Non-Stop

Non-Stop PDF

Author: Brian W. Aldiss

Publisher: Open Road Media

Published: 2020-10-13

Total Pages: 243

ISBN-13: 1504064046

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A “brilliant . . . classic of the field” generation ship adventure from the Golden Age of Science Fiction by the author of the Helliconia Trilogy (Encyclopedia of Science Fiction). Non-Stop is Grand Master of Science Fiction and Hugo and Nebula Award–winning author Brian W. Aldiss’s debut novel. Written in response to Robert Heinlein’s Orphans of the Sky and published in the late 1950s, it is set in a primitive world, home to tribes of inhabitants who endure their harsh and stunted lives in a maze of corridors. Though legends exist that they’re actually on a ship traveling through the universe, no one really believes it. But that conviction doesn’t stop a group of people from embarking on a mission to find the rumored “Forwards” section and its control room. Through a tangled, hydroponic jungle, they’ll encounter telepathic animals, giants, outcasts, and mutants in an epic race to uncover the truth—and survive . . . “A breakneck ride filled with some truly disturbing and chaotic imagery . . . Aldiss’ world is visceral and powerful.” —Science Fiction and Other Suspect Ruminations “Worth reading, and quite a significant contribution to the long SF history of generation ship novels.” —SF Site Praise for Brian W. Aldiss “A major figure in world SF . . . Whatever else Aldiss may be, predictable he is not.” —The Guardian “One of the most influential—and one of the best—SF writers Britain has ever produced.” —Iain M. Banks, award-winning author of the Culture series “One of the most important SF writers of the 20th century.” —Publishers Weekly

Hothouse

Hothouse PDF

Author: Brian W. Aldiss

Publisher: Open Road Media

Published: 2015-05-19

Total Pages: 228

ISBN-13: 1504010353

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A Hugo Award–winning classic about a far-future Earth dominated by gargantuan plants and the few humans who remain Millions of years beyond our time, our Earth has long since stopped spinning—and giant flora have taken over the sunlit half of the motionless world. Here humans are among the very few animal species that still exist, struggling to survive against enormous odds, but they have become small and weak, and their numbers have dwindled to almost nothing. When the aging leader of Gren’s tribe decrees it is time for the old ones to go “Up,” the younger are left to make their own way below. Although the journey will not be an easy one for young Gren, he sets off on an odyssey across a perilous world populated by carnivorous plants and other evolved vegetation. But any knowledge to be gained at the terminator—the forbidding boundary between the day world and the night—might well prove worthless for the boy and the companions he amasses along the way when the expanding sun goes nova and their Earth is no more. A thrilling parable of courage, discovery, and survival, Hothouse is among Grand Master Brian W. Aldiss’s most beloved and enduring works. Ingeniously inventive, richly detailed, and breathtakingly lush and vibrant, the doomed world and people that Aldiss creates will live forever in the minds of all those who enter this remarkable realm.

Brian W. Aldiss

Brian W. Aldiss PDF

Author: Paul Kincaid

Publisher: University of Illinois Press

Published: 2022-07-12

Total Pages: 282

ISBN-13: 0252053478

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Brian W. Aldiss wrote classic science fiction novels like Report on Probability A and Hothouse. Billion Year Spree, his groundbreaking study of the field, defined the very meaning of SF and delineated its history. Yet Aldiss’s discomfort with being a guiding spirit of the British New Wave and his pursuit of mainstream success characterized a lifelong ambivalence toward the genre. Paul Kincaid explores the many contradictions that underlay the distinctive qualities of Aldiss’s writing. Wartime experiences in Asia and the alienation that arose upon his return to the cold austerity of postwar Britain inspired themes and imagery that Aldiss drew upon throughout his career. He wrote of prolific nature overwhelming humanity, believed war was madness even though it provided him with the happiest period of his life, and found parallels in the static lives of Indian peasants and hidebound English society. As Kincaid shows, contradictions created tensions that fueled the metaphorical underpinnings of Aldiss's work and shaped not only his long career but the evolution of postwar British science fiction.

Greybeard

Greybeard PDF

Author: Brian W. Aldiss

Publisher: Open Road Media

Published: 2014-04-01

Total Pages: 244

ISBN-13: 1497608260

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Human reproduction has ceased and society slowly spirals in this “adult Lord of the Flies” by a Grand Master of Science Fiction (San Francisco Chronicle). After the “Accident,” all males on Earth become sterile. Society ages and falls apart bit by bit. First, toy companies go under. Then record companies. Then cities cease to function. Now Earth’s population lives in spread‐out, isolated villages, with its youngest members in their fifties. When the people of Sparcot begin to make claims of gnomes and man‐eating rodents lurking around their village, Greybeard and his wife set out for the coast with the hope of finding something better.

