Farewell Brian Aldiss, RIP
It is with a heavy heart that I bid farewell to Brian W Aldiss, a stalwart writer and scholar who passed away on the weekend aged 92. I think the first book of his that I read was Billion Year Spree, his history of science fiction. It's a fascinating read and influenced me greatly. I was doing my Honours at the time and his definition of science fiction, particularly that it is set in the Gothic or post-Gothic mould, shaped my thinking at the time and infiltrated my whole thesis, even if it was off topic. My ideas on genre have shifted in the last couple of years, and I do not hold so closely to Aldiss' own, but they're still influential, and I wouldn't be where I am without them. I haven't read his most famous fictional works, the Supertoys stories that Spielberg's movie AI was based on, or the Helliconia series, but I have read a couple of others. The first was Frankenstein Unbound. It took me a bit to accept what was going on and for a while I probably wou