Most Popular Books by Brian W. Aldiss

Twenty-two classic science fiction stories spanning the first three decades of the Science Fiction Grand Master''s career. Features "Super-Toys Last All Summer," the short story that inspired the film A.I. Artificial Intelligence. "Britain''s most versatile and durable and consistently most interesting science-fiction writer presents his own personal ''best of'': 22 splendid tales. . . . To Aldiss, the human dimension has always been more important than hardware or fireworks—which is why his best stories have a timeless quality weaving intelligence, emotion, and inventiveness." — Kirkus Reviews (starred review) Winner of the Hugo and Nebula Awards, Brian W. Aldiss was a science fiction author "in competition with no one but himself" ( The New York Times Book Review). In this collection he shows why, offering up twenty-two stories from the first three decades of his career, encompassing a stunning range of ideas, moods, and styles. In the title story we find a man, recently back from an expedition in space, who lives 3.3077 minutes in the future. A meteor shakes things up in a quiet English town in "The Saliva Tree," an homage to H. G. Wells, and which earned Aldiss the Nebula Award in 1965. A giant lizard-like alien comes to Earth in "Heresies of the Huge God," and while some believe it is a monster, others worship it. A mother tries to connect with her son through the help of a robot intermediary in "Super-Toys Last All Summer." Unhappy with the state of his life, a man ventures back in time to hunt dinosaurs in "Poor Little Warrior!" Robots have an existential crisis in "Who Can Replace a Man?" and men travel to Mars to take a picture of the planet''s tallest volcano in "The Difficulties in Photographing Nix Olympica." Although the stories in this collection were originally published in the 1950s,''60s, ''70s, and ''80s, they remain just as gripping today. Each conveys a fascinating idea for readers to ponder, and together, they make a perfect introduction to one of British science fiction''s greatest authors.

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.

A classic collection of twelve exciting science fiction stories from the Hugo Award–winning author of Non-Stop and Hothouse. "Brian Aldiss is a master of the form." — The Guardian Prepare yourself for an out-of-this-world journey through time and space, in fantastic tales that skirt reality, with Science Fiction Grand Master Brian W. Aldiss at the helm . . . A one-armed mutant travels back in time on a deadly mission. A team of scientists fears what comes next when they land on a peaceful planet littered with alien corpses. Beings from the future need help from the past. A man is forced to relive one meaningless day over and over before a strange audience. A jaded sportsman gets more than he bargained for on his latest big game hunt. A governor is eager to rebuild a war-torn planet but may not be prepared for the cost . . . Originally published in 1959, No Time Like Tomorrow showcases the skills of a gifted author at the dawn of his career.

A novel of time-traveling adventure from the author of the story "Supertoys Last All Summer Long," the basis for the movie A.I.: Artificial Intelligence. Winner of two Hugo Awards, one Nebula Award, and named a Grand Master by the Science Fiction Writers of America, Brian W. Aldiss challenged readers'' minds for over fifty years with literate, thought-provoking, and inventive science fiction. In the year 2093, human consciousness has expanded to the point that man can now travel to the past using a technique called "mind-traveling." Artist Edward Bush returns from a nearly three-year mind-travel to find that his government has crumbled and society is now under the leadership a new regime. Given Bush''s experience, he is recruited by the regime to track down and assassinate a scientist whose ideas threaten to topple everything they''ve built. This ebook includes an introduction by the author.

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.

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

A civilization crumbles as its planet hurtles away from its star in the final chapter of this "monumental" epic from the Grand Master of Science Fiction ( The Times, London). After many centuries, the flowering of human civilization has begun to dwindle again and the Great Year slowly progresses while the long, deadly cold winter looms—but a break in the long, repeating cycles of growth and decay may result from the long-ago visit of the Earthman. New legends of the spring and summer have evolved and a new future may be aborning. More than thirty years after the original publication of Helliconia Spring, the first volume of the Helliconia Trilogy, the series is newly available, now with a map, an afterword, and an introduction by the author.

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."

