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Science Fiction Author Brian Aldiss Dies Aged 92 (theguardian.com)

Posted by EditorDavid on from the cultural-breaks dept.

Long-time Slashdot reader Freshly Exhumed writes: Acclaimed Science Fiction author Brian Aldiss, first published in the 1950s, has died at the age of 92. Aldiss wrote such science fiction classics as Non-Stop, Hothouse and Greybeard, as well as the Helliconia trilogy, winning the Hugo and Nebula prizes for science fiction and fantasy, an honorary doctorate from the University of Reading, the title of grand master from the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, and an OBE for services to literature. Tributes from contemporaries and younger authors have been plentiful.
In 1969 Aldiss published the short story "Super-Toys Last All Summer Long" (1969), which after decades of work became the basis for the Stanley Kubrick-developed Steven Spielberg movie A.I. in 2001.

19 comments

  1. Trillion Year Spree was amazing! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    As someone who is interested in literature from a literary theory and literary criticism perspective, and tends to overlook genre fiction, Trillion Year Spree was an amazing survey of the history of science fiction. Maybe for people deeply steeped in the genre it wouldn't have the same impact, but to me it was wonderful.

  2. Hothouse was awesome. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    RIP, Brian

  3. Cause of death: by Gravis+Zero · · Score: 1

    Hang gliding accident. (He was 92, you boob!)

    --
    Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
  4. You only noticed now? by Chris+Mattern · · Score: 0

    He died a week ago!

  5. Re:Good riddance! by nospam007 · · Score: 1

    "A.I. was so bad it killed Kubrick, and it was his story."

    I remember.

    'He wants our love, we want our money back.'

  6. Re:What a shame by Z00L00K · · Score: 1

    Time to get a book or two by him then. "non-stop" is probably the easiest, Helliconia most epic - on the same level as the lord of the rings trilogy.

    --
    If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
  7. A.I. super-toys vs. pulp fiction supertoys by epine · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Wikipedia can't make up its mind.

    The A.I. Artificial Intelligence page consistently uses "Super-Toys", while the main article, Supertoys Last All Summer Long consistently goes the other direction.

    Google: "Super-Toys" Last All Summer Long -"supertoys" = 66,800 results

    Google: "SuperToys" Last All Summer Long -"super-toys" = 70,300 results

    Squeaker. By the Law of Electoral College, I think the first item wins.

    But no, let's aim higher.

    Writing Talk: Conversations with top writers of the last fifty years — 2014

    As this book goes to print in 2012, author Brian Aldiss tells me that his entire production of fiction is to be republished.

    And this:

    How many times can films destroy books? ...

    "The risk was patent," he allowed, "because Stanley gave me a beautiful illustrated copy of Pinocchio, and he always wanted Pinocchio to be the Blue Fairy. When I heard those dreadful words, the Blue Fairy, I really started throwing up. I couldn't take this.

    "But all right, I went to work with him. At ten o'clock they'd come and collect me, we'd find a pub, we'd go over this with lots of coffee, lots of Marlboros, and sometimes we seemed to be getting somewhere. But always he was determined that David the super toy should cease to be a fairy and become a real boy, while I hoped that between us we could have created a modern myth. That this robot child could exist in modern society and it would be of enormous interest.

    "But this didn't interest Kubrick one bit. Do you know, he spent two years thinking about my short story? Perhaps he'd lost some of his earlier genius."

    When Kubrick died it was taken over by Spielberg, and was out of reach of its originator, who now said to me wistfully, "Super-Toys Last All Summer Long is a nice title. It's poetic, it sounds nice. And what will the audience thing when winter comes?"

    My bold & paragraph breaks.

    I think Aldiss would have wanted his views known, so I quoted a bit more than normal given the occasion.

    As copyright now works—de facto—everyone who reads the above quotation is now obligated to buy Alex Hamilton's fine book—that's how it now works, right?

    1. Re:A.I. super-toys vs. pulp fiction supertoys by epine · · Score: 2

      s/thing/think

    2. Re:A.I. super-toys vs. pulp fiction supertoys by epine · · Score: 2

      Well, who is this Alex Hamilton, anyway, with most of a famous name?

      Alex Hamilton obituary — November 2016

      Above all, Alex conducted scores of interviews with important literary figures. In fact, he probably met more famous authors than anyone else on earth. Among them were Graham Greene, Muriel Spark, Gunter Grass, Chinua Achebe and Jorge Luis Borges, who delighted Alex by saying that when he himself wrote horror stories, he shed tears, "tears of laughter". A selection of these conversations was issued in 2012 under the title Writing Talk.

      Weirdly, this is exactly the kind of book I tend to seek out, so I'm surprised he was not on my radar already. Weirdly (again), Borges shows up in this connection surprisingly often.

      As far as I'm concerned, if Alex wrote "Super-Toys" then "Super-Toys" it is, then. Case closed. Recount denied.

  8. Re:Good riddance! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Like most movies A.I. had it's flaws but I think that overall it was still a worthwhile effort, especially when compared against some more contemporary science fiction films produced by Hollywood in recent years. At the very least, it holds up better than most. Could it have been better? Absolutely, but the necessary edits would have made it even more niche, more like a film in the tradition of 2001 which critics admire but most people never actually see because they either think it's boring or they just don't understand it or both.

  9. Re:Good riddance! by sheramil · · Score: 1

    Didn't do Spielberg much good.

    Anyway Aldiss' fiction didn't include gays, women, transsexuals, so he would't win a Hugo today.

    You, evidently, have not read any of Aldiss' fiction.

    "Let those who will, object to vivisection -"

    Vivisection

    has no objection

    to them."

    - "The Eighty Minute Hour"

  10. Re:What a shame by Crashmarik · · Score: 1

    I would have gone with Hothouse. Probably his best science fiction

  11. Re:What a shame by hughbar · · Score: 1

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... (aka Cryptozoic also very good). Yes, it took slashdot a week to discover this. Still, he's not a fashionable author now.

    --
    On y va, qui mal y pense!