Brian Aldiss

Brian Wilson Aldiss (born August 18, 1925 in Norfolk) is a prolific English author of both general fiction and science fiction. In 1943 he joined the Royal Signals regiment, and saw action in Burma; his encounters with tropical rainforests at that time may have been at least a partial inspiration for his novel Hothouse. After the war, he worked as a bookseller in Oxford. His first book, The Brightfount Diaries, was a collection of fictional pieces he had written for a booksellers journal, about life in a small bookshop. He won a short story competition sponsored by the Observer newspaper in 1955, and became a full-time writer. He was elected President of the British Science Fiction Association in 1960, and was the literary editor of the Oxford Mail newspaper during the 1960s. Around 1964 he started the first ever journal of science fiction criticism, Science Fiction Horizons, which during its brief span published articles and reviews by such authors as James Blish, and featured interviews with C.S. Lewis and William S. Burroughs

Books:

The Brightfount Diaries
Space, Time and Nathaniel (1957 - a collection of his short stories, and his first published science fiction book)
Non-stop - A curious story of a small tribe in a very strange jungle, who make unsettling discoveries about the nature of their world. This was published in the US under a different title, which gives away the basic plot premise, so that title will not be quoted here...
Hothouse (1962) Set in a far future Earth, where the earth has stopped rotating, the Sun has increased output, and plants are engaged in a constant frenzy of growth and decay, like a tropical forest enhanced a thousandfold; a few small groups of humans still live, on the edge of extinction, beneath the giant [banyan]] tree that covers the day side of the earth. Originally published in the Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, the magazine editor actually sought scientific advice about one aspect of the book. He was told that the orbital dynamics involved meant that it was nonsense, but the image of the earth and moon side by side in orbit, shrouded with cobwebs woven by giant vegetable spiders was so outrageous and appealing that he published it anyway. Science fiction fans endorsed this decision, voting it a Hugo Award
The Airs of Earth (1963 - short story collection)
The Dark Light Years (1964)
Space, Time and Nathaniel (short story collection)
Equator
Galaxies like Grains of Sand (short story collection)
Greybeard
The Saliva Tree and othe growths (1966) Story collection. The title story of the collection, The Saliva Tree was written to mark the centenary of H.G. Wells' birth, and received the Nebula award for the best short novel
An Age (1967: also published as Cryptozoic)
Report On Probability A (1968)
Barefoot in the Head (1969)
The Canopy of Time
Earthworks
The Interpreter
The Male Response
The Primal Urge
The Horatio Stubbs saga
- The Hand-Reared Boy
- A Soldier Erect
- A Rude Awakening
Frankenstein Unbound
Brothers of the Head
The Helliconia Trilogy
- Helliconia Spring
- Helliconia Summer
- ??
The 80 minute Hour

Stories:

Other:

Cities and Stones - A traveller's Yugoslavia
Billion Year Spree - a history of science fiction, in which he argues that Mary Shelley's Frankenstein was the first true science fiction novel.
Bury My Heart in W.H. Smiths - an autobiography

Besides his own writings, he has had great success as an anthologist. In 1961 he edited an anthology of reprinted short science fiction for the british paperback publisher Penguin books under the title Penguin Science Fiction. This was remarkably successful, going into numerous reprints, and was followed up by two further anthologies, More Penguin Science Fiction (1963), and Yet More Penguin Science Fiction (1964). The later anthologies enjoyed the same success as the first, and all three were eventually published together in the 1970s as The Penguin Science Fiction Omnibus, which also went into a number of reprints. In the 1970s, he produced several large collections of classic grand-scale science fiction, under the titles Space Opera, Space Odysseys, Galactic empires, and Evil Earths, which were quite successful. Around this time, he edited a large format volume Science Fiction Art, with selections of artwork from the magazines and pulps.

In response to the results from the planetary probes of the 1960s and 1970s, which showed that Venus was completely unlike the hot, tropical jungle usually depicted in science fiction, he and Harry Harrison edited an anthology Farewell, Fantastic Venus!, reprinting stories based on the pre-probe ideas of Venus. He also edited, with Harrison, a series of anthologies The Year's Best Science Fiction (1968-1976?)