Fourth in the acclaimed Squire Quartet—from the author of "Supertoys Last All Summer Long," the basis for the movie A.I.: Artificial Intelligence. Architectural historian Roy Burnell has been tasked with traveling the globe and listing architectural gems in danger of being destroyed. But when Burnell is in Budapest, ten years of his memory, mostly his architectural knowledge and sexual experiences, are stolen. In this near-future, thieves using EMV ("e-mnemonicvision") sell memories on the black market. In the wake of this event, Burnell tries to resume his life, while also searching for the "bullet" that will restore his memory. Winner of two Hugo Awards, one Nebula Award, and named a Grand Master by the Science Fiction Writers of America, Brian W. Aldiss challenged readers'' minds for over fifty years with literate, thought-provoking, and inventive science fiction. "Aldiss weaves these thoughts into a delightful and sometimes harrowing story, proving once again that science fiction can illuminate vital matters of the present as effectively as any genre." — Publishers Weekly This ebook includes an introduction by the author.

In the far future, a group of evolved utopians stranded on an inhospitable planet are unable to resist the reemergence of the human animal One million years in the future, the universe has become a utopia for the humans inhabiting it. Having evolved into the race homo uniformis—"man alike throughout"—they share a centralized nervous system and know nothing of war, disease, violence, emotion, or any of the ancient ills that plagued their ancestors. But while en route to a vacation that is light years from Earth, a small group of elite travelers find themselves marooned in the wilderness of the planet Lysenka. And they are not alone. Many millennia ago, during Earth''s darker days, human colonists came to this regenerate world, and the creatures their descendants became out of necessity bear little resemblance to the uniquely civilized beings now stranded in their midst. Here, in this place far removed from the protection of uniformity, there is only one rule: Adapt—or die. One of the twentieth century''s premier practitioners of the art of science fiction, Grand Master Brian W. Aldiss offers readers a startling look into the far future with a remarkable work of speculation that explores what it means to be human.

In this satirical science fiction classic, a new technology promises to help British subjects find love—and threatens to destroy the empire. In the years following World War II, a new day has risen in Great Britain. A mechanical marvel has arrived to free society from the shackles of prudish Victorian morality and neo-Freudianism. The Emotion Register, a coin-shaped device, attaches to the forehead and emits a soft pink glow when the wearer experiences sexual attraction. Now the British can no longer deny that sex exists—and the government is insisting everyone undergo the procedure to get the device. Much of the population, including young Jimmy Solent, embraces the Emotion Registers. The gadget gives them a new lease on life. Meanwhile others refuse, seeing the marvel as an invasion of privacy. And so, another conflict begins on British soil. Fortunately, the stakes are far lower and much more hilarious . . . A satire on sexual reserve set in an alternate world, The Primal Urge was first published in 1961. Although the novel was initially banned in Ireland, Brian W. Aldiss still went on to become a Grand Master of Science Fiction.

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

The Hugo and Nebula Award–winning author and Science Fiction Grand Master delivers a sweeping epic of a planet suffering deadly conditions of alternating extremes in this Nebula Award finalist Helliconia follows an eccentric orbit around a double-star system with a twenty-six-hundred-year cycle of very long seasons. As spring slowly breaks the brutally long winter, humans emerge from hiding and a long sequence of civilization and growth begins to repeat again, unbeknownst to the participants but watched by an orbiting satellite station, Avernus, created by Earth some centuries ago. Humans free themselves from slavery to the aboriginal Phagors, and religion and science flower and expand. Brian W. Aldiss has, for more than fifty years, continued to challenge readers'' minds with literate, thought-provoking, and inventive fiction. Helliconia Spring''s prescience with regard to climate change is nothing short of extraordinary.

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.

War is humanity''s only hope. " Aldiss'' dark vision of collapsing society and withering earth is poignant and brutal . . . [a] richly detailed world" (Science Fiction Ruminations). In a future where the Earth has been savaged by overpopulation and over‐farming, robots are considered more valuable than humans and sand must be altered to create artificially fertile soil. Ex‐convict Knowle Noland, the hallucinating sea captain of the Trieste Star, finds himself wrapped up in a plot to incite a global war that will wipe out millions. War, it seems, is the only way to drastically reduce the population and create a better world for those who survive.

