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Three Types of Solitude

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Faber Stories, a landmark series of individual volumes, presents masters of the short story form at work in a range of genres and styles. Brian Aldiss, who died in 2017, was best known for his science fiction - and in particular for a short story optioned by Stanley Kubrick, which would, under the direction of Steven Spielberg, become the film A.I. Artificial Intelligence. Aldiss's first book was published by Faber in 1955.This brief, late trilogy contains much of his lively humour, one improbable invention, and a pervasive sense of loneliness and longing. 'Sadness is just happiness in reverse,' says someone in a story within the story, 'We humans have to put up with it.'

36 pages, Kindle Edition

First published March 7, 2019

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About the author

Brian W. Aldiss

833 books662 followers
Pseudonyms: 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

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Displaying 1 - 30 of 51 reviews
Profile Image for Sam Quixote.
4,782 reviews13.4k followers
April 21, 2019
I don’t feel at all strongly about any of Brian Aldiss’ stories in Three Types of Solitude but I can appreciate the artistic skill that’s so self-evident in them, as well as aspects of the tales.

Happiness in Reverse is a letter by a judge to his estranged wife about a case he’s presiding over. A man has somehow created new life in the form of a wooden puppet that’s bred asexually and is now taking over the planet. You could read it literally - Aldiss is predominantly known as a sci-fi writer - but I think it’s a clever, sweet and imaginative way of the judge telling his wife that he wants her back, he’s sorry he took her for granted, etc. rather than simply coming right out and saying so.

A Single-Minded Artist is about a rich’n’famous artist who finds fulfilment and purpose in a small town with a wife, painting the same thing over and over. I guess it’s ok - happiness in simplicity - but, eh, didn’t do much for me.

Talking Cubes is the most overtly sci-fi story of the bunch which is surprising as I expected them all to be like this. Two old, former lovers, meet up after a vague conflict - they were on opposite sides of the war - to remember their long-finished affair. I loved the haunting imagery of these two old people sitting alongside their holographic younger selves professing their love for one another - it’s very romantic.

I can’t say any of the stories blew my hair back, nor did they impress me enough to want to read more of Brian Aldiss’ fiction, but it wouldn’t be accurate to say they were bad stories either. Three Types of Solitude is a decent collection of well-crafted, albeit unmemorable, short stories.
Profile Image for Glenn Russell.
1,502 reviews13.2k followers
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July 28, 2020


Three Types of Solitude - a trio of short stories (or, if you prefer, brief sketches) by British author Brian Aldiss that can be read in an hour. Thank you Faber & Faber for publishing this delightful little book. Fiction that's fanciful and whimsical thus my review whimsy x 3:

1. A SINGLE-MINDED ARTIST
Arthur Scunnersman is the artist of his age. His painting and sketches dazzle, commanding vast sums of money, enough money for Arthur Scunnersman to live exactly as he wishes.

Whether he knows it or not, Arhtur Scunnersman is also a follower of the Cyrenaics, those ancient philosophers who maintained the only intrinsic good is pleasure. And the best pleasures of all are those intense physical pleasures we can experience here and now.

Forget memory; let go of worrying about the future - just tune into the present moment and enjoy your senses tingling with pleasure.

But then an art critic criticized Arhtur Scunnersman: too rootless. The artist of his age goes undercover, becomes a new man, of sorts. What happens next is for Brian Aldiss to tell.

2. TALKING CUBES
A love story complete with computerized cubes, just the inorganic things to underline, underscore and emphasize that most unpleasant reality: frequently time extinguishes the fire of love. We so wish it to be otherwise, but there it is.

3. HAPPINESS IN REVERSE
Judge Beauregard Peach writes his estranged wife who currently lives with their adult daughter in the South of France. He tells her about a dummy he's created out of wood.

The judge and his dummy exchange reflections on matters of the heart, all type of things. At one point, the dummy says he's never been sad in his entire life, not even back when he was a sapling.

Reading this Brian Aldiss tale, I was wondering: Who does both the judge and especially the dummy remind me of? Ah, yes, Russell Edson's Closet-Man, as per:

THE REASON WHY THE CLOSET-MAN IS NEVER SAD by Russell Edson
This is the house of the closet-man. There are no rooms, just hallways and closets.
Things happen in rooms. He does not like things to happen. . . . Closets, you take things out of closets, you put things into closets, and nothing happens . . .

Why do you have such a strange house?

