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New Arrivals, Old Encounters
Ranging across the mind-blowing wastes of space and time, the dozen stories in New Arrivals, Old Encounters are by Brian Aldiss at his sharpest and most inventive. Here are space colonizers, god creators, god implanters, visions of future Earths (on one of which the EEC has become a horrifying bureaucracy where people speak SpEEC) and new stories of the zeepees-the Zodiacal Planets.
[Taken from the back cover]
[Taken from the back cover]
240 pages, Paperback
First published August 1, 1979
2 people are currently reading
68 people want to read
About the author
Brian W. Aldiss
837 books678 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 - 4 of 4 reviews
April 23, 2026
How I love my grab bag books of pulp scifi. This one was one of the worst I've read on several levels. At the same time, I think the author has a few bits of very solid prose and well presented ideas. I quite liked one of the stories, but alas, there is more than one story in this book.
"New Arrivals, Old Encounters"
Each section of this short short story ends with 'and then the earth ships came', and that's a poignant little beat. I like that. Nothing else. This is a story about colonialism, and it defaults to that 'I've just learned colonialism is bad and need to teach people about it' playbook: the natives are simple-minded, innocent, pure, good, kind savages. And then they all die. And ohhhhh that's so tough isn't it? That these noble inferior lil' guys, who love the land and nature and animals, got killed? Because they don't know what war even is! They don't know what meanness is, because they are pure hearted animals more than people. :(
The issue, to step outside that sarcasm, is that this is the Noble Savage trope. I had such flashbacks to Word for World is Forest, my beloathed. Colonilasm is bad. You do not need to make the native people into sad aliens for that to be true. You do not need to show their moral innocence and make it about colonizers introducing sin. The bad part of colonialism is not corruption, it's the colonialism, the killing and invading and displacing. Native American people are and were human beings. They did, in fact, know what death and war was. Colonialism is not more or less forgivable depending on the morality of those invaded.
"The Small Stones of Tu Fu"
This one threw me for a long loop, but I did find the end reveal kind of sweet. It's about someone who is speaking to a Chinese philosopher and poet, Tu Fu. Tu Fu does not seem to be real, and rather an amalgamation of other real poets. Tu Fu is close to his death, and the narrator is hanging out with him, looking at stones and a river, and debating philosophy. The aspect that constitutes a 'reveal' later is too complex and tricky to explain here, but essencially, part of Tu Fu's philosophy is proven true by the narrator.
Otherwise, the story is... kind of boring and uninteresting.
"Three Ways"
The concept of this is good, and then everything else sucks. A ship of scientists returns after ten years in space (for them), and it has been 120 years for Earth. A huge number of social and political changes have occured which leave three men displaced.
Part of these changes include the establishments of the world into five states: Corportia, Neutralia, Communia, Socdemmia, and Third World. Corportia, while sounding like capitalism, is actually a woman-led hellscape where they killed all the men and hate science and progress. There's quite a bit of men being horrified by women in power, and how bad they are at ruling because they just donn't know how to do so. Later it is said they 'figure it out', and it's alright, but the whole notion is stupidly sexist.
Third World is something the author refers to in multiple stories, often as a singular wide reaching zone. While aspects of racism are mocked, such as a white character struggling to get citizenship because his grandmother was bengali, the way the author writes about race is... more than a little dubious, and later stories force you to endure pages of vile language. Non white characters are lacking, and limited in their portrayel.
This story winds up being about one of the men becoming a folk hero because he remembers how things Used To Be (ahem, the proper way), and heading out to the frontier of Zealandia, a new island that has emerged, in order to found a successful colony and marry a woman and be a proper man in all this madness.
(TO BE CONTINUED, GOTTA GO)
"New Arrivals, Old Encounters"
Each section of this short short story ends with 'and then the earth ships came', and that's a poignant little beat. I like that. Nothing else. This is a story about colonialism, and it defaults to that 'I've just learned colonialism is bad and need to teach people about it' playbook: the natives are simple-minded, innocent, pure, good, kind savages. And then they all die. And ohhhhh that's so tough isn't it? That these noble inferior lil' guys, who love the land and nature and animals, got killed? Because they don't know what war even is! They don't know what meanness is, because they are pure hearted animals more than people. :(
The issue, to step outside that sarcasm, is that this is the Noble Savage trope. I had such flashbacks to Word for World is Forest, my beloathed. Colonilasm is bad. You do not need to make the native people into sad aliens for that to be true. You do not need to show their moral innocence and make it about colonizers introducing sin. The bad part of colonialism is not corruption, it's the colonialism, the killing and invading and displacing. Native American people are and were human beings. They did, in fact, know what death and war was. Colonialism is not more or less forgivable depending on the morality of those invaded.
