The Best of Brian W. Aldiss by Open Road Media

A strange alien species forces us to question our definition of civilization in this biting satire from the Grand Master of Science Fiction. What would intelligent life‐forms on another planet look like? Would they walk upright? Would they wear clothes? Or would they be hulking creatures on six legs that wallow in their own excrement? Upon first contact with the Utod— intelligent, pacifist beings who feel no pain—mankind instantly views these aliens as animals because of their unhygienic customs. This leads to the slaughter, capture, and dissection of the Utod. But when one explorer recognizes the intelligence behind their habits, he must reevaluate what it actually means to be "intelligent."

In Galaxies Like Grains of Sand, Brian W. Aldiss tells the tale of mankind's future over the course of forty million years. Each of these nine connected short stories highlights a different millennia in which man has adapted to new environments and hardships. This ebook includes a new introduction from the author.

From the back cover: OUT OF THIS WORLD A monster travels back in time to destroy a race called Man on a planet called Earth... A mild-mannered husband is stranded centuries ahead in a world of peep-show barbarianism... A jaded sportsman returns to the prehistoric past to hunt a gigantic brontosaurus... The governor of a penal space settlement makes the supreme sacrifice for the colony he loves... Here are startling stories -- adventures that soar beyond the barriers of time and space, yet remain perilously close to the boundaries of reality.

In a brilliant reimagining of Bram Stoker's horror classic, an inventor travels back in time to save humankind from a nightmarish enslavement by vampires Joe Bodenland has figured out how to manipulate time—a discovery that leads him to Utah and an impossible sixty-five-million-year-old human gravesite. It is here that he learns of the existence of a monstrous race of intelligent predators as old as the dinosaur, and of the remarkable "train" the undead creatures use to travel back and forth from a Paleolithic past to a monstrous far future in which Homo sapiens are enslaved cattle. With the fate of all humanity at stake, Joe commandeers the ghostly transportation and rides it back to Victorian England, where he enlists the aid of a powerful ally, the author Bram Stoker, in the battle to secure Earth. But to prevent the coming apocalyptic nightmare, they must first confront and destroy the most cunning and deadly being the world has ever known: Lord Dracula, the immortal vampire. The recipient of numerous awards and honors, including multiple Hugo and Nebula Awards and the Prix Jules Verne, Grand Master Brian W. Aldiss puts a bold new science ficion spin on Bram Stoker's classic tale of vampiric horror. An ingenious reinvention of the Nosferatu myth, Dracula Unbound is a breakneck thrill ride from one of the most revered names in science fiction and fantasy.

Travel through time and space with fourteen remarkable science fiction stories from the early career of an award-winning Grand Master of the genre. "The stories in this collection are some of Aldiss' earliest stories and it's amazing how little they have lost through the years. . . . Well worth picking up." — Science Fiction Book Reviews A father communicates with his unborn son to warn him of impending dangers . . . On the fringes of a galaxy waits a machine inhabited by a terrifying being with one mission: to destroy a planet in our solar system . . . A man is condemned to live a routine from which he cannot deviate, all before a live audience who eerily find humor in the strangest of his actions . . . A time traveler is recruited to voyage many thousands of years into the future to rescue mutated beings known as "the Failed Men" by digging them up from their graves . . . These stories and more await readers in Space, Time, and Nathaniel. Originally published in 1957, this collection marked Brian W. Aldiss's entry into science fiction. He would become a pioneer in the genre's British New Wave style with experimental tales such as these, exploring the vastness of outer space and the unknown realms of human nature.

In this satirical science fiction classic, a new technology promises to help British subjects find love—and threatens to destroy the empire. In the years following World War II, a new day has risen in Great Britain. A mechanical marvel has arrived to free society from the shackles of prudish Victorian morality and neo-Freudianism. The Emotion Register, a coin-shaped device, attaches to the forehead and emits a soft pink glow when the wearer experiences sexual attraction. Now the British can no longer deny that sex exists—and the government is insisting everyone undergo the procedure to get the device. Much of the population, including young Jimmy Solent, embraces the Emotion Registers. The gadget gives them a new lease on life. Meanwhile others refuse, seeing the marvel as an invasion of privacy. And so, another conflict begins on British soil. Fortunately, the stakes are far lower and much more hilarious . . . A satire on sexual reserve set in an alternate world, The Primal Urge was first published in 1961. Although the novel was initially banned in Ireland, Brian W. Aldiss still went on to become a Grand Master of Science Fiction.

