This World and Nearer Ones. Brian Aldiss
gravestones.
Other special purgatories are reserved for science fiction authors. They are invited to appear on BBC television with people like Uri Geller, Bruce Bellamy, or Dr Magnus Pyke. They are introduced at literary luncheons with jokes about their not having two heads or green skins (less of that lately, thank goodness). They have to endure conversations with people who assume automatically that they believe, as do their interrogators, in Flying Saucers and telepathy and Atlantis and the Bermuda Triangle and God as Cosmonaut and acupuncture and macrobiotic foods and pyramids that sharpen razor blades. They are scrutinised closely by their neighbours for traces of android-like behaviour.
At festivals of literature, they are regarded askance by chairmen of panels, who may make jocular interjections if they chance to refer to either E. E. Smith on the one hand or Dr Johnson on the other. More orthodox writers present suspect them of earning far more money than they do, or far less. (Both are true, by the way.)
All this may suggest that I have reasons to dislike being labelled an SF author. I have my reasons; but I do not dislike being an SF author. On the contrary. Although my first loyalty is to literature, I owe a great deal to a field to which I have been able to contribute something.
I am regarded as a difficult author, because I write non-fiction as well as fiction, ordinary fiction as well as science fiction, and occasionally what is considered a difficult book; but in my experience the readership of SF, on its more informed level, is remarkably patient, and will always endeavour to comprehend what they at first find incomprehensible.
Let me name two additional advantages in being a writer of science fiction, apart from becoming pampered Guest of Honour at a Convention, since they are germane to these essays.
Firstly, over the last twenty years, the span of my writing career, science fiction has developed remarkably all round the world, the toothed peak of its progress rising like a population graph. Playing a role in that process has been tremendously rewarding.
Despite all the expansion, readers and writers have managed to remain closely in communication, as this Convention indicates. This may be in part because of the indifference of people beyond the field, and the condemnation of critics armed only with the antique weaponry of standard lit. crit.; but it more probably springs from an inner mystery – the attempted complex unity of art and science – in SF itself. Because of that mystery, which every writer tries to interpret in an individual way, and because of the indifference from outside, we have been forced to form our own body of criticism, our own canons of taste; we have established our own editors, reviewers, scholars, booksellers and publishers, in a remarkable burst of creativity for which I can think of no parallel. We have done it all ourselves and given the world a new literature, whether the world wants it or not.
Secondly, that close community of interest, that fascination with the mystery, is global, and not confined to Western Europe or the United States. Largely thanks to friendly connections overseas, I have been able to travel about the world a good deal in the last decade, as some of the contents indicate, and have wandered as far afield as Iceland, Scandinavia, the Soviet Union, Japan, Brazil, Sicily, Mexico, Australia, Sumatra, and now Brighton. (Some of the trips were made by good old private enterprise, such as the Mexico and Sumatran ventures, but I should perhaps add that the Soviet visit was laid on by the Arts Council of Great Britain and the GB/USSR Association, to whom I wish to express my thanks.) Even the most casual traveller abroad must notice the way in which the whole world is caught up in a scramble of change.
In England at least, reviewing is very much part of a writing career, a valuable part; low pay and the general education give one a feel for the somewhat marginal job of authorship. As well as reviewing for the Oxford Mail, for which I worked for many years, I have written articles for a spectrum of journals, among them the Times Literary Supplement, Nature, Punch, Penthouse, and the Guardian. To the latter, I contributed an irregular series on art, which I wish I had found time to continue. I have reviewed films for this paper and that, and for the BBC. I have read for publishers and for the Arts Council. I have contributed to countless fanzines. Millions of words, wind into the wind.
From all that material, I could have bundled together enough wordage to fill several volumes. But a book is a book is a book, and rarely a collection of old journalism. I have tried to reshape everything in order to make a new book. Only in the section entitled ‘Rough Justices’, where I appear primarily as reviewer, is the material almost as originally published.
‘Ever Since the Enlightenment’ is based on a speech given in Canberra, thanks to Colin Steele. The James Blish article is a development of an interview I made with Blish; earlier stages of the article appeared in Foundation and a critical volume for Queensland University Press edited by Kirpal Singh and Michael Tolley (to both of which gentlemen my thanks for aid beyond the scope of literature). ‘Dick’s Maledictory Web’ appeared first in Science Fiction Studies and then as an introduction to an edition of Dick’s Martian Time-Slip. ‘Why They Left Zirn Unguarded’ is based on a review which appeared in Vector. The Nesvadba article appeared as an introduction to an edition of Nesvadba’s In the Footsteps of the Abominable Snowman. The Vonnegut article is based on one which appeared in Andrew Mylett’s Summary. The ‘Barefoot’ article is based on an introduction for a Swedish translation of Barefoot in the Head which, despite gallant efforts by John Henri Holmberg and Sam Lundwall, never got published. ‘The Gulf and the Forest’ is based on an article with the same title which appeared in the Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction.
‘Looking Forward to 2001’ is based on a speech delivered to the Oxford Union, with apologies to Arthur C. Clarke.
‘The Hiroshima Man’ is an extended version of a review which appeared in Michael Moorcock’s New Worlds. ‘The Hashish Club’ appeared as an introduction to a book of the same name, published by Peter Owen. ‘1951’ appeared in slightly different form in Mary Banham and Bevis Hillier’s A Tonic to the Nation.
‘The Sower of the Systems’ is based on a review of a Watts exhibition published in the Guardian. ‘The Fireby-Wireby Book’ appeared in a fanzine, Cidereal Times. ‘The Film Tarkovsky Made’ was first published in Foundation. ‘Kissingers Have Long Ears’ is based on an article written for Art and Story. ‘Spielberg’ began life as a lecture delivered at the ICA.
‘Sleazo Inputs I Have Known’ was published in Foundation. ‘It Catechised from Outer Space’ was published in New Review. ‘The Flight into Tomorrow’ appeared as an introduction to an edition of Harness’s The Paradox Men. The Burroughs article appeared in Punch. ‘Yes, well, but …’ appeared in Science Fiction Studies. ‘The Universe as Coal-Scuttle’ was developed from two reviews which appeared in the New Statesman.
‘California’ is based on an article in the Guardian. ‘Modest Atmosphere’ was broadcast in the BBC Third Programme, with George Macbeth and me playing all twelve voices, and later appeared in Encounter. Passages from ‘Cultural Totems’ appeared in New Review.
Two awards for criticism have been bestowed upon me. I am first holder of the James Blish Award for Excellence in Science Fiction Criticism (1977), presented for services to SF, with particular reference to my book Science Fiction Art (a revised version of the text of which is included here), and the introduction to Philip K.Dick’s Martian Time-Slip (which is included here). In 1978, the SFRA presented me with a Pilgrim Award in recognition of distinguished contributions to the study of science fiction, with particular reference to Billion Year Spree, and my anthologies.
To both these bodies, the British and the American, I offer my thanks for such encouragement. Come, gentlemen, what more fascinating subject for study is there?
Brian W. Aldiss
Oxford
December 1978
There is no finality in the current