange Land," are journalists, I assume, but what is the female fashion style "flared mock-male with recessed carnation poltroons," and what is a "magnastic" bathytherm?). Adding to the rather strange feel of the book are little oddball anecdotes regarding minor characters who just kind of peter out, and the stilted, unnatural-sounding conversations that most of the characters engage in.
Fortunately, Aldiss also peppers his novel with many ingenious and imaginative touches, such as the background war that is transpiring between Britain and Brazil on the newly discovered deep-freeze planet beyond Pluto, dubbed Charon (the author, in a fascinating aside, here gives us some of the rules governing 21st century warfare); the mescahale smokes that many characters imbibe in (inhaled powdered mescaline, if I'm reading the author correctly!); the complicated monorail system surrounding 21st century London; the face masks that all London residents must wear in the street, to protect themselves from the ghastly air pollution; the décor motif known as Ur-Organic; and the californium slugs (with an impact force "equivalent to seventeen tons of TNT") spat out by the rifle-toting Earth goons as they engage in their "explorations."
Aldiss’ book IS a brief one, as I mentioned, densely and compactly written, and I cannot help feel that its brevity works against it. Still, his barbs shot against us silly humans are well-aimed ones. It would have been nice to have revisited the curious utods in another, later book, but sadly, by the end of this one, there are shockingly few of them left. Turns out that the residents of Dapdrof fared even worse than had the Native Americans! In all, yes, "The Dark Light Years" is a lesser Aldiss affair, but one still worth, uh, wallowing in....
(By the way, this review originally appeared on the FanLit website at http://www.fantasyliterature.com/ ... a most ideal destination for all fans of Brian Aldiss....)
An extremely cynical novel of first contact, "The Dark Light Years" (the lack of a hyphen between those last two words is annoying) takes place in the year 2035, except for the opening and closing sections, which transpire 40 years later. The book, in essence, gives us the history of Earth's relationship with the so-called utods, a race that an Earth exploration ship had discovered on the planet Clementina, around 100 light-years distant. The utods, typically, are first found wallowing in a mudpit beside the banks of a river. Resembling two-headed hippopotami, the race is soon nicknamed "rhinomen" by the Terrans, who waste little time in slaughtering a half dozen of them and bringing a couple of others back to the Exozoo in London for study. Although the reader is made privy to the utods' conversation amongst themselves--a conversation that quickly assures us that the utods are both intelligent and the products of a sophisticated culture--the various investigators who we meet cannot crack their language at all, and are fairly well convinced that these rhinomen are little more than interesting beasts...despite the fact that a small, wooden (!) spaceship had been found near the utods' wallow on Clementina.
Another factor arguing against their intelligence: the fact that the utods love nothing so much as rolling around in the mud and in their own excrement. A race of coprophiles, the utods actually revel in their own dung, and their wooden star vessel is literally caked in it! Can such an ugly-looking race, with such unsanitary habits, possibly be one harboring intelligence? As might be expected, the answer is an unqualified yes; as might also be expected, things go as well for the utods here as they did for some other maltreated groups that Aldiss brings up ("the Polynesians, the Guanches, the American Indians, the Tasmanians..."), in this mordant look at Man's first interstellar dealings.
"The Dark Light Years" is a short novel, and one that is difficult to love. For one thing, there are hardly any Earth characters in it whom one can admire (with the possible exception of Aylmer Ainson, who is marooned on the utod homeworld of Dapdrof for 40 years to study the beasts, but who is only present in the novel briefly), and indeed, most of the characters--Aylmer's father Bruce, the weak-willed explorer who discovers the utods; Mihaly Pasztor , the wily head of the Exozoo; Hilary Warhoon, an attractive, middle-aged "cosmeclectic" with good intentions but who is, ultimately, easily led astray; and Hank Quilter, a trigger-happy crewman--are ultimately shown in a less-than-flattering light. As might also be expected, the only two characters who manage to arouse the reader's sympathy are the captured utods themselves, and their horrible treatment while here on Earth manages to both shock and offend.
Aldiss' book is a thoughtful one, raising questions regarding the nature of intelligence, beauty, and civilization, although it is a tad clinical and dry. Fortunately, the author manages to counterbalance the aridity with occasional, pleasing dollops of humor. I love it when he tells us that after a period of revolutionary cleanliness, hundreds of years earlier in utodian history, "law and ordure were restored." Also amusing: when Aldiss refers to the utods' habit of politely excreting on one another as "Do to others as you would be dung by"; when he refers to the three-times gravity on a utod planet as a "crippling tripling"; and when he mentions that one of the obscure utodian folk arts is called "blishing." (American sci-fi author James Blish, it will be remembered, famously criticized "Hothouse" for its scientific implausibilities.)
Aldiss accentuates the satirical nature of his work by giving his utods outrageous, borderline silly names (such as Blug Lugug, Snok Snok Karn and Quequo Kifful), and their home planets such appellations as Buskey, Clubshub and the previously mentioned Dapdrof. He also throws in made-up words that he never bothers to elucidate ("grokkies," an apparent homage to Robert A. Heinlein's 1961 classic "Stranger in a Strange Land," are journalists, I assume, but what is the female fashion style "flared mock-male with recessed carnation poltroons," and what is a "magnastic" bathytherm?). Adding to the rather strange feel of the book are little oddball anecdotes regarding minor characters who just kind of peter out, and the stilted, unnatural-sounding conversations that most of the characters engage in.
Fortunately, Aldiss also peppers his novel with many ingenious and imaginative touches, such as the background war that is transpiring between Britain and Brazil on the newly discovered deep-freeze planet beyond Pluto, dubbed Charon (the author, in a fascinating aside, here gives us some of the rules governing 21st century warfare); the mescahale smokes that many characters imbibe in (inhaled powdered mescaline, if I'm reading the author correctly!); the complicated monorail system surrounding 21st century London; the face masks that all London residents must wear in the street, to protect themselves from the ghastly air pollution; the décor motif known as Ur-Organic; and the californium slugs (with an impact force "equivalent to seventeen tons of TNT") spat out by the rifle-toting Earth goons as they engage in their "explorations."
Aldiss’ book IS a brief one, as I mentioned, densely and compactly written, and I cannot help feel that its brevity works against it. Still, his barbs shot against us silly humans are well-aimed ones. It would have been nice to have revisited the curious utods in another, later book, but sadly, by the end of this one, there are shockingly few of them left. Turns out that the residents of Dapdrof fared even worse than had the Native Americans! In all, yes, "The Dark Light Years" is a lesser Aldiss affair, but one still worth, uh, wallowing in....
(By the way, this review originally appeared on the FanLit website at http://www.fantasyliterature.com/ ... a most ideal destination for all fans of Brian Aldiss....)
April 2, 2014
I feel bad giving this a two but that's how it pans out. A fantastic concept that I was excited Aldiss came up with, but the story is just not up to expectations (I have read many other of his titles). I'll just leave it at that.
April 11, 2013
SNOK SNOK OF THE GRUDGRODD!
This slim novel is a wryly humorous indictment of man’s boundless arrogance. Failure to comprehend an existence that is starkly at odds with our own leads to the mistaken conclusion that the utods are little more than vaguely bright cattle. Throughout the story the strange alien’s serene intelligence is either misconstrued or missed completely. Only one man, who decides to exile himself in order to observe the creatures in their own environment, will ever understand the profound connection they have with their world and each other.
