Brian Aldiss: Greybeard

“They can be taught not to fear us,” Greybeard said absently. “After that vital lesson, we should be able to give them plenty of help.”

“Of course it must be as you say. But they’re virtually a new race — perhaps ideally they should not be taught not to fear us,” Martha said. She laid a hand across his shoulder as she rose.

Greybeard chewed over the implications of that remark as he watched her walk forward. She bent over the improvised stretcher, smiling as she began gently to change young Arthur’s bandage. For a minute her husband looked at her, her hands, her face, and at the child solemnly staring up into her eyes.

Then he turned his head, resting one hand on his rifle as with the other he shaded his brow and pretended to gaze ahead at the horizon where the hills were.

Brian Aldisswas born in 1925. During the Second World War he served in the Royal Signals in Burma and Sumatra. In 1948 he was demobilised and became an assistant in an Oxford bookshop. His first published SF novel was Non-Stop , published in 1958.

By 1962 he had already won an award for his series of novellas collectively known as Hothouse , and during the 1960s he wrote some of his most famous novels: Greybeard (1964), Report on Probability A (1968) and Barefoot in the Head: A European Fantasia (1969). In addition, The Saliva Tree (1965) won the Nebula award for best novella. He continued his prolific output throughout the 1970s but achieved his greatest acclaim in the 1980s for the three massively researched novels Helliconia Spring (1982), Helliconia Summer (1983) and Helliconia Winter (1985), the first of which won the John W. Campbell Memorial Award.

He subsequently turned his attention to straight fiction focusing on aspects of his own life (such as Forgotten Life (1988)) or autobiography (Bury My Heart at W.H. Smith’s: A Writing Life (1990) and The Twinkling of an Eye or My Life as an Englishman (1998)) before returning to SF.

Throughout his writing career, Aldiss has been both an anthologist and a critic, involved in both the Penguin Science Fiction and The Year’s Best SF series. Both Billion Year Spree (1973) and its expanded follow-up Trillion Year Spree (1986) are considered classic surveys of SF. The latter won a Hugo Award in 1987.

He has also worked as a reviewer and essayist, writing for the Times Literary Supplement , the Guardian , and the Washington Post . In 2001, his short story Super-Toys Last All Summer Long was the basis for the Steven Spielberg film A.I. Artificial Intelligence .

Aldiss was awarded an OBE for services to literature in 2005. He currently lives in Oxford.

The Brightfount Diaries (1955)

Non-Stop (1958)

Bow Down to Nul (1960)

The Primal Urge (1961)

The Male Response (1961)

Hothouse (1962)

The Dark Light Years (1964)

Greybeard (1964)

Earthworks (1965)

An Age (1967)

Report on Probability A (1968)

Barefoot in the Head: A European Fantasia (1969)

The Hand-Reared Boy (1970)

A Soldier Erect (1971)

Frankenstein Unbound (1973)

The Eighty Minute Hour: A Space Opera (1974)

The Malacia Tapestry (1976)

Brothers of the Head (1977)

A Rude Awakening (1978)

Enemies of the System: A Tale of Homo Unifomis (1978)

Moreau’s Other Island (1980)

Life in the West (1980)

Helliconia Spring (1982)

Helliconia Summer (1983)

Helliconia Winter (1985)

The Year Before Yesterday (1987)

Ruins (1987)

Forgotten Life (1988)

Dracula Unbound (1991)

Remembrance Day (1993)

Somewhere East of Life (1994)

White Mars Or, The Mind Set Free (with Roger Penrose) (1999)

Super-State (2002)

The Cretan Teat (2002)

Affairs at Hampden Ferrers (2004)

Sanity and the Lady (2005)

Jocasta (2006)

HARM (2007)

Space, Time and Nathaniel (Presciences) (1957)

No Time Like Tomorrow (1959)

The Canopy of Time (1959)

Galaxies Like Grains of Sand (1960)

The Airs of Earth (1963)

Best Science Fiction Stories of Brian W. Aldiss (1965)

The Saliva Tree and Other Strange Growths (1966)

Intangible Inc. (1969)

The Moment of Eclipse (1970)

The Book of Brian Aldiss (1972)

Last Orders and Other Stories (1977)

New Arrivals, Old Encounters (1979)

Seasons in Flight (1984)

The Magic of the Past (1987)

Best SF Stories of Brian W. Aldiss (1988)

Science Fiction Blues (1988)

A Romance of the Equator: Best Fantasy Stories (1989)

A Tupelov Too Far (1994)

The Secret of This Book (1995)

Common Clay (1996)

Super-Toys Last All Summer Long and Other Stories of Future Time (2001)

Cultural Breaks (2005)

The Shape of Further Things (1970)

Billion Year Spree (1973)

Science Fiction Art (1975)

Science Fiction Art (1976)

Science Fiction as Science Fiction (1978)

The World and Nearer Ones (1979)

The Pale Shadow of Science (1985)

…And the Lurid Glare of the Comet (1986)

Trillion Year Spree (1986)

Bury My Heart at W.H. Smith’s: A Writing Life (1990)

The Detached Retina (1995)

The Twinkling of an Eye or My Life as an Englishman (1998)

When the Feast is Finished (with Margaret Aldiss) (1999)

Art after Apogee: The Relationships between an Idea, a Story, a Painting (with Rosemary Phipps) (2000)