Shane’s Comments (group member since Aug 17, 2009)

Shane’s comments from the Brian W. Aldiss Appreciation Group group.

Goodreads tells me that I read The Dark Light Years in June 2008 and gave it 3 stars but I have no recollection of it whatsoever...

Tough to pick one favorite but off the top of my head contenders include:
The Malacia Tapestry
Brothers Of The Head
One or two of the Squire series

Comfort Zone by Brian Aldiss


Publication Dates:
UK: 19 December 2013
Australia: 01 January 2014

A new novel from one of Britain’s best-loved writer, Brian Aldiss OBE, set in and around his home-town of Oxford.

Set in contemporary Oxford, this incisive novel charts the breakdown of a community. A new mosque is to be built – on the site of a derelict pub – and gradually, half-hidden prejudices begin to surface, and relationships between the residents start to sour. Drawing closely on current affairs, this novel investigates what it means to live in a post 7/7 world, where paranoia, prejudice and fear compete with tolerance and diversity.

Finches of Mars is out, there is a limited number of signed copies available here.

Booksquawk have a review and a review.

That old link to the journals doesn't seem to work anymore, but this one does:

http://brianaldiss.co.uk/journals/

http://www.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/news/exile-planet-earth-2012-jan

Published to celebrate the deposit of the Brian Aldiss archive in the Bodleian Library, An Exile on Planet Earth brings together twelve personal and revealing essays by the master of science fiction, offering real insight into his life and work.

This collection of essays, most of which are revised for this volume, is a testimony to the influences behind Brian Aldiss’ writing, showing how the circumstances and events of his childhood are translated into strange metaphors in his novels and stories (the lonely boy playing on the beach in Walcot), how his identification with the ‘exile’ is a recurring theme throughout his work (it is surely no accident that he was asked to write an introduction to Solzhenitsyn’s The Gulag Archipelago), and how a world without children (Greybeard) expressed his grief at the temporary loss of his own children after his first marriage broke up.

As Alan Yentob notes in the foreword, ‘Here we find some brilliant observations and the kind of detail that will delight aficionados of his fiction: ‘Cultivating the wilderness, it’s what a writer does all the while. What we are fills the fictions we tell, often without our realizing it. What one pours out, alone in the room, is much like sessions of psychoanalysis, as one produces things that astonish even oneself.’ For those revelations this is a book well worth reading.’

For the lovers of his many books and poems this volume reveals new insights into the man and his world, giving us a better understanding of his place in the history and literary criticism of science fiction and of his interest in the cultural importance of SF as a genre.

BA tweeted this exciting news yesterday:

HarperCollins imprint The Friday Project has acquired more than 50 titles by prolific author, and former Bookseller columnist, Brian Aldiss.

Publisher Scott Pack bought UK and Commonwealth rights in the titles—comprising literary fiction, sci-fi and non-fiction works—as well as Aldiss—entire short-story archive from Gordon Wise at Curtis Brown. The acquisition also includes six new titles, which The Friday Project plans to publish in e-book and print editions over the next four years.

The first of the six new works to be published will be Finches of Mars, out in September. Aldiss describes it as his "final science-fiction novel". It explores the problems of human colonisation of the red planet when female members of the civilisation are unable to carry babies to full term.

The other new works are All the Planets of the Zodiac, the final novella in the Supertoys series (which was made into the film "AI" by Steven Spielberg); Fortitude, a contemporary novel examining the clash of cultures in Britain; Jocasta, which retells the Oedipus myth; Walcott, an epic family saga spanning the 20th century; and Headless, a new short-story collection.

The reissues will begin in April with the publication of The Squire Quartet, four linked novels, charting life in Britain during the latter part of the Cold War. It follows Thomas Squire as he faces a mid-life crisis.

Or a redesign of the old one.

http://brianaldiss.co.uk/

Appears to be still a work in progress as a lot of the content is not yet there but it looks very nice, I am looking forward to browsing around on there.

New twitter account too!

http://twitter.com/#!/brianaldiss

Just noticed that some extracts from the author's journals are up at http://www.brianwaldiss.org. It seems to be worth a look for anyone with an interest in the man and his writing.

