Brian W. Aldiss (1925–2017)

According to the introduction, this one started out as just another bunch of short stories. After the author's editor suggested that they be linked and made into a loose narrative, the book became a sort of history of the far future and a trip through deep time. The move was, I think, a good one, as it lends some needed structure to the proceedings, and Aldiss obviously enjoyed writing the connecting segments, which contain some deliciously purple prose. There are some interesting ideas show more here, including a language that exponentially increases humans' abilities and long-term conflicts between human and machine intelligences. Oddly enough, though, I enjoyed this one because it presents some accidental insight into the anxieties of the time it was written. There are some lively psychedelic settings to be found here, but the book is also full of Cold War-era fears. Visions of catastrophic nuclear conflict, environmental ruin, and societal entropy appear again and again. A nervous concern with vitality and masculinity runs through it, too. Aldiss seems to be digging through emotional stuff that seems close to the heart of a lot of pulp genres, which isn't necessarily a bad thing. Not a classic, but an interesting read nonetheless. show less

In 1982, when this book was published, I was 14, a SFF fan and reading novels written for adults. I read it then, and I remember only that I wasn't enthralled. I remember literally nothing else about the book. Fast forward to 2024. I picked up a copy at a library book sale, along with the others in the series. I knew this series is considered to be a masterpiece, and I thought that maybe it was just over my head when I read it the first time. So I decided to give it another go.

I'm not quite show more halfway into the book, and I'm wondering if I'm going to finish. I'm kind of amazed that 14-year-old me actually DID finish. It's an ambitious premise that Aldiss has attempted, so I give him points for that. But as a story, it's not actually very interesting. The characters feel cardboard to me. And most of them, so far, are men. Women are definitely secondary to the main narrative, and largely interchangeable. Given the time it was written, that's perhaps not surprising, but I'm just tired of reading books like this.

Also, I'm experiencing some cognitive dissonance. The planet is essentially just coming out of an ice age, the people dress in skins and use spears, and follow a hunter gatherer existence. And yet...they have metal implements. They have cloth, even thought they wear animal skins, and they have flour to make bread, meaning agriculture and some kind of mechanical means to turn grain into flour. But none of these more technological aspects are satisfactorily explained, or even alluded to beyond the product mentioned. It seems beyond the capacity of a stone age civilization. Even leaving that aside (assuming some technology left over from previous civilizations), how could you have agriculture when the ground is frozen and always covered with snow and ice? Or, how can you have a permanent town where everyone is a hunter? Hundreds of people constantly hunting in the same area is going to quickly deplete the game. Yet, all the adult males are described as hunters (if they aren't priests), and the women don't seem to do anything but bake bread with flour from *somewhere* since nobody seems to farm. And the humans don't use draft animals. And there don't seem to be any artisans. I mean, who makes all the things that aren't spears? The alien phagor that share the planet do ride the animals that they herd, and they also have metal and cloth, but are nomadic herders with no towns. Again, who weaves the cloth? Who shapes the metal? Who mines the ore? The whole milieu just seems implausible to me.

In other reviews, Aldiss is lauded for his worldbuilding and the scientific basis for Helliconia's ecology. But he hasn't put the same care into creating a believable civilization, at least so far. I mean, maybe there's an explanation for all this, but right now it just seems like Aldiss is ignoring what to me are the keystones of any civilization or society.

Haven't decided yet if I'll go any further, or read the other books.

UPDATE: Read a little bit further, investigated reviews of this book as well as others in the series, and decided to not finish. It looks like, if I don't like it that much now, my opinion isn't going to improve. Those that love it, love it. Those that don't never do. show less

An astonishing trilogy, best read, I suspect, in one big 1,000-plus paged lump as presented here. Helliconia is a formidable work. The timescale is vast, the themes are difficult, the human dramas, though full of intrigue and passion, battles and spectacle, are unashamedly literary in the demands placed on the reader. The trilogy, in fact, expects full intellectual and emotional engagement in order to fully appreciate the scale and complexity of Aldiss' achievement.

Helliconia is a planet show more with two suns and two years. The shorter years are over four hundred days long. The greater year takes milllenia. At one end of the great year the planet is shrouded in extreme cold, at the other in extreme heat. Civilisations rise and fall over the course of the year, only for the survivors to come forth again in the Spring and start all over again. Helliconia is an epic of climate change.

Vying for supremacy on the planet are two species, the phagor, who dominate in the cold time, and humans who dominate in the warmth. The two are profoundly hostile to each other, and yet fundamentally linked in the struggle to survive. Overhead is a research station from Earth, the Avernus, cataloguing and recording and transmitting its findings home.

Life persists, in abundant forms and varieties, though the processes are cruel and profligate with individuals, but the books chart the stories of individuals as they struggle with their strange world, trying to understand it or shape it or control it, often with plenty of cruelty of their own. Can the cycle be broken? Can memory and civilisation persist, and if so at what price?

The worlbuilding's the thing here. Designed, envisioned and delineated with great care and detail, Helliconia is alive on the page, but though marvelous and splendid and strange, it's more than a simple vehicle for escapist fantasy. It's a world in some ways even more circumscribed than our own, partly because of the strictures of the environment and partly because of humanity itself. It's a big, broad, shambling masterpiece. Every human is flawed, every venture doomed and the vast natural processes designed to preserve life are merciless and inscrutable, yet ultimately Aldiss unifies these elements into a vision of universal empathy in which intelligent life must adapt to to the natural vehicles that keep it alive. show less

Another outstanding work of science fiction by Brian Aldiss. This is a darkly amusing and sarcastic look at the darker side of humanity and badly we get it wrong when we come across a benign extraterrestrial culture that developed differently from us. It is better than Non-Stop but not as good as Hothouse (one of my favorite Aldiss novels).