Frankenstein Unbound

Frankenstein Unbound PDF

Author: Brian W. Aldiss

Publisher: Open Road Media

Published: 2015-05-19

Total Pages: 153

ISBN-13: 1504010361

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A disruption of time and space sends a modern man back two hundred years to confront Dr. Frankenstein’s immortal monster in this brilliant reinvention of Mary Shelley’s classic tale Some years into the twenty-first century, a newly devised weapon of mass destruction will do far worse than kill; it will disrupt time and space. Suddenly, land, buildings, animals, and people are falling through “timeslips” and being transported briefly back to earlier eras. One of these inadvertent time travelers, Joe Bodenland, is shocked when he finds himself parked outside a villa on the shore of Lake Geneva—and soon after, unbelievably, in the presence of nineteenth-century literary luminaries Lord Byron and Percy Shelley, along with Shelley’s very enticing fiancée, budding author Mary. But when Joe comes face to face with a real, flesh-and-blood Victor Frankenstein and the monster the mad doctor brought into this world, the visitor from the future realizes that not only has time been disrupted, reality itself has been transmogrified. And this Frankenstein, it seems, is far from finished with his unholy endeavors, leaving it up to Joe to make it right for the sake of history—and for the bewitching lady novelist who has stolen his heart—before he is rudely thrust back to his own time. An absolutely stunning reinvention of a cherished literary classic, Frankenstein Unbound proves once more that there are no limits to the unparalleled creative genius of science fiction Grand Master W. Brian Aldiss, one of the most revered names in the field of speculative fiction.

Cryptozoic!

Cryptozoic! PDF

Author: Brian Aldiss

Publisher: Faber & Faber

Published: 2009-06-04

Total Pages: 188

ISBN-13: 0571253121

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'The human consciousness had now widened so alarmingly, was so busy transforming everything on Earth into its own peculiar tones, that no art could exist that did not take proper cognisance of the fact. Something entirely new had to be forged.' The time traveller Bush's adventure takes him through 1930, 1851, the Jurassic and 2093, on the way exploring a modern crisis that remains our own. In Brian Aldiss's tale of time travel, the fiction is once again as psychologically imaginative as it is scientific, an idiosyncrasy of Aldiss's future visions that, over time, have proven remarkably prescient.

Super-State

Super-State PDF

Author: Brian W. Aldiss

Publisher: Open Road Media

Published: 2015-05-19

Total Pages: 175

ISBN-13: 1504010302

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A wildly satirical look at life—and death—in the near-future, not-quite-unified superstate that was once the continent of Europe Welcome to the future European Super-State—one continent united into a not-quite-homogenous whole. Numerous historic happenings and technological advances have ushered us to this new age of solidarity and prosperity, though it’s true that some of the past’s annoying problems still linger: global warming, terrorism, war, rape, murder, Alzheimer’s disease, environmental catastrophe. Despite all the advances of this brave new tomorrow, it seems people haven’t changed one bit. The rich, beautiful, and celebrated still revel in their outrageous excesses. The government still stumbles about its business of governing while presidential assassins blithely go about theirs. As before, we gaze toward the stars with wonderment, and even now the brave crew of the spaceship Roddenberry is approaching Jupiter’s moon, Europa, ready to make first contact with members of a very tasty alien race. Back on Earth, the Insanatics, our digital conscience, attempt to keep us honest as we love, lie, covet, cheat, and watch our best-laid plans go predictably haywire—and the android slaves we keep locked away overnight in cupboards exchange perplexed reflections on the myriad foibles of their human masters. One of the most acclaimed and accomplished science fiction writers of the twentieth century, Grand Master Brian W. Aldiss offers a colorful tapestry of what’s to come in his thoughtful and savagely funny take on the shape of tomorrow. Aldiss has seen the future . . . and it is ridiculous.

Supertoys Last All Summer Long

Supertoys Last All Summer Long PDF

Author: Brian W. Aldiss

Publisher: Macmillan

Published: 2001-06-27

Total Pages: 263

ISBN-13: 0312280610

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A collection of science fiction tales, including the story of a robot boy who wants nothing more than to be loved by his parents.

Barefoot in the Head

Barefoot in the Head PDF

Author: Brian W. Aldiss

Publisher: Open Road Media

Published: 2014-04-01

Total Pages: 334

ISBN-13: 1497608031

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A new savior emerges from a drugged-out dystopia in “the most ambitious psychedelic sci-fi novel of the era” from the Science Fiction Grand Master (Conceptual Fiction). The earth is recovering from the Acid Head War, in which hallucinogenic chemicals were the primary weapon. Many humans are now suffering from delusions and are unable to tell the real from the imaginary. When a man named Colin Charteris tries to make sense of the drugged-out world, he is taken as the new messiah. As he descends into paranoid visions, he begins to believe this himself.

The Dark Light Years

The Dark Light Years PDF

Author: Brian W. Aldiss

Publisher: Open Road Media

Published: 2014-04-01

Total Pages: 192

ISBN-13: 1497608147

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A strange alien species forces us to question our definition of civilization in this biting satire from the Grand Master of Science Fiction. What would intelligent life‐forms on another planet look like? Would they walk upright? Would they wear clothes? Or would they be hulking creatures on six legs that wallow in their own excrement? Upon first contact with the Utod— intelligent, pacifist beings who feel no pain—mankind instantly views these aliens as animals because of their unhygienic customs. This leads to the slaughter, capture, and dissection of the Utod. But when one explorer recognizes the intelligence behind their habits, he must reevaluate what it actually means to be “intelligent.”