This isn’t one of Aldiss’s best. The humour can be a little smug and the narrative seems to lack conviction. Also, the depth of characterisation and description doesn’t live up to that of his better work. That said, as always with Aldiss, this is still worth a read.
This slim novel is a wryly humorous indictment of man’s boundless arrogance. Failure to comprehend an existence that is starkly at odds with our own leads to the mistaken conclusion that the utods are little more than vaguely bright cattle. Throughout the story the strange alien’s serene intelligence is either misconstrued or missed completely. Only one man, who decides to exile himself in order to observe the creatures in their own environment, will ever understand the profound connection they have with their world and each other.
This isn’t one of Aldiss’s best. The humour can be a little smug and the narrative seems to lack conviction. Also, the depth of characterisation and description doesn’t live up to that of his better work. That said, as always with Aldiss, this is still worth a read.
May 15, 2021
I read this book a long, long time ago and at the time found it quite sad and tragic. It has hovered there, in the back of my mind, ever since; a tale about an alien species living in absolute peace and harmony with its universe, encountered by humans who are disgusted by the fact that the aliens live in their own excrement, and treat them as ignorant and brutish animals (despite the evidence of peacefulness and intelligence) and, in man's usual ignorance, set about destroying the aliens both deliberately and unintentionally..
I was surprised, when re-reading the book, that it concentrates much more on the brutish and ignorant humans than I remembered. Our species does not come out of this well... and it is ironic, in these last days of Civilisation, that it is we who are living in our own excrement, and NOT in harmony.
I was surprised, when re-reading the book, that it concentrates much more on the brutish and ignorant humans than I remembered. Our species does not come out of this well... and it is ironic, in these last days of Civilisation, that it is we who are living in our own excrement, and NOT in harmony.
May 11, 2015
Humanity has met many species of semi-sapient lifeforms on its expansion across the galaxies, but had never discovered another intelligent race before. That changed when a group of explorers ran into the utod. Hippopotomi-sized, two-headed mammals that wallow in mud and their own filth, traversing the galaxy in wooden spacecraft, the utod are gentle creatures who feel no pain, can change their gender, and communicate in a complex series of whistles and hoots from their eight orifaces. Needless to say, humanity’s gut instinct on first contact is to gun down all but two of them. Taken back to the London Exozoo, the sharpest human minds attempt to converse with the remaining creatures, only to see them fail every man-made test for intelligence. Meanwhile, the utod refuse to open communications with this strange race of two-legged creatures whose second orifice is hidden under clothing, and who shun the holiness of a middenwallow in favor of abject cleanliness.
It sounds like the perfect setup for a social satire---and that's exactly what Aldiss provides, a kind of first-contact, post-colonial take on humanity's anthropocentric expectations of what an alien intelligence should look/act like. Like other such satires (Pohl's Jem comes to mind), it isn't as good at being a novel as it is as biting social commentary. Aldiss' writing is good, as always, but the pacing and particularly the characterization is weaker than normal. The characters are wooden and under-developed; while one "critical" character isn't introduced until the third to last chapter. Most exist as one-dimensional stand-ins for what Aldiss is mocking, the pompous scientists who are already convinced that these grotesque beasts aren't intelligent despite any sign to the contrary. A bit too much hyperbole for some, but I think it amps up the satire when there's only ever one sane man in the room.
Come for the social commentary, which is spot on; if you enjoy social satire SF ala Pohl, Sheckley, Tenn, and others, there's a good chance you'll like this one. Just lower your expectations a bit before diving in. While it's not a bad novel, the pacing and characters haves some serious issues, and it isn't quite able to deliver on its brilliant premise.
Full review, and other reviews of Aldiss and classic SF, on my blog.
It sounds like the perfect setup for a social satire---and that's exactly what Aldiss provides, a kind of first-contact, post-colonial take on humanity's anthropocentric expectations of what an alien intelligence should look/act like. Like other such satires (Pohl's Jem comes to mind), it isn't as good at being a novel as it is as biting social commentary. Aldiss' writing is good, as always, but the pacing and particularly the characterization is weaker than normal. The characters are wooden and under-developed; while one "critical" character isn't introduced until the third to last chapter. Most exist as one-dimensional stand-ins for what Aldiss is mocking, the pompous scientists who are already convinced that these grotesque beasts aren't intelligent despite any sign to the contrary. A bit too much hyperbole for some, but I think it amps up the satire when there's only ever one sane man in the room.
Come for the social commentary, which is spot on; if you enjoy social satire SF ala Pohl, Sheckley, Tenn, and others, there's a good chance you'll like this one. Just lower your expectations a bit before diving in. While it's not a bad novel, the pacing and characters haves some serious issues, and it isn't quite able to deliver on its brilliant premise.
Full review, and other reviews of Aldiss and classic SF, on my blog.
December 24, 2013
Whoa. This is my first Aldiss. As it starts, this book is a little frustrating, but pretty irresistible, & eventually the frustrations are revealed to have been an ingenious device. Aldiss is really good at keeping his skepticism about our present civilization just barely visible, & likewise having the unfortunate aspects of his characters' personalities slip out briefly & almost accidentally & just enough to be damning without bludgeoning us with them. Attention to detail really pays dividends here & will rapidly convince you that Mr. Aldiss has brilliant foresight & restraint. Even once I'd sussed out just how deviously clever the author really was, the emotional impact of the ending still felt like being caught in an ambush. I will absolutely be reading more books by this man soon.
April 14, 2017
Another crybaby sf tale about "humans suck". There was very little carnage in it, as other reviews had talked of, which is sort of what sparked my interest in it to begin with. The genocide of a disgusting alien species? That sounds cool, right? Well, not in this case. Read Greybeard or Non-stop instead. They're the authors strongest works.
March 26, 2008
A short novel but teeming with great ideas. What is intelligence? How can we tell if a completely foreign alien is intelligent or not? Are you intelligent if you like to lie in your own poop?
February 13, 2024
Here is a typically creative, albeit rather scatological, piece by my late illustrious second cousin. It is set in a not so distant future where humans have normalised rapid space travel to the extent that it is commonplace to train as a ‘Master Space Explorer’, war has been exported from Earth to be fought, by appointment, on Charon, and visits to far-flung parts of the galaxy are fairly usual. This has all been made possible by the use of the ‘TP drive’, which is explained thus: ‘transpotential flight is the very opposite of travel; it causes the [space] ship to stand still and the universe to move in the desired direction’. That this is as neat a piece of non-explanation as I have come across within the genre is beside the point.
An expedition by the Exploration Corps (whose members, with their many failings, seem to owe much to the soldiers of Aldiss’s own experience during the 1940s) to a planet in a distant multiple star system encounters ‘esods’, representatives of an alien race also exploring away from their home planet. These huge creatures, known to the humans as ‘rhinomen’, evolved on a planet with three times the gravity of Earth. They are peaceful, philosophical, long-lived, highly intelligent, and like nothing better than wallowing in a communal ‘middenstead’ filled with mud made fertile by copious amounts of their own dung. Each has two heads, one with a mouth, the other an anus, six retractable limbs, and they are gender-flexible. They have eight sound-producing orifices and communicate using each of them, over a very large range of frequencies, some beyond human hearing. Communication with humans is thus next to impossible, not helped by a total contrast in cultural attitudes. For example, during an early part of the book, much human effort is expended on trying to decipher the utod language. That this is unsuccessful is in large part because the captive utods don’t cooperate with the process: they are simply not interested!
