Brian W. Aldiss Appreciation Group discussion

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

I've been following this on his site, not SF but it might be interesting. Shame about the forum on his site BTW-its been disabled due to spammers.

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.

Hmmm I wonder if he borrowed the title from the town of Sparcot in Greybeard!