It has been a while since I read his “Trillion Year Spree”, but I
would respectfully submit that Aldiss may very well have made his case for the
essential nature of science fiction in making and moving on the modern world.
It is difficult to think of another genre so relevant, and at the
same time (in its various forms) so popular and influential. I think he did
much to point out the debt we owe the revolutionary authors like Mary Shelley
(Frankenstein), and the hot-housing role of science-fiction short stories in
incubating new (or reheated) ideas.
Brian Aldiss championed SF to the world outside, and occasionally
gave those of us who were a little bit . . . insular . . . the ticking-off we
deserved. He was part of the community in a good way, attending sf conventions,
always approachable, and being the life and soul of the party but always
producing books and criticism which challenged us. You could never quite
predict what the next Aldiss novel would be, but you always knew there would be
something to think about. He was a remarkable man. Even though he received an
OBE and an honorary doctorate for "services to literature", I suspect
he would have been much more successful in "critical" terms if he had
jettisoned science fiction, and he would have been more successful in the sf
world if he had buckled down to churn out identikit trilogies. "His work
is still [in a sense] to be discovered." Yes, that's correct. It was wide,
various, and deep. But those of us who discovered even a part of it are
grateful to have done so.
Thank you, Brian.
Between Brian's own stories and his edited anthologies, (among
others, e.g. Harlan Ellison, Phil Dick, Alfred Bester) new ways of processing
the world were welcomed by me when I first discovered him back in the early
'70s. The ground was also prepared for more left-field SF such as Iain M.
Banks. Not that there are any second hand bookshops left around here anymore,
(when they used to be a reliable way to browse and discover on a wet afternoon
almost anywhere. Charity shops with a half-hearted shelf of TV related titles
seem to have supplanted them), but I was able to get a Kindle copy of “The
Brightfount Diaries”. I imagine that back when I first read it, such a thing
might have seemed like science fiction. Having said that an ability to suspend
critical judgement is key to the enjoyment of reading, I will also say that the
books that remain with you are the ones that have greater psychological
reality.
Ray Bradbury has faded, but James Blish grows stronger; Harlan
Ellison was a flash-bang, and all we smell is stale cordite; The work of Phil
Dick lingers like a bad dream; Philip Jose Farmer ages like H. G. Wells, but
Asimov is unreadable now; David Brin is a low profile Arthur C. Clarke; Larry
Niven wears bell bottoms, but may come into fashion again; Iain M. Banks big
thinking feels as if it wasn't thought through, a half vision undone by
plotting, half glimpsed.
And so it goes...
RIP Brian, your works made your mark on me and many others, and will
continue to do so. Always an engaging writer. I notice I only seem to have “Last
Orders” and “The Brightfount Diaries” on my shelf now. I think I must have
liberated the other dozen or so. And good for them, they're meant to be read,
not collect dust and tobacco film.
SF = Speculative Fiction.