The book is, I find, not one of Aldiss’s best. Besides the analysis of mutual incomprehension between intelligent sentient beings who, mostly, cannot communicate with each other, and who have no cultural basis in common, it is really an exploration of many of the worst human traits, including some very old-fashioned colonialism, contrasting them with an alien race that is rather too good to ring true. (The best parts are those written from the aliens’ point of view). In a situation that is painted with too few shades of grey, it is, of course, the humans who are the main agents of their own destruction – but the ending is a bit vague, anticlimactic and unsatisfactory.
An expedition by the Exploration Corps (whose members, with their many failings, seem to owe much to the soldiers of Aldiss’s own experience during the 1940s) to a planet in a distant multiple star system encounters ‘esods’, representatives of an alien race also exploring away from their home planet. These huge creatures, known to the humans as ‘rhinomen’, evolved on a planet with three times the gravity of Earth. They are peaceful, philosophical, long-lived, highly intelligent, and like nothing better than wallowing in a communal ‘middenstead’ filled with mud made fertile by copious amounts of their own dung. Each has two heads, one with a mouth, the other an anus, six retractable limbs, and they are gender-flexible. They have eight sound-producing orifices and communicate using each of them, over a very large range of frequencies, some beyond human hearing. Communication with humans is thus next to impossible, not helped by a total contrast in cultural attitudes. For example, during an early part of the book, much human effort is expended on trying to decipher the utod language. That this is unsuccessful is in large part because the captive utods don’t cooperate with the process: they are simply not interested!
The book is, I find, not one of Aldiss’s best. Besides the analysis of mutual incomprehension between intelligent sentient beings who, mostly, cannot communicate with each other, and who have no cultural basis in common, it is really an exploration of many of the worst human traits, including some very old-fashioned colonialism, contrasting them with an alien race that is rather too good to ring true. (The best parts are those written from the aliens’ point of view). In a situation that is painted with too few shades of grey, it is, of course, the humans who are the main agents of their own destruction – but the ending is a bit vague, anticlimactic and unsatisfactory.
July 26, 2016
I bought this book based on its cover alone. They say don't do that, and sometimes they're right, but sometimes they're wrong. Sci-fi from the 60s and 70s and even a little into the 80s had great cover art. Even if the books sucked, they had awesome cover art, the kind of cover art that books SHOULD have, with brilliantly painted visions of whatever was relevant, an almost psychedelic and epic and surreal and brain-stretching aspect to all of it.
I don't know what happened, but sometime around the 90s publishers decided it would be a good idea to throw terrible shit cover art on their books and call it a day. This probably had something to do with computers taking off, and people thinking that computer graphics made good covers just because it was new, or tacky colors (the greatest identifier of the 90s), or dull colors, or vapid trends and character-subduing "style" that made everything boring, or stupid photographs made good cover art. Or maybe all the good artists died, and amateurs who had never touched a paint brush or a pencil decided it was their turn to design book covers. I think that really took off in the 2000s. Whatever it was, covers for books these days, whether it be literary fiction, speculative fiction, or something else, are generally crap. If you need proof of this, go to your BOOKS section on Facebook and look at the modern covers they attribute to the books you've read. All of them are shit. But click on those books, and you're taken to the Wikipedia page for said book, where far superior cover art resides.
But enough about covers. I found the Dark Light Years used, it was a little worn out, and I'd never heard of Brian Aldiss. The bit about it on the back made it sound interesting, so I bought it. I read it a couple days later.
It's a really well done little story about the discovery of truly alien life (not the kind of "alien" life you read and see in lots of the more banal sci-fi that almost entirely resembles humankind aside from the color of their skin or their language or their advanced technology). It's this truly alien life, different to humankind in almost every conceivable way, which is central to the story, and that makes the book so special. Using a peaceful and intelligent species that have unwittingly been discovered by intrepid human explorers, Aldiss demonstrates to the reader exactly the barbaric and imperialistic nature of humankind by challenging the fundamental ideas we have about what it means to be intelligent and civilized.
When presented with a form of life that is both unfamiliar to their myopic understanding of existence, and disgusting and "offensive" to their arbitrary human values, humanity is met with the choice of peacefully observing and learning about the puzzling Utods, or idiotically disposing of them, submitting to its prejudices, and imprisoning them for its own selfish purposes. Unsurprisingly, they overwhelmingly choose the latter, while only a few thoughtful humans suspect there might be more to these disgusting and confusing forms of life than the majority of mankind suspects.
A reader who borderlines on thoughtfulness might reflect that this is an all too standard cliche, representing humanity as "evil" and only a few choice samples of the race as being "good". This "cliche", however, is rooted in truthfulness, and rises from the facts of life. A reader less thoughtful might even label this with the cliche of "standard allegory for racism... nothing new." The reader who instead dives headfirst into thoughtfulness will correctly observe that this goes beyond the scope of racism, because it goes beyond the scope of a singular species. This reader will probably say the "cliche" is no more a cliche than the act of writing human beings as male and female, for the representation of man's insidious nature in this story is just as accurate as the assessment that there are two distinct sexes among humans. The difference is that this vantage point of human nature has never been adequately observed in fiction, to my knowledge.
Literary fiction occupies itself with handling human-to-human interactions, and regaling us with the vast but entirely limited ways in which humans differ from one another. Literary fiction addresses prejudice in a strong way, but it's limited and predictable because it is entirely human, it is entirely familiar, and it has the problem of being drastically mild, since one simply has to say, "But you are all human! We are all one! Let us unite and understand!" All differences are relatively minor, and in the end, we're all kind of the same, because we're all thinking in human ways, pursuing humans pursuits, having similar wants and needs, and believing similar things. And more or less, this kind of revelation, or some variation of it, spreads throughout literature. This is not how Aldiss handles it.
The ethical issues addressed in this book are bigger than Aldiss originally lets on, but it becomes clear he is fully aware of that fact, and so are a few of the brighter characters. It is a huge point of conflict that's more complex than just "MAN = CRUEL BARBARIAN", and asks more of the reader than to sit by and say, "OH, ok, these are clearly the bad guys, and these are clearly the good guys." (It should be noted, too, that the characters, even the less morally agreeable ones, are all intelligent and well developed in their own ways, making it more difficult to judge who is right and wrong.)
Instead, the Dark Light Years shows the reader that, with high probability, he or she might be one of the "bad guys". While the sensible reader reacts to the actions of certain characters with shock and disgust, further reflection will reveal to them that they might, in fact, be no better than the loathsome people they have just read about. And that their entire worldview may be flawed at the very foundations. Aldiss flips your shit upside down, and you are entertained while he does it. From this, it becomes obvious that an entire reworking of the reader's values and treatment of life may be necessary if they want to transcend these sad aspects they see in others. Unless they're already there. In that case, one reads the story as a tragic but enticing tale of truly alien life being met by what might be the galaxy's lowest form of intelligence.
The book was a surprising dose of superb thinking and good storytelling, taking ideas that had previously only been dealt with in mild ways to new heights, and examining them with a new power that is deeper than it originally seems. And I haven't even mentioned the inventiveness of the story, the creative momentum of Aldiss' attention to detail, and the level of characterization. But since that seems to have been covered elsewhere, I thought I'd focus on its lesser discussed aspects.