A retrospective of classic science fiction tales from the first decade in the long-running career of the Hugo Award–winning author of Non-Stop. "A writer of imagination and power." —Frederick Pohl Science Fiction Grand Master Brian W. Aldiss had a career spanning sixty years. Although he is a well-known author of the 1960s and '70s British New Wave style of science fiction, Aldiss's career as a science fiction writer began in the 1950s. The Complete Short Stories: The 1950s offers the full catalog of Aldiss's stories from his first decade as an author. This volume starts off with his first professional sale, "A Book in Time"—about a bookseller chasing a thief one hundred years into the future—and finishes off with a group of strangers forming a peculiar bond in "Three's a Cloud." By the end of the decade, Aldiss had established himself as a major new voice in science fiction. Together the fifty-eight stories in this retrospective collection offer a look at the burgeoning writer before he became a literary legend.

Architectural historian Roy Burnell has been tasked with traveling the globe and listing architectural gems in danger of being destroyed. But when Burnell is in Budapest, ten years of his memory, mostly his architectural knowledge and sexual experiences, is stolen. In this near-future, thieves using EMV ("e-mnemonicvision") sell memories on the black market. In the wake of this event, Burnell tries to resume his life, while also searching for the "bullet" that will restore his memory.

THE LAST DAYS OF MAN Under a dying sun, monstrous sentient plants and carnivorous insects are the predators. Man is the prey...

From the back cover: Edward Bush is a young artist millions of years from home, sketching the desolate landscapes of the Devonian age. There he meets Ann, another mind traveler, and they decide to travel together to the later Jurassic age -- where they materialize beside a 20-foot stegosaurus. Thus begins an extraordinary adventure across aeons of time, from Bush's home time, 2093 A.D., to the utterly alien experience of time uncreated -- the CRYPTOZOIC!

Collected from an evening of live performance, a selection of the Science Fiction Grand Master's best stories, poetry, and speculations. In October 1987, Brian W. Aldiss—with the help of two other performers—took his science fiction to the masses, staging theatrical performances of his best stories and fantastic, mind-wrenching speculations before a live audience. Included in Science Fiction Blues are three short stories that were included in the show's program, three scripted stories that didn't make the final cut, and a selection of the author's science fiction poetry. Among the scripted stories, readers will find "Supertoys Last All Summer Long," based on the original short story that inspired Stanley Kubrick and Steven Spielberg's film A.I. Artificial Intelligence, in which Aldiss portrayed the role of Teddy. When the show was taken on the road, Matrix hailed it as "possibly the best piece of SF theatre [they've] seen." In this book's introduction, Robert Holdstock recalls it as "an evening of splendidly visual effects" all done by words that "managed to indulge all the senses, all the moods. . . . The feeling was one of something very special."

This is the first volume of the Helliconia Trilogy - a monumental saga which goes beyond anything yet created by this master among today's imaginative writers. An entire solar system is revealed, and with it a world disturbingly reflecting our own, Helliconia: an Earth-like planet where dynasties change with the seasons . Events and characters and animals stream across the pages of this gigantic novel. Cosmic in scope, it keeps an eye lovingly on the humans involved. So the 5,000 inhabitants of the Earth's observation station above Helliconia keep their eyes trained on the events of Oldorando and may long to intervene though the dangers are too great. So we on Earth have them all in our vision in one of the most consuming and magnificent novels of scientific romance.

A breathtaking vision of a utopian future on Mars by one of science fiction's most renowned authors In the middle decades of the twenty-first century, the corporate powers on Earth have established a thriving colony on Mars as an alternative to life on the overpopulated, war-torn, ecologically ravaged home planet. But when the economy of EUPACUS—Earth's collective industrialized nations—collapses, all contact between the two worlds abruptly ceases, and the Martian pioneers are left to fend for themselves. Led by Tom Jeffries, a philosopher and a visionary, the colonists now face a twofold challenge: No longer supported and subsidized by Earthbound interests, they must somehow form a working planetary alliance to create a new society based firmly in freedom and fairness for all while at the same time eliminating war, hunger, hatred, environmental abuse, and other former scourges of humanity. But first and foremost, they must survive. Brian W. Aldiss, a Hugo and Nebula Award–winning Grand Master of Science Fiction, presents a vision for the future that is startling, uplifting, and endlessly exciting. Written in collaboration with noted mathematician and physicist Roger Penrose—and with essential input from international law expert Laurence Lustgarten—Aldiss's remarkable White Mars opens a window onto a relentlessly thrilling and gloriously possible tomorrow.