"For a good many years I have been keeping a journal. Originally, it was secret, the volumes locked in a London bank.

Not the Journals have grown into a Project.
All sorts of items are tipped into a volume, illustrations, cuttings and whatever interests me.
Journals are still handwritten in A5 hardbound notebooks.

The series will eventually go to the Bodleian library in my hometown of Oxford. There follow a few pages from volume 65, in the summer of 2009."

http://www.brianwaldiss.org/index.php...

It's a few years since I read it now but I remember loving the sections in which the characters had grown old and were traveling down the river. That was classic stuff and very beautiful. The flashback stuff I was less fond of and I thought those bits and the general approach to mixing up the timeline weakened it a bit overall however the good bits are memorable and quite haunting.

Has anyone seen the film Children of Men or read the book by P. D. James on which it was based? I haven't however the similarities to the Aldiss story are remarkable. Aldiss mentions it (not very flatteringly) himself in his autobiography In The Twinkling of an Eye which is also a very good read.

Yes, pity that forum is inactive. I joined it at some point, i dont think it was ever very busy (much like here) but at least there was a chance of getting some up to date info.

I read Walcot at christmas. I was so excited about it beforehand that i couldnt help but find it a bit of an anti-climax, but having said that I did really enjoy it. Its a bit of an epic in that it covers so much ground, its like a history of the 20th century. I liked the span of it but found that maybe it stretched itself a bit too far at times in the effort to include so much history. One of the things I think he has always done really well is write about ordinary domestic scenes and to place them in contrast to something extra-ordinary. He does it in a lot of the sci-fi too. There was one scene in one of the time-travelly novels (Cryptozoic maybe) in which the main character finds himself in a small poor english village sometime either in the early 20th century or earlier and gets involved with a family in which the mother is pregnant and the father, if i recall correctly, is a ne're-do-well. Appearing in the middle of a sci-fi novel i found it quite surreal and it also added a very down-to-earth humane element. Anyway, theres a good bit of that excellent ordinariness in Walcot. One thing I didn't really like about it was the sci-fi bit.

There's a review of Walcot in todays Guardian. I havent seen too many reviews of this novel so far.

I can now report that Brothers of the Head is excellent, one of my favorite aldiss books possibly.. The rock band freakshow aspect of it is fairly minimal and the rest is quite sad and moving story of an ordinary family who loose out to bad luck. it gets pretty creepy at times too. Its also very short. I would say its probably worth hunting down an illustrated copy, i found one on ebay for €0.80

Some of his short stories are absolutely superb, even if a book of them might be a bit patchy overall. Moment of Eclipse has some amazing ones, as does The Meaning of this Book. I might go so far as to say that he is at his best when the short stories hit the mark.

I found it difficult going too, but it had its moments. My favorite bit was when he got off the ferry in dover from france and saw all the "Gurdjieffian I" variations of himself going their separate ways. My grasp on what was actually happening got a lot more tenuous from there on.

I had mixed feelings about Barefoot in the Head too, parts of it i thought were genius, other bits annoying. I think I read that Finnegan's Wake by Joyce inspired the writing style, but I could be mistaken.

Brothers of the Head is about siamese twins in england who start a rock band. they have a third dormant head which comes to life at some point too. It was made in to a movie a few years ago, it sounds like it might be quite good. I wouldnt like to see it before reading the book though

I just got a copy of this, the illustrated edition. Hope to get reading it tomorrow.

Well, i have no idea, sorry! (havent read Hothouse either)

Just finished HARM. I started off not liking it at all but by about half way through I was sucked in. I enjoyed the dual story-lines, some of the dialogue seemed a bit clumsy in the Earth bits and it wouldnt be one of my favorite Aldiss books but overall its pretty good.

Looks like you weren't altogether convinced. I've been wondering if theres a dip in his later books or not. I havent read many of the ones from the last decade so i cant really comment except that I really enjoyed Super-State and while I thought Walcot was maybe a bit too broad in terms of the plot (trying to encompass everything important that happened in the 20th century) i still really liked the way he wrote it. So, no dip then i suppose!

Not yet, thats next on my list actually, i've been carrying it around with me the last week or two but have been bogged down in another book.