"The Small Stones of Tu Fu"
This one threw me for a long loop, but I did find the end reveal kind of sweet. It's about someone who is speaking to a Chinese philosopher and poet, Tu Fu. Tu Fu does not seem to be real, and rather an amalgamation of other real poets. Tu Fu is close to his death, and the narrator is hanging out with him, looking at stones and a river, and debating philosophy. The aspect that constitutes a 'reveal' later is too complex and tricky to explain here, but essencially, part of Tu Fu's philosophy is proven true by the narrator.
Otherwise, the story is... kind of boring and uninteresting.
"Three Ways"
The concept of this is good, and then everything else sucks. A ship of scientists returns after ten years in space (for them), and it has been 120 years for Earth. A huge number of social and political changes have occured which leave three men displaced.
Part of these changes include the establishments of the world into five states: Corportia, Neutralia, Communia, Socdemmia, and Third World. Corportia, while sounding like capitalism, is actually a woman-led hellscape where they killed all the men and hate science and progress. There's quite a bit of men being horrified by women in power, and how bad they are at ruling because they just donn't know how to do so. Later it is said they 'figure it out', and it's alright, but the whole notion is stupidly sexist.
Third World is something the author refers to in multiple stories, often as a singular wide reaching zone. While aspects of racism are mocked, such as a white character struggling to get citizenship because his grandmother was bengali, the way the author writes about race is... more than a little dubious, and later stories force you to endure pages of vile language. Non white characters are lacking, and limited in their portrayel.
This story winds up being about one of the men becoming a folk hero because he remembers how things Used To Be (ahem, the proper way), and heading out to the frontier of Zealandia, a new island that has emerged, in order to found a successful colony and marry a woman and be a proper man in all this madness.
(TO BE CONTINUED, GOTTA GO)
November 10, 2019
This is a just a fair collection of Aldiss's short fiction; none of the stories struck me as truly great and I lost track of the last couple of them while slogging through to the end. I felt that he was struggling too much for a high literary content and lost track of the storytelling; perhaps he was trying too hard to follow in J.G. Ballard's wake, or perhaps they just haven't aged well for me. My favorites were the shorter ones, especially The Small Stones of Tu Fu.
May 24, 2020
Well written stories, but didn't go anywhere and were pretty dated.
March 18, 2018
I would give a 7 out of 10 due to it being a mix of some very good stories with a few slightly slower ones.
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It always seems to me that older science fiction books and stories seem to hold up much better than science fiction movies, and in my opinion this seems to be because, at least I seem to have noticed that a ton of older science fiction books always seem to focus a lot less on the futuristic technology and instead on how people act and think in the future, the morality in dealing with aliens or how we handle finding out we are alone, how our laws and feelings as well as morals try to keep up with the new technology, dealing with artificial intelligence, how we handle races completely unlike our own, and just how we deal with the universe once we find ourselves in it.
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I have always loved the psychological aspect of so many of the older science fiction stories, as opposed to a lot of the newer ones focusing on describing all the cool tech stuff we want to be able to do in the future and how it works for 5 chapters, and enjoy reading them, if you happen to have read any of these stories by Brian Aldiss let me know what you think and if you have a favorite!
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It always seems to me that older science fiction books and stories seem to hold up much better than science fiction movies, and in my opinion this seems to be because, at least I seem to have noticed that a ton of older science fiction books always seem to focus a lot less on the futuristic technology and instead on how people act and think in the future, the morality in dealing with aliens or how we handle finding out we are alone, how our laws and feelings as well as morals try to keep up with the new technology, dealing with artificial intelligence, how we handle races completely unlike our own, and just how we deal with the universe once we find ourselves in it.
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I have always loved the psychological aspect of so many of the older science fiction stories, as opposed to a lot of the newer ones focusing on describing all the cool tech stuff we want to be able to do in the future and how it works for 5 chapters, and enjoy reading them, if you happen to have read any of these stories by Brian Aldiss let me know what you think and if you have a favorite!
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews