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Billion Year Spree started out as my 'bathroom book' -- usually a work of non-fiction interesting enough to keep me from terminal boredom there, but not one I want to read straight through to the end. By chapter two, I knew this book wasn't going to stay in that category.
Mr. Aldiss' history includes authors whose works weren't actually science fiction, but contain elements of that genre, or influenced it. Some of those authors I've read (or read about), some I haven't. I agree with that choice. I've often felt the advantage of growing up with my mother passing on her historical romances after she read them and my father passing on his science fiction. I feel that it's helped widen my perspective.
Most of the book I enjoyed even when I disagreed with the author's assessment of a writer. I thought the last two chapters dragged a little, but they cover the 1950s and 60s, the decades in which I was born, spent my childhood, and most of my teens. Perhaps a reader who wasn't around then might enjoy them as much as I enjoyed the earlier chapters.
John W. Campbell's opinion of BEMs (Bug-Eyed Monsters), quoted in chapter nine, made me laugh aloud. (That same chapter has what I think must be a typo on p.238 of my edition: shouldn't that be the paper shortages induced by World War II, not 'I'?)
There's an unintentional chuckle in Mr. Aldiss' opinion of Orwell's Animal Farm. Yeah, we'll still be using microfiche by the time we're capable of reaching Pluto. Even in the late 1990s the only reason my small Army medical library had a microfiche reader was that soldiers still had microfiche copies of their records. Oh, well, Mr. Aldiss voiced a low opinion of sf as prophecy.
If you prefer your history to be considerably more entertaining than the dry-as-dust school of writing, and you're interested in science fiction history prior to the 1970s, you'll want to read this book.
David November is the artist for the black cover with the title in yellow letters with a hint of pale green with light beams radiating from it. The subtitle is in much smaller, white letters, the first three words to the left of the 'Y' and the last three words to its right, above the 'EAR'. The author's name is in deep sky blue letters at the bottom of the dust jacket, in line with the title. ( )
Een pleziertochtje door de ruimte en tijd, een lichtjarenfeest. De ontwikkelingsgang van het genre wordt geschetst, aandacht wordt besteed aan de algemene literaire waarde van de diverse romanse en stromingen. Een volwaardige literatuurgeschiedenis van het Essef genre. Gedetailleerd overzicht van de fantastische literatuur en de toekomst- romans, waarvan de schrijver de oorsprong nagaat tot in de klassieke oudheid.
Rooted as they are in the facts of contemporary life, the phantasies of even a second-rate writer of modern Science Fiction are incomparably richer, bolder and stranger than the Utopian or Millennial imaginings of the past. Aldous Huxley: Literature and Science
Often I sit alone at night, staring with the eyes of my mind into the darkness of unborn time, and wondering in what shape and form the great drama will be finally developed, and where the scene of its next act will be held. Rider Haggard: the final paragraph of She
Dedication
To Jannick Storm who colonized Denmark
First words
'The stars shone at intervals, as the clouds passed over them: the dark pines rose before me, and every here and there a broken tree lay on the ground; it was a sense of wonderful solemnity, and stirred strange thoughts within me.' [Aldiss is quoting from Mary Shelley's Frankenstein]
Introduction Wy are the public buildings so high? How come you don't know? Why, that's because the spirits of the public are so low. Or so says W. H. Auden, in a definitive word on town-planners, pinning down a nebulous relationship.
Quotations
Science fiction is no more written for scientists than ghost stories are written for ghosts. Most frequently, the scientific dressing clothes fantasy. And fantasies are as meaningful as science. The phantasms of technology now fittingly embody our hopes and anxieties. It is from this angle that I have approached my subject. (introduction)
This volume will use the term 'science fiction' (and the abbreviation 'sf'), a widely preferred usage to the hyphenated science-fiction. Perhaps unease at the ungrammatical distortion of having a noun do duty as adjective has led to the fashion for abbreviating the term in a number of ways: SF, sf, sci-fi, sci-fic, si-fi, si-fic. Only would-be trendies use sci-fi. (footnote in chapter one)
Wells is the Prospero of all the brave new worlds of the mind, and the Shakespeare of science fiction. (chapter five)
So why does one obstinately respect Wells the more? It must be because, whatever else his failings, he is trying to grapple with what he sees as the real world, whereas Burroughs -- however expertly, and he can be a mesmerist -- is dishing out daydreams. (chapter seven)
Ghastly writer though Lovecraft is, predictable though the horrors are. somewhere buried in his writing is a core of power that remains disconcerting when all the adjectives have fallen away like leaves. (chapter seven)
One must add that Le Guin is a rarity in that she writes beautifully. Not prettily. Beautifully. Her prose is a pleasure to read. (chapter eleven)
I concur with Harlan Ellison; much of the best writing in science fiction today is being done by women (and he didn't even mention Christine Brooke-Rose, author of Such (1966), and a fine modern novelist.
What has made the difference is the disappearance of the Philistine-male-chauvinist-pig attitude, pretty well dissipated by the revolutions of the mid-sixties; and the slow fade of the Gernsbackian notion that sf is all hardware. ... (chapter eleven)
Last words
Although helping to create that order is one of the objectives of this book, its author bows with deepest affection towards the chaos of the past.
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Mr. Aldiss' history includes authors whose works weren't actually science fiction, but contain elements of that genre, or influenced it. Some of those authors I've read (or read about), some I haven't. I agree with that choice. I've often felt the advantage of growing up with my mother passing on her historical romances after she read them and my father passing on his science fiction. I feel that it's helped widen my perspective.
Most of the book I enjoyed even when I disagreed with the author's assessment of a writer. I thought the last two chapters dragged a little, but they cover the 1950s and 60s, the decades in which I was born, spent my childhood, and most of my teens. Perhaps a reader who wasn't around then might enjoy them as much as I enjoyed the earlier chapters.
John W. Campbell's opinion of BEMs (Bug-Eyed Monsters), quoted in chapter nine, made me laugh aloud. (That same chapter has what I think must be a typo on p.238 of my edition: shouldn't that be the paper shortages induced by World War II, not 'I'?)
There's an unintentional chuckle in Mr. Aldiss' opinion of Orwell's Animal Farm. Yeah, we'll still be using microfiche by the time we're capable of reaching Pluto. Even in the late 1990s the only reason my small Army medical library had a microfiche reader was that soldiers still had microfiche copies of their records. Oh, well, Mr. Aldiss voiced a low opinion of sf as prophecy.
If you prefer your history to be considerably more entertaining than the dry-as-dust school of writing, and you're interested in science fiction history prior to the 1970s, you'll want to read this book.
David November is the artist for the black cover with the title in yellow letters with a hint of pale green with light beams radiating from it. The subtitle is in much smaller, white letters, the first three words to the left of the 'Y' and the last three words to its right, above the 'EAR'. The author's name is in deep sky blue letters at the bottom of the dust jacket, in line with the title. (