The Pale Shadow of Science
BY BRIAN ALDISS
Contents
Introductory Note
Introductory Note to The Lurid Glare of the Comet
Preparation for What?
Long Cut to Burma
Old Bessie
Science Fiction’s Mother Figure
The Immanent Will Returns
The Downward Journey: Orwell’s 1984
A Whole New Can of Worms
Peep
A Transatlantic Harrison, Yippee!
The Atheist’s Tragedy Revisited
The Pale Shadow of Science
A Monster for All Seasons
Helliconia: How and Why
Bold Towers, Shadowed Streets …
… And the Lurid Glare of the Comet
When the Future Had to Stop
What Happens Next?
Grounded in Stellar Art
It Takes Two to Tango
Robert Sheckley’s World: Australia
Sturgeon: Mercury Plus X
The Glass Forest
About the Author
Also available by the author
Also part of The Brian Aldiss Collection
About the Publisher
This book preserves a few of the many articles and reviews I have written over the last few years. My passport describes me as ‘Writer and Critic,’ because a fair proportion of my writing has always been non-fiction. Non-fiction has a role to play in an author’s life. It is to fiction what target practice is to a soldier: it keeps his eye in in preparation for the real thing.
For the record, these are the various places where the pieces originally appeared.
‘Preparation for What?’ in The Fiction Magazine, 1983; ‘Long Cut to Burma’ (as ‘Drawn Towards Burma’) in The Fiction Magazine, 1982, here revised; ‘Old Bessie’ first told at a Halloween party in Chris Priest’s house in Harrow, October 1984.
‘Science Fiction’s Mother Figure’ (as ‘Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley’) in Science Fiction Writers, edited by E.F. Bleiler, Simon & Schuster, 1981; ‘The Immanent Will Returns’ (as ‘Olaf Stapledon’) in the Times Literary Supplement, 1983; ‘The Downward Journey’ in Extrapolation, 1984; ‘A Whole New Can of Worms’ originated in a speech delivered at the City Lit on 9 January 1982, later published in Foundation, 1982; ‘Peep’ formed the Introduction to James Blish’s Quincunx of Time, published by Avon Books, 1983; ‘A Transatlantic Harrison, Yippee!’ was printed in the programme book for Novacon 12, held in Birmingham, England in 1982.
‘The Atheist’s Tragedy Revisited’ is a new piece. ‘The Pale Shadow of Science’ was delivered as a talk to the British Association for the Advancement of Science during their annual meeting at Norwich, 11 September 1984, and an abridged edition was published in The Guardian newspaper, 13 September 1984; ‘A Monster for All Seasons’ in Science Fiction Dialogues, edited by Gary Wolfe, Academy Press, 1982; ‘Helliconia: How and Why’ has not yet been published anywhere.
My thanks go to the committee of Norwescon 8, to all my friends attending that illustrious event, and in particular to Jerry Kaufman, Donald G. Keller, and Serconia Press.
This volume is divided into three sections, autobiographical, followed by articles on individual writers, and articles on more general aspects of science fiction.
This section is the most fun. Here are a few of the experiences which went to shape me as a writer. An American audience will surely find them very strange, especially when they come to the piece about the haunted house in which my family once lived.
These pieces have been published here and there in England. They are an approach towards an autobiography which I intend one day to write … once I have set a few more pressing novels down on paper.
Introductory Note to The Lurid Glare of the Comet
The idea of this book is to preserve some of the articles I have written over recent years which may be of more than ephemeral interest. It follows on from my earlier Serconia Press book, The Pale Shadow of Science, and is the mixture as before. Except.
Except that here I include a brief autobiography, presenting it to my readers with some trepidation. Gale Research Books in Detroit have begun a rather astonishing series of volumes, entitled Contemporary Authors – Autobiography Series. Gale sent me a copy of Volume I, asking me if I would write for Volume 2. Writers are allowed to have photographs of their choice to accompany the text. It all looks amateur and artless, but from it a reader can learn a great deal about that ever-mysterious subject, other people’s lives. I decided to have a go at Volume 2.
It is difficult, perhaps impossible, to be truthful about oneself. I did my best. The exercise opened up a new area of writing. Gale limits its writers to a certain number of words. In the greatly revised sketch, here presented as ‘The Glass Forest,’ the thing has grown almost half as long again. My trepidation is, in consequence, almost half as great again.
Incidentally, it is worth anyone’s while looking up the Gale books in their library. The first volume contains autobiographical sketches by Marge Piercy, Richard Condon, Stanislaw Lem, and Frederik Pohl, among other familiar names, the second Poul Anderson, James Gunn, and Alan Sillitoe.
‘The Glass Forest’ is the pièce de resistance on this menu; but I hope that the other courses will also please. As before, science fiction and writing rub shoulders with travel, history, and other arts.
My thanks go as ever to the stalwarts of Serconia Press and to Marshall B. Tymn,