I am the closet-man, I am either going or coming, and I am never sad.

But why do you have such a strange house?

I am never sad . . .


British author Brian Aldiss, 1925-2017
Profile Image for Andrew.
2,536 reviews
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June 23, 2019
This is an intriguing little book (only 70 pages long) which is part of a series of 20 Faber books published this year to celebrate their 90th birthday.

the book itself is very reminiscent of similar "taster" books published in the past for example the classics printed by Penguin.

The series a covers a number of genres and styles as well as authors as you would expect as they showcase the authors Faber have published over the years.

This book contains 3 short stories (after all the book complete is 70 pages) all about what solitude is and how it can relate differently to different people.

I have read a number of Brian Aldiss books and I must admit they always have been able to surprise and challenge me and this is no different. An excellent choice and I will be certainly hunting down the others in the series as well.
Profile Image for Maura Heaphy Dutton.
736 reviews18 followers
January 26, 2021
Three thoughtful, interesting and challenging stories from an author at the end of a long career in which he managed to combine the best of speculative fiction with a deeply humane interest in life as it really is, on this fragile world of ours.

If you are looking for easily-digested, "beginning-middle-end" type traditional short stories, then you really should move on: these three ... vignettes work with each other, and against each other, and all circle around the questions of happiness, and loneliness, and love. A barrister (cold? Unable to express his feeling?) attempts to win back his estranged wife and daughter with a fantastic tale. A celebrity artist reinvents himself in obscurity. Two former lovers, from opposite sides of a brutal civil war, revisit the sad end of their doomed affair .... All circling around the idea that, as one of the characters says, "sadness is just happiness in reverse."
Profile Image for Marcus Hobson.
714 reviews113 followers
February 20, 2019
To celebrate their 90th birthday, publisher Faber and Faber have launched a series called ‘Faber Stories’. Short stories by a host of well-known writers such as Samuel Beckett, Kazuo Ishiguro, P D James, Lorrie Moore, Flannery O’Connor and Sylvia Plath. The first launch of these individual shorts has twenty slim volumes. There will be more later in the year.

I only know Brian Aldiss from some of the science fiction that I used to adore as a teen, so these three short stories are both a surprise and a delight. They were first published in 2001 in a book called ‘Supertoys Last All Summer Long and Other Stories of Future Time’.
All three stories only take up 42 pages, but one of the things I love about them is the variation between the three. Although the title tells us that we are dealing with different types of solitude, in fact what we are seeing is also about togetherness and longing.

Story one is called ‘Happiness in Reverse’ in which a judge, Beauregard, writes to his wife who has left him and gone to live in the south of France. His wife is a lawyer and he write to her about a case that he is hearing at the Oxford Crown Court. “Beauregard did not plead for her to return. His mind worked in a more sophisticated way. Gertrude knew that way, admired it, feared it.” I imagined he would try to draw her home by talking about a case that she could not help be fascinated by, and so he would lure her home to talk about it with him in the evenings. As the detail expands, you suddenly see that this is not a real story but a fable. Donald Maudsley has vanished to live in the wilds of South America, where “The little man collected discarded sunsets. He swept them up every evening when they were spent, and kept them in a big golden cage in the depths of the forest.” He cuts down a tree from which he carves a ventriloquist’s dummy and calls it Ben. They have deep conversations. But the dummy begins to ask questions that he finds too personal, and Maudsley becomes angry. Eventually the dummy says “I’m only your echo,” and Maudsley see that he has always refused to let people into his life.

Story two is very short. Called ‘A Single-minded Artist’ it is about Arthur Scunnersman, a man with houses all around the world, who paints, composes songs and designs film sets that are all impossibly beautiful. Everything he does is a success. The diversity of his artwork charmed the world. Then an art critic criticised his diversity as rootlessness and Arthur Scunnersman vanishes. He goes to live in a simple house opposite the post office in Dykstad, twenty kilometres south of Oslo. There Bea Bjorklund is his housekeeper and knows a lot about mackerel fishing. She has never heard of Scunnersman. Eventually she comes to his bed and unwinds the long plait of her hair that resembled an ornamental loaf. Her needs are simple and she teaches him to fish for mackerel. They live a simple life, but at Christmas he buys her lace underwear and she buys him a box of paints. She says ‘People in the village find it bad that we live together without marriage. So I make you out to be an artist. Then they do not worry. They expect nothing else from artists.’