I don't know what happened, but sometime around the 90s publishers decided it would be a good idea to throw terrible shit cover art on their books and call it a day. This probably had something to do with computers taking off, and people thinking that computer graphics made good covers just because it was new, or tacky colors (the greatest identifier of the 90s), or dull colors, or vapid trends and character-subduing "style" that made everything boring, or stupid photographs made good cover art. Or maybe all the good artists died, and amateurs who had never touched a paint brush or a pencil decided it was their turn to design book covers. I think that really took off in the 2000s. Whatever it was, covers for books these days, whether it be literary fiction, speculative fiction, or something else, are generally crap. If you need proof of this, go to your BOOKS section on Facebook and look at the modern covers they attribute to the books you've read. All of them are shit. But click on those books, and you're taken to the Wikipedia page for said book, where far superior cover art resides.
But enough about covers. I found the Dark Light Years used, it was a little worn out, and I'd never heard of Brian Aldiss. The bit about it on the back made it sound interesting, so I bought it. I read it a couple days later.
It's a really well done little story about the discovery of truly alien life (not the kind of "alien" life you read and see in lots of the more banal sci-fi that almost entirely resembles humankind aside from the color of their skin or their language or their advanced technology). It's this truly alien life, different to humankind in almost every conceivable way, which is central to the story, and that makes the book so special. Using a peaceful and intelligent species that have unwittingly been discovered by intrepid human explorers, Aldiss demonstrates to the reader exactly the barbaric and imperialistic nature of humankind by challenging the fundamental ideas we have about what it means to be intelligent and civilized.
When presented with a form of life that is both unfamiliar to their myopic understanding of existence, and disgusting and "offensive" to their arbitrary human values, humanity is met with the choice of peacefully observing and learning about the puzzling Utods, or idiotically disposing of them, submitting to its prejudices, and imprisoning them for its own selfish purposes. Unsurprisingly, they overwhelmingly choose the latter, while only a few thoughtful humans suspect there might be more to these disgusting and confusing forms of life than the majority of mankind suspects.
A reader who borderlines on thoughtfulness might reflect that this is an all too standard cliche, representing humanity as "evil" and only a few choice samples of the race as being "good". This "cliche", however, is rooted in truthfulness, and rises from the facts of life. A reader less thoughtful might even label this with the cliche of "standard allegory for racism... nothing new." The reader who instead dives headfirst into thoughtfulness will correctly observe that this goes beyond the scope of racism, because it goes beyond the scope of a singular species. This reader will probably say the "cliche" is no more a cliche than the act of writing human beings as male and female, for the representation of man's insidious nature in this story is just as accurate as the assessment that there are two distinct sexes among humans. The difference is that this vantage point of human nature has never been adequately observed in fiction, to my knowledge.
Literary fiction occupies itself with handling human-to-human interactions, and regaling us with the vast but entirely limited ways in which humans differ from one another. Literary fiction addresses prejudice in a strong way, but it's limited and predictable because it is entirely human, it is entirely familiar, and it has the problem of being drastically mild, since one simply has to say, "But you are all human! We are all one! Let us unite and understand!" All differences are relatively minor, and in the end, we're all kind of the same, because we're all thinking in human ways, pursuing humans pursuits, having similar wants and needs, and believing similar things. And more or less, this kind of revelation, or some variation of it, spreads throughout literature. This is not how Aldiss handles it.
The ethical issues addressed in this book are bigger than Aldiss originally lets on, but it becomes clear he is fully aware of that fact, and so are a few of the brighter characters. It is a huge point of conflict that's more complex than just "MAN = CRUEL BARBARIAN", and asks more of the reader than to sit by and say, "OH, ok, these are clearly the bad guys, and these are clearly the good guys." (It should be noted, too, that the characters, even the less morally agreeable ones, are all intelligent and well developed in their own ways, making it more difficult to judge who is right and wrong.)
Instead, the Dark Light Years shows the reader that, with high probability, he or she might be one of the "bad guys". While the sensible reader reacts to the actions of certain characters with shock and disgust, further reflection will reveal to them that they might, in fact, be no better than the loathsome people they have just read about. And that their entire worldview may be flawed at the very foundations. Aldiss flips your shit upside down, and you are entertained while he does it. From this, it becomes obvious that an entire reworking of the reader's values and treatment of life may be necessary if they want to transcend these sad aspects they see in others. Unless they're already there. In that case, one reads the story as a tragic but enticing tale of truly alien life being met by what might be the galaxy's lowest form of intelligence.
The book was a surprising dose of superb thinking and good storytelling, taking ideas that had previously only been dealt with in mild ways to new heights, and examining them with a new power that is deeper than it originally seems. And I haven't even mentioned the inventiveness of the story, the creative momentum of Aldiss' attention to detail, and the level of characterization. But since that seems to have been covered elsewhere, I thought I'd focus on its lesser discussed aspects.
January 17, 2025
2025 Book #4:
The Dark Light Years (1964) by Brian W. Aldiss
Another brilliant offering from Aldiss! This one took me by surprise – After the rather serious and cynical tone of Non-Stop, I was expecting something similar from this novel. But The Dark Light Years is a virtuosic balance of weird humor, incisive satire, and empathetic introspection. It tells a first-contact story in which humans encounter an alien species called the utods. The utods are vastly different from humans: shaped like six-armed hippopotami, they communicate through whistles, honks, and raspberries. They also have cultural practices that grate against everything humans hold dear. And because of this, the humans have a really hard time determining whether utods are intelligent. At heart, this book is a deconstruction of the concept of cleanliness. In the spirit of ideology critique, Aldiss pulls apart our seemingly natural aversion to the “dirty” utods to reveal that this aversion (deriving from our concepts of what counts as “clean” and “civilized”) merely comes from conventional wisdom, not divine order. And Aldiss brings this full circle back to humanity, turning the critical SF mirror onto humans’ distaste (at least in the 1960s) for particular ethnic and sexual “others” (and in this capacity, Aldiss presages Delany’s later SF). Ultimately, The Dark Light Years is a provocative, challenging book that uses the trope of the extraterrestrial to offer a biting comment on human affairs. It has its bleak and heart-wrenching moments; but it’s also a very entertaining read. The failures of communication between the two species are written in Aldiss’s knowing, sophisticated prose-style, which highlights the satirical purpose of the novel as a whole. This is a lesser-known book, but I would recommend it highly. Aldiss is fast becoming one of my favorite SF writers. (5/5)
The Dark Light Years (1964) by Brian W. Aldiss
Another brilliant offering from Aldiss! This one took me by surprise – After the rather serious and cynical tone of Non-Stop, I was expecting something similar from this novel. But The Dark Light Years is a virtuosic balance of weird humor, incisive satire, and empathetic introspection. It tells a first-contact story in which humans encounter an alien species called the utods. The utods are vastly different from humans: shaped like six-armed hippopotami, they communicate through whistles, honks, and raspberries. They also have cultural practices that grate against everything humans hold dear. And because of this, the humans have a really hard time determining whether utods are intelligent. At heart, this book is a deconstruction of the concept of cleanliness. In the spirit of ideology critique, Aldiss pulls apart our seemingly natural aversion to the “dirty” utods to reveal that this aversion (deriving from our concepts of what counts as “clean” and “civilized”) merely comes from conventional wisdom, not divine order. And Aldiss brings this full circle back to humanity, turning the critical SF mirror onto humans’ distaste (at least in the 1960s) for particular ethnic and sexual “others” (and in this capacity, Aldiss presages Delany’s later SF). Ultimately, The Dark Light Years is a provocative, challenging book that uses the trope of the extraterrestrial to offer a biting comment on human affairs. It has its bleak and heart-wrenching moments; but it’s also a very entertaining read. The failures of communication between the two species are written in Aldiss’s knowing, sophisticated prose-style, which highlights the satirical purpose of the novel as a whole. This is a lesser-known book, but I would recommend it highly. Aldiss is fast becoming one of my favorite SF writers. (5/5)
April 10, 2019
De omschrijving doet geen recht aan de inhoud van het boek en kan de lezer teleurstellen wanneer die het gewone verhaal in verband met de kennismaking met een buitenaards ras verwacht.
