Science Fiction maestro Brian Aldiss at the top of his writing powers in a rare foray into literary fiction. With a sparse elegance, Aldiss crafts a heart-breaking, heart-fixing novella delving into ideas of selfhood and human connection. Published in beautiful new collector's livery. 'The best contemporary writer of science fiction.' Guardian Hugh Billing is sad. After making his fortune in the music industry decades ago, for years Hugh has been drifting. Shuttling between the US and UK on business, his life has become a testament to monotony. With every trip through customs he becomes more customary. With every departure he seems to leave a little more behind. But when his mother's death returns him to London, Hugh draws just enough hope and courage to travel on a different journey; from loneliness and loss of purpose through to somewhere beyond just survival. Writing at the height of his powers and with a sparse elegance, Aldiss departs from science fiction to craft a...

The centuries-long winter of the Great Year on Helliconia is upon us, and the Oligarch is taking harsh measures to ensure the survival of the people of the bleak Northern continent of Sibornal. Behind the battle with which the novel opens lies an act of unparalleled treachery. But the plague is coming on the wings of winter and the Oligarch’s will is set against it—and against the phagors, humanity’s ancient enemies, who carry the plague with them.

The second volume in the acclaimed Squire Quartet, available for the first time as an ebook.Spanning fifty years and three continents -- from pre-war Suffolk, to the Far East in the 1940s, to Oxford and America in the present day -- Forgotten Life is a novel of immense scope, encompassing comedy and tragedy, joy and grief, as its three main characters try to work out the most difficult problem of all -- the meaning of their own lives.Brian says: 'This novel, which in retrospect can be seen to have a similar ground plan to Non-Stop, written thirty years earlier, was more warmly received than any other Aldiss novel, not simply by its reviewers but by readers.'Features a new introduction by the author.

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 50's. 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. With a New Introduction from the Author! "When is science fiction not science fiction? The answer must be: When it becomes too frighteningly believable. This is.î - Sacramento Bee

For the first time ever all three Horatio Stubbs novels in one volume.An omnibus edition of the groundbreaking sex comedies that together form the Horatio Stubbs Trilogy.Following our hero from schoolboy through to soldier and on to his 40s, these books were highly shocking when they were first published in the 1970s but are now viewed as landmark novels.Contains The Hand-Reared Boy, A Soldier Erect and A Rude Awakening.

The Sun is about to go Nova. Earth and Moon have ceased their axial rotation and present one face continuously to the sun. The bright side of Earth is covered with carnivorous forest. This is the Age of vegetables. Gren and his lady - not to mention the tummybelly men - journey to the even more terrifying Dark side. One of Aldiss' most famous and long-enduring novels, fast moving, packed with brilliant imagery.

Written at the peak of the swinging sixties, this is an ironic, hilarious and frank investigation of sexual politics and the male sex drive. The Brian Aldiss collection includes over 50 books and spans the author's entire career, from his debut in 1955 to his more recent work. Events move fast in Umbalathorp, the capital city of the new African republic of Goya. When affable young PR man Soames Noyes arrives fresh off the boat from England to deliver the city's first computer, he finds himself swept up in a current of women, witch-doctors and promiscuity. Soon the indecisive Soames is saying goodbye to inhibition and hello to a new sexual politics.

This is the first volume of the Helliconia Trilogy— a monumental sage which goes beyond anything yet created by this master among today’s imaginative writers. An entire solar system is revealed, and with it a world disturbingly reflecting our own, Helliconia: an Earth-like planet where dynasties change with the seasons. Events and characters and animals stream across the pages of this gigantic novel. Cosmic in scope, it keeps an eye lovingly on the humans involved. So the 5,000 inhabitants of the Earth’s observation station above Helliconia keep their eyes trained on the events of Oldorando and may long to intervene though the dangers are too great. So we on Earth have them all in our vision in one of the most consuming and magnificent novels of scientific romance. Won BSFA Award for Best Novel in 1982. Won John W. Campbell Memorial Award in 1983. Nominated for the Nebula Award for Best Novel in 1983. Note: British spelling.

A Theban adventure from the master of Science-Fiction, here proving himself adept at imagining historical worlds. Part of the Brian Aldiss Collection. In Jocasta, Aldiss brings vividly to life the ancient world of dreaming Thebes: a world of sun-drenched landscapes, golden dust, sphynxes, Furies, hermaphroditic philosophers, ghostly apparitions and ambivalent gods. Jocasta is also a strikingly effective contemplation of an older world order where the human mind is still struggling to understand itself and the nature of the world around it.

This new edition of Brian Aldiss's classic anthology brings together a diverse selection of science fiction spanning over sixty years, from Isaac Asimov's 'Nightfall', first published in 1941, to the 2006 story 'Friends in Need' by Eliza Blair. Including authors such as Clifford Simak, Harry Harrison, Bruce Sterling, A. E. Van Vogt and Brian Aldiss himself, these stories portray struggles against machines, epic journeys, genetic experiments, time travellers and alien races. From stories set on Earth, to uncanny far distant worlds and ancient burnt-out suns, the one constant is humanity itself, compelled by an often fatal curiosity to explore the boundless frontiers of time, space and probability.

An exciting anthology of science fiction adventures on alien planets, edited by Brian W. Aldiss. The contents are: Introduction, Brian W. Aldiss; How Are They All on Deneb IV?, C. C. Shackleton; Mouth of Hell, David I. Masson; Brightside Crossing, Alan E. Nourse; The Monster, A. E. van Vogt,; The Monsters, Robert Sheckley; Grenville's Planet, Michael Shaara; Beachhead ["You'll Never Go Home Again"], Clifford D. Simak; The Ark of James Carlyle, Cherry Wilder; On the River, Robert F. Young; Goddess in Granite, Robert F. Young; The Seekers, E. C. Tubb; When the People Fell, Cordwainer Smith; The Titan, P. Schuyler Miller; Four in One, Damon Knight; The Age of Invention, Norman Spinrad; The Snowmen, Frederik Pohl; Schwartz Between the Galaxies, Robert Silverberg; Afterword, Brian W. Aldiss

A story charting the events of the twentieth century through the eyes of the Fielding family, whose fortunes are altered irrevocably... The Brian Aldiss collection includes over 50 books and spans the author's entire career, from his debut in 1955 to his more recent work. On the glorious sands of the North Norfolk coast, Steve, the youngest member of the Fielding family, plays alone. But are these halcyon days? War is looming, and things will never be the same again. This book, described by Brian as his magnum opus, charts the fortunes of the Fielding family throughout the twentieth century.