The Dark Light Years

THE MILD PLEASURES OF ANTIQUE SCIENCE FICTION What you get with 52-year-old science fiction novels is the past’s version of the future, which is fun. So in 1964 Brian Aldiss sets his story in 2035 and in this 2035 everyone is still smoking (but a derivative of mescaline, not tobacco), hardly anyone i......more

Civilization is a distance the man has placed between him and his excreta. What an idea, though, of course, not without its limitations. Conceptually this is precisely the sort of scifi I enjoy. The sort that uses fictional constructs to address serious topics. The sort that uses aliens to talk abou......more

Brian Aldiss loved challenging the basic assumptions of Western civilisation. Here, it's cleanliness. Most SF writers it for granted that beings from any "advanced" culture will keep themselves clean and neat. So Aldiss introduces the Utods, who are sophisticated enough to have invented interstellar......more

It had been a good 30 years since I last read anything by British sci-fi author Brian Aldiss. Back in the mid-'80s, spurred on by three highly laudatory articles in David Pringle's "Science Fiction: The 100 Best Novels," I had eagerly read Aldiss' classic novel of a generational starship, "Non-Stop"......more

SNOK SNOK OF THE GRUDGRODD! This slim novel is a wryly humorous indictment of man’s boundless arrogance. Failure to comprehend an existence that is starkly at odds with our own leads to the mistaken conclusion that the utods are little more than vaguely bright cattle. Throughout the story the strange......more