Het boek is meer en laat tegelijk veel onvermeld al wordt het op het einde wel duidelijk.
De domheid van de de mensen die het eerste contact leggen komt nogal onwaarschijnlijk over, dit is niet het niveau dat je van hoogopgeleiden in een eliterol verwacht. Dat is dan weer wel wat je mogelijk krijgt als je het gemiddelde niveau van het plebs vrije toegang geeft tot de ruimtevaart. Uniek is het niet in de literatuur.
Ook op de Aarde wordt vooral de kleinheid van de mensheid benadrukt, een mensheid die het belang van een buitenaards intelligent ras niet inziet. Vivisectie in plaats van diplomatie. En proberen de schijnbare ongevoeligheid voor pijn van de utods over te brengen op menselijke soldaten en zo de oorlogen tussen de mensen onderling te beïnvloeden.
Je voelt in dit boek al wel de grootsheid van Aldiss in de subtiele verwijzingen die je tussen de regels kan lezen. Eigenlijk weer eens een harde analyse van onze maatschappij vanuit het standpunt van een buitenstaander waar Aldiss erg goed in is.
En op het einde natuurlijk een hint naar de mogelijke gevolgen ervan voor de mensheid.
Het boek is meer en laat tegelijk veel onvermeld al wordt het op het einde wel duidelijk.
De domheid van de de mensen die het eerste contact leggen komt nogal onwaarschijnlijk over, dit is niet het niveau dat je van hoogopgeleiden in een eliterol verwacht. Dat is dan weer wel wat je mogelijk krijgt als je het gemiddelde niveau van het plebs vrije toegang geeft tot de ruimtevaart. Uniek is het niet in de literatuur.
Ook op de Aarde wordt vooral de kleinheid van de mensheid benadrukt, een mensheid die het belang van een buitenaards intelligent ras niet inziet. Vivisectie in plaats van diplomatie. En proberen de schijnbare ongevoeligheid voor pijn van de utods over te brengen op menselijke soldaten en zo de oorlogen tussen de mensen onderling te beïnvloeden.
Je voelt in dit boek al wel de grootsheid van Aldiss in de subtiele verwijzingen die je tussen de regels kan lezen. Eigenlijk weer eens een harde analyse van onze maatschappij vanuit het standpunt van een buitenstaander waar Aldiss erg goed in is.
En op het einde natuurlijk een hint naar de mogelijke gevolgen ervan voor de mensheid.
July 23, 2020
Was soll das? Warum existiert dieses Buch?
October 3, 2020
Debo decir que lo que mejor logró Aldiss en este libro fue hacer de cada ser humano (excepto, tal vez, Aylmer) una criatura detestable o insoportable.
March 3, 2011
It has been many years since I have read a science fiction novel. Whilst browsing in a second-hand bookshop I happened upon "The Dark Light Years" by Brian Aldiss. The blurb on the back cover of this slim novel, published in 1964, describes it as difficult and one of Aldiss' best. Both my recollection of Aldiss as an accomplished science-fiction writer and some nostalgic recollections from my childhood made me decide to buy this book.
However, I almost gave up reading the novel after a few pages; the reason being that the initial setting is so bizarre, and yes, alien, and one has to make a real effort to comprehend the "Utods"; ungainly six-limbed creatures who enjoy wallowing in their own faeces, not to mention also having a penchant for slapping the stuff over each other. In addition, we are faced at the outset with the Utod's "middensteads" (i.e. homesteads made from dung), their salad beds, and their strange modes of communication involving the use of use of mouths, anuses, and other orifices. Then there is the problem of trying to figure out the significance of the presence of the elderly exile, Ainson, amongst the Utods. Ainson is a human who, after several decades amongst the Utods, has learned enough of the their language (something like a simplified pidgin form) to be able to tell them he is popping indoors for a lie down. Thankfully, it does all become clear after a while.
The irony of what I have just said in relation to comprehending the Utods is that this turns out (I believe) to be the central theme of the novel: the two life forms, Utods and humans, each of them with complex languages, highly-developed emotions and advanced space-faring technologies, just cannot figure each other at all. The Utods feel no pain, are completely passive, have difficulty with the concept of something being "bad" and do not look upon death with horror (this is merely seen as "progressing to the carrion stage"). Needless to say, humans are not like this, and so you can be in no doubt as to which life form you will end up rooting for in the end, notwithstanding the Utod's aversion to cleanliness. In fact, you becomes so sympathetic towards the Utods that when trigger-happy unconscionable humans decide to shoot some of them on a game hunt it creates a feeling of repulsion much like you would expect to feel if you witnessed a panda hunt. The vivisection of some Utods, who can't comprehend why the humans are slicing them up, also makes for uncomfortable and disturbing reading. One might be tempted to think of the novel as a metaphor for imperialism, but this only works to a certain degree because we don't here have a technologically-advanced civilization encountering and forcing itself on a relatively primitive one; this encounter is more like the exact opposite to a meeting of minds.
A large portion, if not most, of the novel takes place on the planet earth in the early part of the twenty-first century. This aspect of the novel shows how notoriously difficult it is really to predict the future, especially in terms of technological, social and political developments. Apparently, people still send letters as their main form of long-distance communication; Britain is at war with Brazil, and London at least feels little more than a very polluted version of 1950s Britain with some space-age gizmos thrown in for good measure. Moreover, the Soviet Union still exists, and so at least George Galloway would be happy. Some things, however, are quite plausible; for example, that that long-distance space travel is accomplished not by propulsion, but by the manipulation of the very fabric of space and time; most scientists agree that this is certainly the only way to consider crossing the vastness of inter-stellar space.
The novel is pessimistic, but is not without its lighter moments: On landing on a new world, and after opening a hatch on their spacecraft, a high-ranking Utod claims ownership of the new world for his species by saying, "I pronounce all this to be land belonging to the Triple Suns. Let defecation commence." Not quite Neil Armstrong, but this novel does represent one giant leap for imagination; I thoroughly recommend it, but be prepared to be disturbed and maybe even a little upset.
However, I almost gave up reading the novel after a few pages; the reason being that the initial setting is so bizarre, and yes, alien, and one has to make a real effort to comprehend the "Utods"; ungainly six-limbed creatures who enjoy wallowing in their own faeces, not to mention also having a penchant for slapping the stuff over each other. In addition, we are faced at the outset with the Utod's "middensteads" (i.e. homesteads made from dung), their salad beds, and their strange modes of communication involving the use of use of mouths, anuses, and other orifices. Then there is the problem of trying to figure out the significance of the presence of the elderly exile, Ainson, amongst the Utods. Ainson is a human who, after several decades amongst the Utods, has learned enough of the their language (something like a simplified pidgin form) to be able to tell them he is popping indoors for a lie down. Thankfully, it does all become clear after a while.