Travel through time and space with fourteen remarkable science fiction stories from the early career of an award-winning Grand Master of the genre. "The stories in this collection are some of Aldiss'' earliest stories and it''s amazing how little they have lost through the years. . . . Well worth picking up." — Science Fiction Book Reviews A father communicates with his unborn son to warn him of impending dangers . . . On the fringes of a galaxy waits a machine inhabited by a terrifying being with one mission: to destroy a planet in our solar system . . . A man is condemned to live a routine from which he cannot deviate, all before a live audience who eerily find humor in the strangest of his actions . . . A time traveler is recruited to voyage many thousands of years into the future to rescue mutated beings known as "the Failed Men" by digging them up from their graves . . . These stories and more await readers in Space, Time, and Nathaniel. Originally published in 1957, this collection marked Brian W. Aldiss''s entry into science fiction. He would become a pioneer in the genre''s British New Wave style with experimental tales such as these, exploring the vastness of outer space and the unknown realms of human nature.

An unending chain of surveillance crosses countless dimensions in this brilliant, disturbing, and groundbreaking "antinovel" by one of science fiction''s greatest practitioners Mr. Mary and his wife are being observed from at least three vantage points as they go about their mundane home lives. G, the former gardener, watches them from a garden shed. Mr. Mary''s dismissed secretary, S, watches them from the top room of a brick outhouse in the back. The chauffeur, C, who no longer drives, watches the Marys from the garage. Each observer must file a report with his superiors in another continuum, pausing in his surveillance only long enough to eat identical meals alone at the deserted café across the street. But the watchers are themselves being observed by others who are, in turn, being watched across vast and infinite dimensional planes in an attempt to unravel the mysteries of the world known as Probability A. This brilliant, experimental work by Grand Master Brian W. Aldiss is a perplexing and devastatingly haunting masterwork of speculative fiction, considered by many to be the greatest work in the long, prolific career of a true giant of the genre. Thought-provoking, confounding, and stylistically brilliant, Report on Probability A will burn its way into the reader''s mind and memory.

The Grand Master of Science Fiction''s "monumental" epic continues as Helliconia nears its larger star—and a strange visitor joins its civilization ( The Times, London). A handful of centuries on, Helliconia is close to the larger star in its binary system, and the Phagors have been driven into exile, but conflicting religions and hostility to science keep human civilization fragmented and constantly fighting wars over petty power and fertile land as a plague devastates populations. However, everything changes when a secret visitor from the observer satellite from Earth accepts a slow death in order to visit the planet and spend his time in the sunlight and open air. More than thirty years after the original publication of Helliconia Spring, the first volume of the Helliconia Trilogy, the series is newly available, now with a map, an afterword, and an introduction by the author.

A breathtaking vision of a utopian future on Mars by one of science fiction''s most renowned authors In the middle decades of the twenty-first century, the corporate powers on Earth have established a thriving colony on Mars as an alternative to life on the overpopulated, war-torn, ecologically ravaged home planet. But when the economy of EUPACUS—Earth''s collective industrialized nations—collapses, all contact between the two worlds abruptly ceases, and the Martian pioneers are left to fend for themselves. Led by Tom Jeffries, a philosopher and a visionary, the colonists now face a twofold challenge: No longer supported and subsidized by Earthbound interests, they must somehow form a working planetary alliance to create a new society based firmly in freedom and fairness for all while at the same time eliminating war, hunger, hatred, environmental abuse, and other former scourges of humanity. But first and foremost, they must survive. Brian W. Aldiss, a Hugo and Nebula Award–winning Grand Master of Science Fiction, presents a vision for the future that is startling, uplifting, and endlessly exciting. Written in collaboration with noted mathematician and physicist Roger Penrose—and with essential input from international law expert Laurence Lustgarten—Aldiss''s remarkable White Mars opens a window onto a relentlessly thrilling and gloriously possible tomorrow.