Good SF stories like "Supertoys Last All Summer Long" almost get squeezed out by semi-autobiographical musings such as Travels in India and My Worst Parasitic Infections. All right I suppose...if you like that sort of thing. ( )

http://speculiction.blogspot.com/2016/05/review-of-moment-of-eclipse-by-brian.ht... ( )

http://nwhyte.livejournal.com/2178701.html

This collection of short stories won the BSFA Award for 1970; I first read them as a teenager, and found them mindblowing then. I still find them mindblowing now - maybe it's just that Aldiss got to me at a vulnerable age, but there's something about his laconic yet cosmic vision that sucks me in, almost uncritically.

Not completely uncritically. The story "Supertoys Last All Summer Long", which was the basis for Spielberg's film A.I., is the weakest of the collection, and "Swastika!", about a documentary maker catching up with a disguised Hitler living in Ostend, was surely in poor taste then and worse now. And the stories about the crumbling veneer of civilisation in former British colonies are rather of their time. But beneath the surface detail, Aldiss's preoccupation with the future of humanity, explored through language, grabs me as viscerally as ever. ( )

If there's one thing to be said about Aldiss' work, it's certainly never lacking in imagination or invention. I found this collection of short stories to be challenging, amusing, entertaining, electrifying, baffling and at times, even infuriating. I'm certainly going to be dipping back into this collection from time to time.

1) The Moment of Eclipse: 3/5
A filmmaker seeking an assignation with a beautiful woman follows her to a West African country where he picks up a parasite. Strange story but one I’m still puzzling over.

2) The Day We Embarked For Cythera: 3/5
Two parallel stories, one about a bunch of dandies out on a picnic where they bandy philosophy and drink fine wine. The other is about carnivorous cars. Just as I was thinking that this one was going way over my head, I recalled the joke one of the characters makes about time and the natural order of things - it gives a whole new perspective on the story... I think!

3) Orgy of the Living and the Dying: 3/5
In a future where over-population has devastated India, a Swiss/English doctor with a UN relief team starts to hear voices in his head.

4) Super-Toys Last All Summer Long: 5/5
The story on which the movie A.I. was based. Works wonderfully as a pared down tale, though Aldiss did write two follow ups which I'm keen to read.

5) The Village Swindler: 3/5
A white man travelling in India has a heart attack on a train and is taken by a doctor to his home. His daughter who was accompanying him on the trip meets a man in the nearby village selling a vase.

6) Down the Up Escalation: 3/5
Escalating violence in Vietnam while an editor back in the west suffers a heart attack. A strange, surreal story.

7) That Uncomfortable Pause Between Life and Art...: 4/5
The author is accosted by a woman in the cafeteria of the Victoria & Albert Museum after he has just seen the works of Wiliam Holman Hunt. An odd but witty dissection about art and criticism and time.

8) Confluence: 2/5
A partial dictionary of an alien language. Tongue in cheek.

9) Heresies of the Huge God: 5/5
A brilliant and hilarious and terrifying story. 900 years in the future, a Church official writes about the history of heresies in the worship of the Huge God – an alien giant lizard that leapt onto the world plunging the world into chaos. Brilliant story.

10) The Circulation of the Blood...: 4/5
A scientist discovers a virus that is giving longevity to various animal species it inhabits. Could it work for humans too?

11) ...And the Stagnation of the Heart.: 2/5
Western countries have allowed the virus that induces longevity but in overpopulated South Asia, it is made illegal.

12) The Worm That Flies: 2/5
Millions of years hence, change is coming to the world where everything heretofore was immortal.

13) Working in the Spaceship Yards: 4/5
Amusing story about working in the spaceship yards with women and androids.

14) Swastika!: 3/5
The author goes to meet Hitler, who still lives under a pseudonym, about getting the rights to a musical based on his life. ( )

NIL