The irony of what I have just said in relation to comprehending the Utods is that this turns out (I believe) to be the central theme of the novel: the two life forms, Utods and humans, each of them with complex languages, highly-developed emotions and advanced space-faring technologies, just cannot figure each other at all. The Utods feel no pain, are completely passive, have difficulty with the concept of something being "bad" and do not look upon death with horror (this is merely seen as "progressing to the carrion stage"). Needless to say, humans are not like this, and so you can be in no doubt as to which life form you will end up rooting for in the end, notwithstanding the Utod's aversion to cleanliness. In fact, you becomes so sympathetic towards the Utods that when trigger-happy unconscionable humans decide to shoot some of them on a game hunt it creates a feeling of repulsion much like you would expect to feel if you witnessed a panda hunt. The vivisection of some Utods, who can't comprehend why the humans are slicing them up, also makes for uncomfortable and disturbing reading. One might be tempted to think of the novel as a metaphor for imperialism, but this only works to a certain degree because we don't here have a technologically-advanced civilization encountering and forcing itself on a relatively primitive one; this encounter is more like the exact opposite to a meeting of minds.
A large portion, if not most, of the novel takes place on the planet earth in the early part of the twenty-first century. This aspect of the novel shows how notoriously difficult it is really to predict the future, especially in terms of technological, social and political developments. Apparently, people still send letters as their main form of long-distance communication; Britain is at war with Brazil, and London at least feels little more than a very polluted version of 1950s Britain with some space-age gizmos thrown in for good measure. Moreover, the Soviet Union still exists, and so at least George Galloway would be happy. Some things, however, are quite plausible; for example, that that long-distance space travel is accomplished not by propulsion, but by the manipulation of the very fabric of space and time; most scientists agree that this is certainly the only way to consider crossing the vastness of inter-stellar space.
The novel is pessimistic, but is not without its lighter moments: On landing on a new world, and after opening a hatch on their spacecraft, a high-ranking Utod claims ownership of the new world for his species by saying, "I pronounce all this to be land belonging to the Triple Suns. Let defecation commence." Not quite Neil Armstrong, but this novel does represent one giant leap for imagination; I thoroughly recommend it, but be prepared to be disturbed and maybe even a little upset.
February 10, 2017
According the the copyright page, this book began life as a short story... which a find odd only in that I can't see where it would have been cut... unlike many such sorry, this was really a novel, I felt.
Be warned, I'm going to summarize most of the plot here, because there's no real twists to spoil, and it seems discussion-worthy :) I'll leave some space here in case y'all want to avoid it.
Not much to the characters here(they're all pretty much from central casting), it's pretty much straight social SF. Set in 2035(but then mostly flashing back to 40 years earlier), it's a first contact with a race called the Utods, which are basically giant six-legged Rhino whose civilization is based on wallow in the mud and their own excerement.
Clearly, the humans didn't get that, so they don't believe they're intelligent. Meanwhile, war rages between England and Brazil, taking place on Charon (the planet after Pluto, used to keep the civilians out of the war). It describes London as pretty much trashed, but not by the war, rather a 'lack of unskilled labor'... streets dirty and close due to lack of road work... people wearing gas masks to block out the fumes from cars, etc. The irony is certainly striking.
In the midst of the war, a explorer looking for planets to settle finds an Utod colony ship, takes them as dangerous beasts and kill all but 2, who are wounded and brought to Earth. Just before they leave they find their ship, but most of the men (those that found the sport of killing the giant aliens exciting) assumed they were test animals, like the monkeys or dogs we used on Earth.
As it turns out, the Utods have 2 heads and 8 'orifaces', and have an extremely complex language, much of which is beyond human range. They decide since the humans don't understand the importance of filth, the refuse to speak.
While a few scientists try to work it out, pressures of war and the hope that their seeming imperviousness to pain could be weaponized lead to the live aliens getting dissected, and a trip to find more.
Some big game hunting ensues, until they find one group of Utods (which leaves near some natural predators) that have guns and fight back. One of the scientists stays behind, to try to learn the language and see what the aliens have to offer, with a promise to be picked up in a year, and the expedition returns home.
Flash forward to the 'present' that started the book, and the old man living with the Utods (the one who was left for a year) gets picked up. We find the proxy war on Charon got out of control, and destroyed most of Earth, and most of the system the Utods lived in (which, of course, was promptly colonized).. the life's work of working of their language is mostly irrelevant, since Utods were near extinct (collateral damage).
This is about as dark and depressing a first contact story as I'd read, all the more so because it seems so very plausible, especially from the world of the 60s. A most excellent read!
Be warned, I'm going to summarize most of the plot here, because there's no real twists to spoil, and it seems discussion-worthy :) I'll leave some space here in case y'all want to avoid it.
Not much to the characters here(they're all pretty much from central casting), it's pretty much straight social SF. Set in 2035(but then mostly flashing back to 40 years earlier), it's a first contact with a race called the Utods, which are basically giant six-legged Rhino whose civilization is based on wallow in the mud and their own excerement.
Clearly, the humans didn't get that, so they don't believe they're intelligent. Meanwhile, war rages between England and Brazil, taking place on Charon (the planet after Pluto, used to keep the civilians out of the war). It describes London as pretty much trashed, but not by the war, rather a 'lack of unskilled labor'... streets dirty and close due to lack of road work... people wearing gas masks to block out the fumes from cars, etc. The irony is certainly striking.
In the midst of the war, a explorer looking for planets to settle finds an Utod colony ship, takes them as dangerous beasts and kill all but 2, who are wounded and brought to Earth. Just before they leave they find their ship, but most of the men (those that found the sport of killing the giant aliens exciting) assumed they were test animals, like the monkeys or dogs we used on Earth.
As it turns out, the Utods have 2 heads and 8 'orifaces', and have an extremely complex language, much of which is beyond human range. They decide since the humans don't understand the importance of filth, the refuse to speak.
While a few scientists try to work it out, pressures of war and the hope that their seeming imperviousness to pain could be weaponized lead to the live aliens getting dissected, and a trip to find more.
Some big game hunting ensues, until they find one group of Utods (which leaves near some natural predators) that have guns and fight back. One of the scientists stays behind, to try to learn the language and see what the aliens have to offer, with a promise to be picked up in a year, and the expedition returns home.
Flash forward to the 'present' that started the book, and the old man living with the Utods (the one who was left for a year) gets picked up. We find the proxy war on Charon got out of control, and destroyed most of Earth, and most of the system the Utods lived in (which, of course, was promptly colonized).. the life's work of working of their language is mostly irrelevant, since Utods were near extinct (collateral damage).
This is about as dark and depressing a first contact story as I'd read, all the more so because it seems so very plausible, especially from the world of the 60s. A most excellent read!
August 19, 2010
Commentators often mention that sf novels would be impossible without the presupposition that mankind has developed the technology that allows spacecraft to break the speed of light. Various ways this unlikely achievement might be realized are sometimes put forth, but for the most part zipping from one galaxy to another is taken for granted.
In the third chapter of this brilliant short novel, Aldiss both mocks and solves this narrative predicament in a single sentence:
And a little grizzled Australian mathematician called Buzzard rushed into his mistress's bedroom at three o'clock of a May morning shrieking,"I got it, got it! Transponential flight!"
