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“... Brian Aldiss gives his definition of Science Fiction on page one of Chapter One of a five-hundred-page volume. This is admirably bold of him – more timorous scholars tuck their definitions away inconspicuously, or else develop complex excuses for not giving any – as well as being admirably genial. After all, says Aldiss, the definition may be wrong, but it doesn’t matter: ‘we can modify it as we go along ...”

“... referring to her heroin addiction. Friends and mentors over the years – Rhys Davies. Peter Owen, Brian Aldiss – have made considerable efforts to dispel such feelings of uncase by stressing how smart and cheerful she, was how little her drug addiction appeared to affect her. Such loyal friends did not wish her to be regarded as a pathological case ...”

“... In his history of the genre, Brian Aldiss suggests that most SF is what he calls ‘prodromic’: we must read it less as a prophecy of the future than as symptomatic of the present. By this rule 1984 will be 36 years out of date when we get there. A commoner view (on which Aldiss is naturally not so keen) holds that SF, like the Western, is an exclusively American line of fiction in which dabbling Europeans can easily make fools of themselves ...”

“... virtue is gilded. Benjy, Diana’s father, is idealised to the point of cloyingness. Since 1980, Brian Aldiss has been thrashing around somewhat. We have had a rewrite of Wells’s Island of Dr Moreau, a text which, together with Frankenstein (which he also rewrote), Aldiss conceives as central to SF’s evolution. In ...”

“... of the funniest novels I have ever read. Yet add the whole thing up and it’s hell, 1988-style. Brian Aldiss’s Forgotten Life has a strikingly good dust-jacket. The front reproduces Lucian Freud’s Interior with plant, reflection listening (self-portrait), a picture of the painter, ear cupped, looking through the foliage of a spider-grass ...”

“... bluster. If naming in the ‘Avignon Quintet’ is a slippery and enigmatic casting of spells, in Brian Aldiss’s ‘Helliconia Trilogy’ its function is remorselessly cognitive. Helliconia is a remarkable instance of what is nowadays called world-building, a specialist activity which has reached the stage of do-it-yourself articles in recent issues of ...”

“... the trouble to waste such expensive technology on an old city that had lost its importance?’ Brian Aldiss coined the term ‘cosy catastrophe’ to describe the kinds of story, especially popular in the 1950s, in which the end of the world outside was an excuse for a return to scenes of domestic middle-class life. Jonas comes across as a character ...”

“... on the idea of utopia, the book has some supple, remarkably powerful readings to offer of Le Guin, Brian Aldiss, Philip K. Dick (‘the Shakespeare of science fiction’), A.E. Van Vogt, Kim Stanley Robinson and a range of others. Jameson has always been an energetic retriever of the neglected and maligned, and a brilliant salvage job here on Charles ...”

“... are its boundaries? Look up the checklist and you will find a large number of genre writers, from Brian Aldiss to P.G. Wodehouse, whose names are virtually absent from the main narrative. Bradbury’s book is based on an entirely conventional notion of the fictional mainstream. One can imagine a very different history of fiction in our century. The ...”

“... contribute a real solidity to his guiding ideas. Greenland’s study notes, with reference to Brian Aldiss, the need for Science Fiction to outgrow a vapid Utopianism. George Turner takes the detour of futurology to persuade us that we will never be much better than we are. Equally telling evidence of the crisis of Utopianism can be found in the ...”

“... scores. This conviction is the theme of ‘Supertoys Last All Summer Long’, the short story by Brian Aldiss that was made into a film by Steven Spielberg. In Spielberg’s AI, scientists build a humanoid robot, David, who is programmed to love. David expresses his love to a woman, Monica, who has adopted him as her child. Current experience suggests ...”