It could be worse; I appreciate that the story is hilariously elaborate-- whereas someone else might've stuck to the basics for a time-traveling-vampire-hunters story, Aldiss threw in feuding archeologists and nuclear waste disposal inventions and ghost trains and three different kinds of vampire and a ruined Earth at the end of time. It's just horribly written, with characters out of an R-rated Tom Swift knockoff. Since it's a sequel to a book that Roger Corman made a movie of, I suspect this one was meant as more of a quick treatment for a second movie. ( )

A time-travel story with s twist, set in 1999 Dallas and Utah, 1896 England, and a dying Earth in 2599, this excellent novel is probably not as good as some of Grand Master Aldiss' earlier works, but I recommend it for the blend of horror and fantasy. ( )

The author Brian Aldiss was a distinguished British SF writer who died last week at the age of 92. I had never read anything by him and this was on my Kindle already, so it seemed the right time to read it. As its title suggests it's a spin off the classic horror novel, set partly in the modern day, partly in late Victorian London around the time of the novel's original publication, and featuring Bram Stoker as a character, and partly 65 million years ago. Aldiss's story opens in modern day Utah, where two coffins are found containing human remains, but buried at a stratum dating from the era of the end of the dinosaurs, and one of whom has a stake through its heart. Despite this promising beginning, and the intriguing combination of vampires and time travel, I found the novel a bit disappointing in practice. I found most of the modern day characters rather annoying for various reasons and the late 19th and late 20th century characters accepted each other rather implausibly quickly given their completely different assumptions. Some of the dialogue jarred as well. The plot jolted along well enough to keep me reading and I'm sure I'll read the others in the trilogy (indeed I've already downloaded them), but this is not representative of Aldiss's work (I must retry his famous Helliconia trilogy). ( )

Brian W. Aldiss is known as one of the greats of Science Fiction. He has published many stories and books, and is still active. Whenever I come across one of his works while thrift-shopping, I pick it up. I have 22 works by now, and have read only three, of which only one was one hundred percent science fiction. The other two, this one and Frankenstein Unbound, are a mix of science fiction (time travel mostly) and classic horror.
It is the future (1999, but still) where one inventor/entrepreneur, Joe Bodenland, has developed a machine that can keep a thing (like toxic waste) at one certain point in time, making it effectively disappear. He is also involved with archaeological research, and because of that he is called when one archaeologist finds a casket with a human body below the K-T boundary (so more than 65 million years old). While looking into this the team gathered at the site get the feeling one night that a train is coming out of nowhere and travels over them at high-speed. Of course Bodenland must investigate, and thus he enters the Time Train that travels through time while carrying "The Fleet Ones", vampires. He ends up in the nineteenth century, picks up Bram Stoker and his gardener, and together they must fight to save humanity from near extinction and servitude in the future by killing the vampires (led by Lord Dracula himself, of course) in the far past.
Like 'Frankenstein Unbound' the book was a bit chaotic, another 300 pages and more time to work out the ideas in this book (time travel, vampires as an evolved species, humankind in the future) would make it so great. As it is now, the ideas are original, the action is pretty good, and the conclusion was good. Still, three out of five stars. ( )

What a disappointment! I was really looking forward to reading my first Brian Aldiss - one of the 'masters' of science fiction - book. It sucked!

The characters and dialogue was flat and annoying. The imagery, with possibly the exception of the first description of the time train and the torture of Alwyn, below par for a school essay by a twelve year old. The science highly contrived. The time travel paradoxes were what you might expect from a 1950's pulp SF novel.

I doubt that I would ever read another Brian Aldiss novel, and am flabbergasted that my favourite author, Gene Wolfe lists him as a favourite, ( )