Aldiss doesn't like to get bogged down. In fact this book deals with complex notions of ethics, civilization, intelligence, and barbarity in less than 200 pages, with the author usually having his ideas tossed around in casual conversation or embodied in characters whose either loathsome or decent behavior is seldom noted and often misunderstood by those around them.
Pity the poor Utods. Centuries of galactic exploration has turned up hundreds of animal species that find their way to the "exozoos" of earth, but no creatures with an intelligence equal to or greater than our own. But then there are the Utods, beings with millions of years of racial memory, capable of space flight, and with verbal skills so complex they cannot be comprehended by human linguists, The utods, however, also have the unfortunate appearance of six-legged hippopotami, except for when they retract their legs and resemble giant yams. Oh, and they cover themselves in their own excrement and live in wallows.
Our encounters with this species if funny and tragic, ranging from vivisection, since they apparently feel no pain, to well-meaning but misplaced efforts to clean them up. Perhaps the only good thing humans can do for the Utods is to introduce them to bananas, which they like a great deal. As it turns out, none of this amounts to much because what has been a "Contained War" between the Brazilians and British on the icy planet of Charon spreads to earth, then to most of the galaxy, and lots of things, such as human beings, Utods, the British Islands, etc, are killed or destroyed.
I see that one Good Reads reviewer calls The Dark Light Years "depressing." I found it bleakly funny and saddening, but hardly depressing. I think Aldiss is having too much fun concocting this future world to find his thoughful and inventive creation anything other than invigorating for the few hours you spend with it.
In the third chapter of this brilliant short novel, Aldiss both mocks and solves this narrative predicament in a single sentence:
And a little grizzled Australian mathematician called Buzzard rushed into his mistress's bedroom at three o'clock of a May morning shrieking,"I got it, got it! Transponential flight!"
Aldiss doesn't like to get bogged down. In fact this book deals with complex notions of ethics, civilization, intelligence, and barbarity in less than 200 pages, with the author usually having his ideas tossed around in casual conversation or embodied in characters whose either loathsome or decent behavior is seldom noted and often misunderstood by those around them.
Pity the poor Utods. Centuries of galactic exploration has turned up hundreds of animal species that find their way to the "exozoos" of earth, but no creatures with an intelligence equal to or greater than our own. But then there are the Utods, beings with millions of years of racial memory, capable of space flight, and with verbal skills so complex they cannot be comprehended by human linguists, The utods, however, also have the unfortunate appearance of six-legged hippopotami, except for when they retract their legs and resemble giant yams. Oh, and they cover themselves in their own excrement and live in wallows.
Our encounters with this species if funny and tragic, ranging from vivisection, since they apparently feel no pain, to well-meaning but misplaced efforts to clean them up. Perhaps the only good thing humans can do for the Utods is to introduce them to bananas, which they like a great deal. As it turns out, none of this amounts to much because what has been a "Contained War" between the Brazilians and British on the icy planet of Charon spreads to earth, then to most of the galaxy, and lots of things, such as human beings, Utods, the British Islands, etc, are killed or destroyed.
I see that one Good Reads reviewer calls The Dark Light Years "depressing." I found it bleakly funny and saddening, but hardly depressing. I think Aldiss is having too much fun concocting this future world to find his thoughful and inventive creation anything other than invigorating for the few hours you spend with it.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
January 17, 2017
Beautifully written, with well-drawn characters and amazing aliens. Aldiss uses a revolving door of characters to shine light on a dozen glittering facets of his vision, and the result is stunning. Remarkably, there is no filler in this book: every scene is important and interesting in its own right. Its only weaknesses are its scattershot themes and an abrupt ending. Those problems notwithstanding, this is a remarkable novel, a classic in the canon of sf and one of its true literary works. 4.5/5
February 29, 2020
As much as I wanted to like this book more because of its premise, its aliens, and the wonderfully awkward first encounter(s), Aldiss hangs himself here with the overload of cynicism, sexism, violence, and stereotyping (the Americans all talk and act like cowboys, the empathetic males are gay, the Hungarian is a womanizing poseur, and women act like toys). All this in 128 pages. Sheesh, I hope Aldiss grew up before he wrote later works.
September 18, 2010
A lesser known Aldiss novel but one I enjoyed. It presents the dilemma of how to deal with the Utods, a race of aliens that are physically repulsive, and in the end I felt quite sorry for the Utods who were trying to express their sadness and anger at their treatment by the soldiers but because they couldnt be understood their ill treatment, due to ignorance, continued unabated.
August 31, 2008
A book picked up in a paperback exchange in the Majorstua neighborhood in Oslo, Norway. Not bad. Not great.
March 5, 2014
Ah, it has been a decade and half since I read this book, and my notes are scant. I offer them for what it is worth: Wonderful, wish there was more of it, unsatisfactorily short.
June 16, 2019
'And we are their random victims.' (p.96, Panther, 1984)
Oh dear. Dull, dated, antiquated. Though well written.
Apart from the obvious anachronisms - Venusian asparagus (slightly burnt, I expect); Charon classified as a planet - this is science fiction (non-space opera) of an old school which may have seemed like a second golden age then, but which is rooted in anthropological turgidity that has little to do with space except its wider context and not very far off Wells. It's like a less well developed Cherryh novel about finding a sufficiently inappropriate alien species without the anthropological - or xenopological - detail. Anyway, any Earth-based sf is of far less interest than space opera.
Mired in the eternally human context of intellectual bitching, pulling it down to the mundane and pedestrian, we should at least be distracted by the additional layers of Asimovian humourous critique of academia and bureaucracy and snipily vying factions of human intelligentsia, if nothing much else exists of story. But this rather dull biocentric view on aliens and alien life and communication founders in the back yard of both science fiction and its own limited parameters. Stylistically it lacks finesse as well as appeal, and some of the names of futurism are plain silly ('antivom', 'synthash', 'sinkers', 'techni', 'tubbies', 'ockpu', 'rhinomen', the odd Orwellian acronym); although there are some good ones ('esod', 'utod', 'werewhisper'). Further, the background story of the utods patently borrows from Animal Farm. The advent of interstellar travel drive is mentioned in passing as a eureka moment of some spotty youth, the context of local (Earth-bound) wars and political divisions as uninventive and consequent as a politician's marital indiscretion.
As for the story, any child would know that to study an alien species, it should at least be in its natural habitat. These merely require mud. They already have healthy telomeres. And telepathy. And are seemingly painless. A little imagination is really all that's required of these so called intelligents (the men). But so little is observed by so many men absorbed by their own self-interest and comfort that this polemic about the innate evils of patriarchy and 'man' becomes irritating rather than amusingly true, and surely, science fiction should be using large brush-strokes to debate that given, not a series of annoying truisms, even though we 1) agree, and 2) read this stuff to escape that quotidian exasperation.
But if anthropology - or xenology - and its debates is what interests, then this mirror is an intelligent means if a dull end, despite that it is well written, with a certain humour, and pointedly finished.
None of it, though, makes for the advancement of science fiction as a canon (perhaps the concept of voluntarily changing sex), nor consequently, of interest. Sometimes you have to read to know what not to read. Thankfully it was slight in volume as well as quality. John Scalzi's Old Man's War [2005] had much the same feel, but did it all a hundred-fold, with many more sound ideas.
Oh dear. Dull, dated, antiquated. Though well written.
