An Exile on Planet Earth

by Aldiss, Brian

• ISBN13: 9781851243730
• ISBN10: 1851243739
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2012-09-01
• Publisher: Bodleian Library

Summary

Although Brian Aldiss cannot be pigeon-holed as a science fiction writer there is no doubt that he is a master of the art of conceiving other worlds. His fertile imagination has created intriguing and often shocking narratives which have become classics of the genre and have also translated into cinema.This collection of his essays, most of which are revised for this volume, is a testimony to the influences behind his writing, showing how the circumstances and events of his childhood are translated into strange metaphors in his novels and stories (the lonely boy playing on the beach in Walcot), how his identification with the 'exile' is a recurring theme throughout his work (it is surely no accident that he was asked to write an introduction to Solzhenitsyn's The Gulag Archipelago), and how a world without children (Greybeard) expressed his grief at the temporary loss of his own children after his first marriage broke up.In these writings we witness the main events of Aldiss's life, and through his honesty and vulnerablity we are able to trace the alliance between incidents in his life and his creative imagination. For the lovers of his many books and poems this volume reveals new insights into the man and his world, giving us a better understanding of his place in the history and literary criticism of science fiction and of his interest in the cultural importance of SF as a genre.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements	p. vi
Publisher's Note	p. vii
Foreword	p. ix
Metaphysical Realism	p. 1
Paradise Square	p. 13
Hothouse	p. 23
A Sight of Serbian Churches	p. 33
Zulu: And a Film that Never Was	p. 57
The Ashgabat Trip	p. 69
'It's the Disorientation I Relish': A revised introduction to The Penguin Science Fiction Omnibus	p. 79
The Gulag Archipelago	p. 95
The Continuing War of the Worlds	p. 113
Thoughts on Science and Civilization	p. 139
Meeting Thomas Hardy	p. 151
Afterword: The Other Hemisphere	p. 165
References	p. 173
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