The third story is called ‘Talking Cubes’ and is the most complex. Two old lovers meet after many years apart. Wars have intervened and they have been on different sides. They are back in the city where they once fell in love and in ancient shops have found two plastic cubes that once were theirs. The cubes contain hologram pictures of their younger selves and when they are plugged in, they speak to each other, recognising the pauses in speech as a prompt for the other to begin talking. So it seems they are having a conversation about their lost lives and lost love. But these two conversations are from different times in their relationship.


Also, I must just mention the cover design, both of the whole series, but in particular of this volume, which is both simple and magical.
Profile Image for Rhys.
Author 325 books320 followers
June 18, 2019
Brian Aldiss can be one of the best short story writers I have ever read. He can also misfire quite badly in the short form. Oddly, he frequently is good and not-good at the same time, especially in his later work. These three stories remind me of the stories in The Secret of this Book, a volume that can best be described as 'patchy'. I enjoyed the book nonetheless because Aldiss has a certain quality, a warmth and oddness that persist even when he is not on top form.

Of the three stories in this (very) slim Faber volume, the best is the first, which tells of a wooden puppet in a rainforest who begins making other wooden puppets. Soon the world will be overrun with wooden puppets. Unfortunately the ending turns this piece of dangerous whimsy into a mere extended metaphor. The other two stories in the book are good but not special, one about an artist and the other about a civil war set in a country that seems based on Sudan.
Profile Image for Mary.
82 reviews
September 1, 2023
“Early one morning, he cut down a forest tree. From a section of the tree he fashioned a ventriloquist’s dummy. He called the dummy Ben. He imbued Ben with an illusion of life for the sake of company.”

- Brian Aldiss, Happiness in Reverse

This trio of short stories is aptly named. I’m left thinking about loneliness, memory, and the stubbornness of the human spirit. We all want to reach out and know one another, we want to be comforted by those we love, or think we love, most of all. I’m also now wondering when and if solitude can drift into loneliness?

One man writes to his estranged wife as though they were still together. Although initially uncompromising in his tone, which I can imagine may have been a factor in their estrangement, he appears unwilling to admit vulnerability.

Another man has manifested success, women and riches. When his career is threatened and his comforts revoked, he drifts towards what could be considered a more sincere form of happiness. But can you ever truly be happy without being totally honest? Is it possible to leave a past version of yourself behind, without ever confessing their existence to those in your future?

The final story is of old lovers, separated passionately, returning to find emotions cannot always be unearthed in their original form. They are drawn to one another, or perhaps they are drawn to the memory of one another?

These tales feel different to the Brian Aldiss novels I’ve read. I’ve previously loved the author for their world building, not their introspective characters or the way they tend to write women, but I can’t help but admire the character building in these pages. This felt like something brief to be savoured and later reflected upon. In summary, I’m really glad picked this up
Profile Image for Faye.
208 reviews
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August 26, 2023
Difficult to rate as I didn't fully get the first story. The second and third quite good, but don't know if I'll remember much of them next week 🤷🏼‍♀️
196 reviews
December 20, 2024
An interesting display of narrative voice captured in stories which were extraordinarily ordinary. I’d recommend to friends.
Profile Image for Monika R. .
16 reviews13 followers
January 26, 2020
"Three Types of Solitude" landed in my e-cart for disappointingly simple reasons: I had a gift card for books, gathered my favorites and still had $3 or so to spare. I skimmed through the Faber Stories selection and decided I was curious to find out what kinds of solitude exist out there, except for those I am already familiar with.

I might be wrong; these short stories are now just a fleeting memory - but I think I found more than three.

There is a man collecting discarded sunsets and keeping them in a golden cage. In addition to that, nobody's answering his letters. Sadness is just happiness in reverse, he says. His solitude is imposed, yet hopeful. There is a world-renowned artist for whom solitude is a personal statement, escape from fame. There is a man and his love Sushla, their words oozing with melancholic solitude, the inevitable aftermath of a romantic history.

