Brian Aldiss
Brian Aldiss
Brian Wilson Aldiss, OBEis an English writer and anthologies editor, best known for science fiction novels and short stories. His byline reads either Brian W. Aldiss or simply Brian Aldiss, except for occasional pseudonyms during the mid-1960s. Greatly influenced by science fiction pioneer H. G. Wells, Aldiss is a vice-president of the international H. G. Wells Society. He is alsoco-president of the Birmingham Science Fiction Group. Aldiss was named a Grand Master by the Science Fiction Writers of America in...
NationalityEnglish
ProfessionWriter
Date of Birth18 August 1925
Science fiction is for real, space opera is for fun.
The misfortune of a young man who returns to his native land after years away is that he finds his native land foreign; whereas the lands he left behind remain for ever like a mirage in his mind. However, misfortune can itself sow seeds of creativity. ---- Afterword to "Hothouse" Brian Aldiss
It is at night... that the mind is most clear, that we are most able to hold all our life in the palm of our skull.
Writers must fortify themselves with pride and egotism as best they can. The process is analogous to using sandbags and loose timbers to protect a house against flood. Writers are vulnerable creatures like anyone else. For what do they have in reality? Not sandbags, not timbers. Just a flimsy reputation and a name.
It is comparatively easy to become a writer; staying a writer, resisting formulaic work, generating ones own creativity - thats a much tougher matter.
Feedback is a pleasant thing. I get a lot of letters from unexpected people in unexpected places.
The day of the android has dawned.
Why had I become a writer in the first place? Because I wasn't fit for society; I didn't fit into the system.
I am a writer and always was; being a writer is an integral part of my identity. Being published, being well regarded, is a component of that identity.
That's the artist's role - to strike out always for something new, to break away, to defy, to... grapple with the unfamiliar.
Science fiction is the search for a definition of mankind and his status in the universe which will stand in our advanced but confused state of knowledge (science), and is characteristically cast in the Gothic or post Gothic mode.
To be a standard shape is not all in life. To know is also important.
I can't help believing that these things that come from the subconscious mind have a sort of truth to them. It may not be a scientific truth, but it's psychological truth.
When childhood dies, its corpses are called adults.