Non-Stop

About the Author

Brian Aldiss was born in 1925. During WWII he served in the Royal Signals in Burma and Sumatra. In 1948 he was demobilized and started work as an assistant in an Oxford bookshop. His first published SF story was ‘Criminal Record’ which appeared in Science Fantasy in 1954.

His first SF novel was Non-Stop, published in 1958. By 1962 he had already won an award for his series of novellas collectively known as Hothouse. During the 60s he wrote some of his most famous titles: Greybeard (1964), Report on Probability A (1968) and Barefoot in the Head: A European Fantasia (1969). The Saliva Tree (a novella published in 1965) won the Nebula for Novellas that year.

By now, Aldiss’ stylistic concerns and unconventional themes had much in common with the New Wave movement, and he was instrumental in helping obtain an Arts Council grant for New Worlds, the flagship magazine of the New Wave. He contined his prolific output throughout the 70s but achieved great acclaim in the early 80s for the three massively researched novels Helliconia Spring (1982), Helliconia Summer (1983) and Helliconia Winter (1985), the first of which won the John W. Campbell Memorial Award in 1983.

More recent writings have been either straight fiction focussing on aspects of Aldiss’ own life (such as Forgotten Life (1988)) or autobiography (Bury My Heart at W.H. Smith’s: A Writing Life (1990) and The Twinkling of an Eye or My Life as an Englishman (1998)). Throughout his writing career, Aldiss has been both an anthologist and critic, involved both in the Penguin Science Fiction and The Year’s Best SF Series. Both Billion Year Spree (1973) and its expanded follow-up Trillion Year Spree (1986 with David Wingrove) are considered classic surveys of SF. The latter won a Hugo in 1987. He has also contributed as a reviewer and essayist, writing for the Times Literary Supplement, the Guardian, and the Washington Post.