A new savior emerges from a drugged-out dystopia in "the most ambitious psychedelic sci-fi novel of the era" from the Science Fiction Grand Master (Conceptual Fiction). The earth is recovering from the Acid Head War, in which hallucinogenic chemicals were the primary weapon. Many humans are now suffering from delusions and are unable to tell the real from the imaginary. When a man named Colin Charteris tries to make sense of the drugged-out world, he is taken as the new messiah. As he descends into paranoid visions, he begins to believe this himself.

Roy Complain lives in a culturally-primitive tribe in which curiosity is discouraged and life is solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short. With a small group, he leaves his home and ventures into uncharted territory. The consequent discoveries will change his perception of the entire universe. Complain's small tribe roam nomadically through corridors overrun by vegetation. After his wife is kidnapped, a tribal priest named Marapper encourages Complain to join a furtive expedition into the unexplored corridors. It is Marapper's belief that they are all living on board a moving spacecraft and that if they can reach the control room, they will gain command of the entire gargantuan vessel. On their journey, the group encounters other tribes of varying levels of sophistication. Complain is also briefly captured by humanoid 'Giants' of legend, who release him with no explanation. Complain's party eventually join the more sophisticated society of the 'Forwards'. Here, they learn that the space-craft is a multi-generational starship returning from the newly colonized planet of Procyon. In a previous generation, the ship's inhabitants had suffered from a pandemic because of an alien amino acid found in the waters of Procyon. Law and order began to collapse and knowledge of the ship and its purpose was eventually almost entirely lost throughout the vessel. It is now 23 generations that have passed since this 'Catastrophe'.

A disruption of time and space sends a modern man back two hundred years to confront Dr. Frankenstein's immortal monster in this brilliant reinvention of Mary Shelley's classic tale Some years into the twenty-first century, a newly devised weapon of mass destruction will do far worse than kill; it will disrupt time and space. Suddenly, land, buildings, animals, and people are falling through "timeslips" and being transported briefly back to earlier eras. One of these inadvertent time travelers, Joe Bodenland, is shocked when he finds himself parked outside a villa on the shore of Lake Geneva—and soon after, unbelievably, in the presence of nineteenth-century literary luminaries Lord Byron and Percy Shelley, along with Shelley's very enticing fiancée, budding author Mary. But when Joe comes face to face with a real, flesh-and-blood Victor Frankenstein and the monster the mad doctor brought into this world, the visitor from the future realizes that not only has time been disrupted, reality itself has been transmogrified. And this Frankenstein, it seems, is far from finished with his unholy endeavors, leaving it up to Joe to make it right for the sake of history—and for the bewitching lady novelist who has stolen his heart—before he is rudely thrust back to his own time. An absolutely stunning reinvention of a cherished literary classic, Frankenstein Unbound proves once more that there are no limits to the unparalleled creative genius of science fiction Grand Master W. Brian Aldiss, one of the most revered names in the field of speculative fiction.

The entire catalog of the Hugo Award–winning author's science fiction stories from the 1960s: all four volumes in one book. Featuring "Supertoys Last All Summer Long," the basis of the Steven Spielberg film A.I. Artificial Intelligence. "One of the best SF writers Britain has ever produced." —Iain M. Banks Hailed by the Guardian as "a master of the form," Science Fiction Grand Master Brian W. Aldiss came into his own as an author in the early 1960s. He created enough short fiction over the course of one decade to fill four volumes. This edition of The Complete Short Stories: The 1960s combines all four into one complete collection. The stories herein, gathered from diverse and often rare sources, showcase how Aldiss became one of Great Britain's most beloved authors, and how his work exemplifies the New Wave style. He was constantly experimenting with form and content and exploring new ideas. In this collection, you will meet astronauts approaching a star-swallowing vortex, a mother and son captured by aliens and taken to a world where time runs backward, a robot who commits suicide, and a unique little boy who is closer to his teddy bear than his own mother. The scope of Aldiss's imagination and his gifted prose are sure to challenge and delight readers both old and new. This special short story collection is a must-have for Aldiss fans, as well as an exciting introduction to the work of a true master.

In a grand medieval city where all change has been outlawed, a roguish young actor tempts fate and dinosaurs, all in the name of love By law, nothing can change in Malacia—a teeming, eternal city of dukes, players, wizards, merchants, beggars, ape-men, lizard-boys, and courtesans—but that is of no great consequence to Perian de Chirolo. An out-of-work actor and unabashed rogue, he is well satisfied with his lot as long as there's coin, eager young women to bed, and the occasional adventure. Perhaps it is this thrill-seeking spirit—or simply the lure of noble beauty—that makes Perian imprudently agree to take part in a mad inventor's illegal experiments, since such foolishness will never be tolerated in Malacia. But Perian's rash actions will only lead him on to further indiscretions, winning him first fame and then notoriety, causing him to be hunted, hounded, martyred, and trapped in a fight to the death with a razor-toothed Ancestral Beast on the outskirts of the city. And perhaps most frightening of all, Perian de Chirolo will find himself in love. Grand Master Brian W. Aldiss, one of science fiction's most able and ingenious creative artists, performs a truly astonishing feat of alternate-world building, immersing the reader in an unforgettable Medieval fantasy realm rich in color, incident, invention, and peril—and of course, giant lizards. Welcome to Malacia.