Apart from the obvious anachronisms - Venusian asparagus (slightly burnt, I expect); Charon classified as a planet - this is science fiction (non-space opera) of an old school which may have seemed like a second golden age then, but which is rooted in anthropological turgidity that has little to do with space except its wider context and not very far off Wells. It's like a less well developed Cherryh novel about finding a sufficiently inappropriate alien species without the anthropological - or xenopological - detail. Anyway, any Earth-based sf is of far less interest than space opera.
Mired in the eternally human context of intellectual bitching, pulling it down to the mundane and pedestrian, we should at least be distracted by the additional layers of Asimovian humourous critique of academia and bureaucracy and snipily vying factions of human intelligentsia, if nothing much else exists of story. But this rather dull biocentric view on aliens and alien life and communication founders in the back yard of both science fiction and its own limited parameters. Stylistically it lacks finesse as well as appeal, and some of the names of futurism are plain silly ('antivom', 'synthash', 'sinkers', 'techni', 'tubbies', 'ockpu', 'rhinomen', the odd Orwellian acronym); although there are some good ones ('esod', 'utod', 'werewhisper'). Further, the background story of the utods patently borrows from Animal Farm. The advent of interstellar travel drive is mentioned in passing as a eureka moment of some spotty youth, the context of local (Earth-bound) wars and political divisions as uninventive and consequent as a politician's marital indiscretion.
As for the story, any child would know that to study an alien species, it should at least be in its natural habitat. These merely require mud. They already have healthy telomeres. And telepathy. And are seemingly painless. A little imagination is really all that's required of these so called intelligents (the men). But so little is observed by so many men absorbed by their own self-interest and comfort that this polemic about the innate evils of patriarchy and 'man' becomes irritating rather than amusingly true, and surely, science fiction should be using large brush-strokes to debate that given, not a series of annoying truisms, even though we 1) agree, and 2) read this stuff to escape that quotidian exasperation.
But if anthropology - or xenology - and its debates is what interests, then this mirror is an intelligent means if a dull end, despite that it is well written, with a certain humour, and pointedly finished.
None of it, though, makes for the advancement of science fiction as a canon (perhaps the concept of voluntarily changing sex), nor consequently, of interest. Sometimes you have to read to know what not to read. Thankfully it was slight in volume as well as quality. John Scalzi's Old Man's War [2005] had much the same feel, but did it all a hundred-fold, with many more sound ideas.
May 10, 2017
It explores: What is intelligence and what does it mean to be intelligent - the dichotomy of the cosmos and the mind? What is death? What is civilisation and how does its morality arise ("East of Suez, a man can find more excuses for himself than a cretin can.")? Free will or determinism - is the human but a machine running on instinct, or is there a ghost or spirit in the machine? Different ways of communicating and forms of language - briefly a Sapir-Whorf-esque theorem. How humans can understanding alien life and vice versa, how first contact would work - done amusingly when one of the aliens notes that humans have two heads, one for eating and one for excreting. Pain and its role in "humanity". The Three Body Problem.
As some other reviewers have mentioned (yes, I do suffer from the need to read other people's reviews before I write my own), the book has aged, the female characters are far fewer than the sprawling cast of male characters ("She looked very smart in a flared mock-male with recessed carnation poltroons"), the male characters seem to exhibit all the 20th century English-ness of the author ("I've always believed that the amount of thought that goes on inside a man's head is in inverse proportion to the amount of sunshine that goes on outside it." - later subverted by another character renouncing the remark as glib. "phoney Hungarian glamour", "Oriental mistress", constant references to geographical roots of characters as if that was supposed to convey additional information about the character), the scientific ideas are fair but not particularly inventive in the current day and age (techni-calls! synthwine! controlled war! Non-Einstein, Non-Quantum space travel that draws allusions to man's mind!), the science fantasy-esque naming conventions are amusing (with its fair share of meaningless made up words - cosmoclectic) - and so reading the book gives you a sense of nostalgia.
Despite all the fairly minor issues, Brian Aldiss' satirical work is funny, intelligent and skilled in crafting stories from a few different points of view, representing a selection of human metatypes and their own morality. The story is short and enjoyable, but definitely should not be treated as hard scifi. One thing that irked me is that I cannot for the life of me picture the aliens in my mind - all I can think of is a giant turtle with lots of hands popping in and out. I wish someone would draw a picture...
As some other reviewers have mentioned (yes, I do suffer from the need to read other people's reviews before I write my own), the book has aged, the female characters are far fewer than the sprawling cast of male characters ("She looked very smart in a flared mock-male with recessed carnation poltroons"), the male characters seem to exhibit all the 20th century English-ness of the author ("I've always believed that the amount of thought that goes on inside a man's head is in inverse proportion to the amount of sunshine that goes on outside it." - later subverted by another character renouncing the remark as glib. "phoney Hungarian glamour", "Oriental mistress", constant references to geographical roots of characters as if that was supposed to convey additional information about the character), the scientific ideas are fair but not particularly inventive in the current day and age (techni-calls! synthwine! controlled war! Non-Einstein, Non-Quantum space travel that draws allusions to man's mind!), the science fantasy-esque naming conventions are amusing (with its fair share of meaningless made up words - cosmoclectic) - and so reading the book gives you a sense of nostalgia.
Despite all the fairly minor issues, Brian Aldiss' satirical work is funny, intelligent and skilled in crafting stories from a few different points of view, representing a selection of human metatypes and their own morality. The story is short and enjoyable, but definitely should not be treated as hard scifi. One thing that irked me is that I cannot for the life of me picture the aliens in my mind - all I can think of is a giant turtle with lots of hands popping in and out. I wish someone would draw a picture...
July 12, 2020
This is fairly typical Brian Aldiss sf,so if you like Aldiss, you'll like this story. My biggest problem with it is that I can't believe the behavior of the humans when first encountering the Utods, not even humans in 1964, which is when this book was first published--they act more like British from 1864. I understand Aldiss is making a point about British men (and by extension, modern Western civilization men), but I still had difficulty believing that the first time humans encounter an obviously complex life form, their first impulse is to shoot it, and later, to vivisect it. (Although, come to think of it, if Kane had reacted in a similar fashion in Alien, he--and the entire crew of the Nostromo--would have survived.)
Another comment that really has to do not with The Dark Light Years, but with an online critique that stated the book was allegorically, all about the U.S. "genocide" in S.E. Asia in the 1960s and early '70s, which is patently silly. First of all, most of the characters are Brits, not Yanks. Secondly, the book was first published in June, 1964; the Gulf of Tonkin Incident didn't occur until August 1964--the Vietnam War hadn't really started ramping up yet. And thirdly, the U.S. was not trying to accomplish "genocide" in Vietnam--they were trying to prop up the South Vietnamese government. (And yes, Americans did commit atrocities, but then so did the North Vietnamese and the Viet Cong.)
Another comment that really has to do not with The Dark Light Years, but with an online critique that stated the book was allegorically, all about the U.S. "genocide" in S.E. Asia in the 1960s and early '70s, which is patently silly. First of all, most of the characters are Brits, not Yanks. Secondly, the book was first published in June, 1964; the Gulf of Tonkin Incident didn't occur until August 1964--the Vietnam War hadn't really started ramping up yet. And thirdly, the U.S. was not trying to accomplish "genocide" in Vietnam--they were trying to prop up the South Vietnamese government. (And yes, Americans did commit atrocities, but then so did the North Vietnamese and the Viet Cong.)
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