Brian W. Aldiss by Paul Kincaid

(University of Illinois Press, 2022)

Reviewed by Dev Agarwal

Neither Brian Aldiss nor Paul Kincaid needs any introduction here. These two titanic forces don’t collide so much as combine in critical symbiosis in Kincaid’s analysis of Aldiss’s work, Brian W. Aldiss (2022).

Aldiss was a SFWA Grand Master (in 1999) and inducted into the Science Fiction Hall of Fame in 2004. He won the Nebula and the John W. Campbell Memorial Award, and the Hugo twice. As part of the BSFA’s accepted lore, at one time Brian Aldiss held membership 01 in the Association, so it’s fitting that Kincaid, a voice so central to both science fiction and to the BSFA, should write this key appraisal.

Aldiss (1925 to 2017) had a writing career spanning sixty years and is famed for a range of his works. Mentioning them runs the risk of leaving seminal works out, but obvious highlights include Hothouse (1962), Frankenstein Unbound (1973), The Malacia Tapestry (1976), Brothers of the Head (1977), The Helliconia Trilogy (1982 onwards), and his own critical appraisal of our genre, Billion and Trillion Year Spree (1973 and 1986 respectively).

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Review from BSFA Review 21 - Download your copy here.