Brian Wilson Aldiss

Brian Wilson Aldiss, born in 1925, English writer, well known for his works of science fiction and for his advocacy of the establishment of science fiction as a literary genre. Aldiss was born in East Dereham, Norfolk, in eastern England, and moved to Devon, in southwestern England, when he was 12 years of age. He was educated at various public schools before he served with the British army in East Asia between 1943 and 1947. While working as a bookseller in Oxford from 1947 to 1956, Aldiss wrote his first book, The Brightfount Diaries (1955). His first work of science fiction was Non-Stop (1958). During the 1960s he was associated with another English science-fiction writer, Michael Moorcock, and his New Worlds magazine. Aldiss’s work of this period is characterized by innovative literary techniques and open treatment of sex as a theme. His novel Hothouse (1962) won a Hugo Award, given by the World Science Fiction Society.

During the 1970s, Aldiss explored the experiences of a young soldier in Burma (now known as Myanmar) in a collection of novels entitled The Horatio Stubbs Saga. With Frankenstein Unbound (1973), he acknowledged the contribution made to science fiction by the novel Frankenstein (1818) written by English author Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley. In Moreau’s Other Island (1980), Aldiss similarly invoked The Island of Dr. Moreau (1896) by English author H. G. Wells. The Helliconia sequence (1982-1985) is an epic trilogy encompassing the history of an entire planetary system.

Aldiss edited dozens of anthologies and a critical journal entitled Science Fiction Horizons. His book reviews appeared in the Times Literary Supplement, the Guardian, and the Washington Post. His history of science fiction appeared as Billion Year Spree (1973) and later in an updated edition as Trillion Year Spree (1986). The motion picture Artificial Intelligence: AI (2001), written and directed by Steven Spielberg, was based on an Aldiss science-fiction story “Supertoys Last All Summer Long.”

Aldiss brought out two works of autobiography in the late 1990s: The Twinkling of an Eye (1998) and When the Feast Is Finished (1999). He returned to the novel in the early 2000s with The Cretan Teat (2002), a contemporary story of corruption, and Super-State (2002), which takes place in the European Union 50 years in the future.