Solitude is a great thread, a great topic - if I clung onto it, it probably wouldn't be just a short story. In this case, I also wished it got developed into something more.
Profile Image for bermudianabroad.
671 reviews6 followers
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October 15, 2022
Probably a rather slight selection, but as someone unfamiliar with his work, I felt that I got a little flavour of Aldiss' writing style and I have to say I'm intrigued. More inclined to seek out a longer work of his. I went in with no expectations, but these were surprising: the first story is a kind of genre defying... letter? fable? The second was probably my favourite, deceptively simple and full of sutble feeling. And the last story about old lovers reuniting is a tale as old as time, but with some old school, dated future tech thrown in.
A bitesized hors d'oeuvre rather than anything substantial, but sometimes that's all you want.
Profile Image for Lusionnelle.
186 reviews13 followers
January 21, 2023
Trois micro-nouvelles, beaucoup trop courtes pour véritablement me faire une idée. Je n'en garderai probablement pas un grand souvenir. Ce n'est pas la meilleure porte d'entrée pour découvrir l'auteur, peut-être à lire une fois déjà lu, apprécié, pour en découvrir d'autres facettes.

Three micro-stories way too short to really appreciate it out have a clear idea. I don't really know what to think except that I won't probably remember much of it. Not the best way to discover the author. Probably better to read after having read and appreciate a bunch of his other books to enjoy at its fullest what those stories tell of his writing works.
Profile Image for Guma.
95 reviews2 followers
July 17, 2023
‘How i hate the nature of things!’
-
‘At home, a brook of fresh water flows by our little house. My love for you is like that -always clear, always renewed.’
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‘But what would be the point of it being exactly like the real thing?’
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‘He saw that the other sunsets he had salved were slowly darkening with time, like old newspapers or discarded flags’
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‘You’re pathetic, and your questions are meaningless!’ / ‘How can they be meaningless? My questions are your questions, after all.’
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‘It worries me when you claim you’re sad. You’re like a god to me, you know that? I can’t bear your sadness.’
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‘Time doesn’t pass. That’s just a human myth.’
Profile Image for Sammy.
1,869 reviews17 followers
May 7, 2019
This caught my eye while out book shopping, and was just the perfect length to keep me amused on the bus ride home.

It comprises of three short stories, covering three different relationships, and is competently enough written, but really not much more than that. Some short stories are absolute gems, that you'll remember long after you've read them. These are not like that... I'd forgotten one of them already by the time I got home!
Profile Image for Jonathon Wright.
20 reviews1 follower
April 3, 2019
There is a reason Aldiss remains my favourite science fiction writer. These three short stories demonstrate such craft of a short tale, the structures put in place to tell the stories are ways in which I simply dream to write my own tales similar to some day.

I loved this short bind-up of three stories. I’ll refer back to these in the future, 100%.
Profile Image for Jo.
731 reviews15 followers
May 19, 2019
This series of books is a collection of classic outstanding stories so how would you not rate it 5*? These three stories echo sadness in solitude and yet solitude can be happy. All have a SciFi element and all made me contemplate my own life. That’s a good story! xxx
Profile Image for Stephen Theaker.
Author 92 books63 followers
March 4, 2021
Three stories: a judge sends letters about a plague of wooden men to an estranged wife; an artist finds happiness in simplicity; and two lovers long separated by war compare holograms. All good little stories. The book has no prelim pages, which felt surprisingly disorientating.
283 reviews
April 17, 2023
Three short stories, exploring in each a type of loneliness. I would like each of them to be slightly more in depth as I think they start to explore ideas but don't actually fulfill the potential of them.
Profile Image for eleanor.
846 reviews6 followers
May 14, 2024
the one where three separate, solitary men learn to value human connections

this would have been better if i had read all 3 parts at the same time, but essays got the better of me🙃 i think my favourite was the middle story- i love that his art was humanised
Profile Image for Steph.
179 reviews
May 18, 2024
★ ★ ★ ★ ½

A trio of vignettes that masterfully capture accounts of solitude. Aldiss evokes such vivid emotion in so few lines!

”Time doesn’t pass. That’s just a human myth. Time’s all around us, like some kind of jelly. It’s just human life that passes.”
Profile Image for ashley.
60 reviews5 followers
February 24, 2019
1st story: 3.5 stars
2nd story: 4 stars
3rd story: 2.5 stars
Profile Image for Simon Howard.
711 reviews17 followers
July 21, 2019
These three stories didn't do much for me: science fiction isn't really my thing. I know some people will love them, but they seemed pretty forgettable to me.
7 reviews
April 12, 2020
Short, interesting stories that manage to build a vibrant world quickly. Some lovely imagery and a feel of melancholy appropriate to the title of this trilogy.
Profile Image for Ralph.
150 reviews
November 3, 2020
Short reads and enjoyable on the first reading, I am still left feeling I missed something or didn't grasp the whole picture.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 51 reviews

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