Originally published: London: Cape, 1985.

Case studies are used to show how theory is applied in practice. In the design and construction process, various models are used – geotechnical, laboratory, analytical, delivery, and economic models as the project is developed from planning to construction. This book explores the use and limitations of these earthwork models to be understood and appropriately applied. This book evolved from an earthworks course to practicing engineers over a 10-year period. Theory alone is not enough. Experience alone without relating back to theory can sometimes be misleading if transferred without understanding the fundamentals. The book benefited from the experiences of those many practicing engineers and the author’s experience in multi-disciplinary consulting companies as well as specialist geotechnical companies and government departments. The basics of soil, rock and compaction mechanics as applied to field conditions are covered. Material typically not covered in other textbooks, include the applications and limitations of associated "standard" laboratory and field testing. Specific chapters are dedicated to excavation, subgrade and expansive clay assessment and treatment. Useful design practices as well as the development and application of specifications is covered. A specification, test or design in one climatic condition or geology may not apply in another.

With the Euro successfully launched and a European army a real prospect, Europe is now a recognizable political entity on the world scene. A population of over 300 million and the world's largest economy have already turned the EU into a super-power, but it is now on the verge of being a super-state. Haseler examines why the new European super-state has emerged, how it will inevitably rival the United States and how the Americans are reacting to this new world player. Super-State explores what this new EU super-state means for the citizens of Europe, looking specifically at how Eurosceptic Britain will fit into this new structure.

A London-based female assassin runs into trouble on a mission in 1970s Mexico in this action-packed debut crime thriller. Acapulco 1974: Rina Walker is on assignment. Just another quick, clean kill. When she wakes to discover her employer's severed head on her bedside table, and a man with an AK 47 coming through the door of her hotel room, she must use all her skills to neutralise her attacker and escape. Notting Hill 1956: Fifteen-year-old Rina is scavenging and stealing to support her siblings and her alcoholic mother. When a local gangster attacks her younger sister, Rina wreaks revenge. Innocence betrayed, Rina faces the brutality of the post-war London underworld—a world that teaches her the skill to kill . . . Praise for Harm "Hugh Fraser's Harm is the perfect combination of action, mystery and intrigue. It also features some superbly constructed characters, who develop over the course of the story—which is a rarity in mystery novels." —Benjamin Maio Mackay, actor "Go and buy it quick. It is very filmic and very taut.... This book will do you HARM because you won't want to do anything else but sit down and get to the next bit fast. Fabulous." —Celia Imrie, actress, Bridget Jones' Diary, Calendar Girls, The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel

Colonists on Mars fight to prevent their own extinction in "a suspenseful genre-bending combination of straight SF and mystery" ( Booklist, starred review). Doomed by overpopulation, irreversible environmental degradation, and never-ending war, Earth has become a fetid swamp. For many, Mars represents humankind's last hope. In six tightly clustered towers on the red planet's surface, the colonists who have escaped their dying home world are attempting to make a new life unencumbered by the corrupting influences of politics, art, and religion. Unable ever to return, these pioneers have chosen an unalterable path that winds through a landscape as terrible as it is beautiful, often forcing them to compromise their beliefs—and sometimes their humanity—in order to survive. But the gravest threat to the future is not the settlement's total dependence on foodstuffs sent from a distant and increasingly uncaring Earth, or the events that occur in the aftermath of the miraculous discovery of native life on Mars—it is the fact that in the ten years since colonization began, every new human baby has been born dead, or so tragically deformed that death comes within hours. The great Brian W. Aldiss has delivered a dark and provocative yet ultimately hopeful magnum opus rich in imagination and bold ideas. A novel of philosophy as much as science fiction, Finches of Mars is an exploration of intellectual history, evolution, technology, and the future by one of speculative fiction's undisputed masters.

This special collection of short stories from Grand Master Brian Aldiss is being issued to coincide with his 80th birthday. Set to include such notable works as "Aboard the Beatitude," "A Man with His Mule," and "Head," the anthology will also feature commentaries from a group of his peers sharing their perspectives on this amazingly talented individual.

Originally published: London: Cape, 1983.