The brilliant, fun poetry is equalled only by the totally engaging illustrations. I re-read it regularly, getting more out of it each time.

This beautiful book illustrates one mans realization of personal evil and his victory over it. The line-drawing illustrations and beatiful prose combine to make this picture book unforgetable and moving.

This book contains a story that you simply cannot forget. A story perhaps about the downfall of an incredible society or perhaps the rise of an even more advanced but archaic group. Beautifully illustrated...unforgetable pictures

Brian Aldiss has been turning heads since the sixties with his novels, science fiction, and criticism. His work in NEW WORLDS magazine helped jump-start the New Wave of SF, and not the least of that work was his poetry. Here's a collection much richer and stranger than the usual chapbook, and as surely as a musk ox falls in love with a refrigerator or a book falls in love with its reader, you will at least feel a strange attraction to this audacious volume. Included are gems like "The Cat Improvement Company," unwinding the helix of Felix's genes for his own good, and the title piece, which ponders the eternal question 'If music be the food of love, should we order in?' Aldiss' agile mind leaps across dark light-years to flirt with an incompatible "Femalien," soars across time to visit Mary Shelley, and rearranges headlines into poetry, leaving plenty of room for small gems and larger pieces. Brian W. Aldiss is the critic responsible for pointing out that FRANKENSTEIN was the first science fiction novel, and also the author of FRANKENSTEIN UNBOUND; no surprise that he pays several visits to Mary Shelley, rearranging her own words to make a poem and giving both Victor Frankenstein and his creation narrative voices. Aldiss ends with his "Alphabet Ameliorating Hope," a futuristic tale in verse. Once you've got this book open, it could rain cucumbers for all you'd care.

Yesterday is a dream; today and tomorrow have been shattered like mirrors reflecting endless distorted visions. Anything might be possible. This is because the world has been well-drenched with psychedelic nerve gas, and it never wears off. Civilization has almost crumbled, and mankind stumbles through its daily grind by force of habit. Out of the wreckage of Europe comes Colin Charteris, self-named and losing his grip on reality by inches, driven by a sense of destiny to drive his red Banshee across the deteriorating roads of Europe, searching for meaning in England. But in England he is hailed as a messiah for the message he brings, of uncertainty celebrated, of open-endedness and freedom, and his idea of the new humanity as Man the Driver, choosing his destiny or doom at high speed. A wild motorcade across Europe ensues, and something worse than mere anarchy is loosed upon the dazed world. Aldiss endows his work with a feel of gritty realism, despite the fact that it reads like a Stephen King novel transcribed by James Joyce. Will mankind survive? Will Charteris walk on water and hang on a cross? Was that dog really wearing a tie? Maybe the answer is yes, or no, or maybe; or perhaps all of those at once. There's an incredible feeling of impending doom in this book; all the characters inhabit their own private worlds, unsure if they see the same thing the others see. I finished it, scratched my head, and began to re-read it; and found it almost a different book. Multi-faceted, multi-valued, and filled with poetry and blazing worldplay; BAREFOOT IN THE HEAD is a difficult but rewarding read from a grandmaster of reality.

Everything about this book is disturbing. The cover, all the fantastic artwork inside, and of course, the story. Two brothers, siamese twins, (plus a third unconcious head) are thrown out of their environment, and into the public eye in the form of rock stars. The book follows them from their island home, and then on their world tour. When suddenly the third head awakens.

The 1960's were a time of utopian hopes, celebrating peace, free love and the brotherhood of all; but also of a deep unease, even a nihilistic fear in the Western World. Surely the Vietnam War, the amoral Nixon Administration and the constant threat of nuclear annihilation fed those fears; conservatives feared the destruction of values and society they had worked hard to attain while their opposite numbers feared their continuation. The developed world's squandering of resources began to be understood by all; no longer did a belching smokestack indicate progress as much as environmental disaster.

At this time, science fiction gave us some of the grimmest writing yet. John Brunner's Stand on Zanzibar, Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse Five, and Anthony Burgess's A Clockwork Orange are all outstanding examples of the fear and hopelessness authors of the time understood coursed close under the skin of the optimistic face of society. Brian Aldiss's Earthworks is equally representative of this tone. Although nowhere nearly as well known as my other examples, Aldiss's vision may actually be bleaker. It is set in a future which follows all too recognizably from our own--pollution has taken its toll and disease and hunger are so rampant that they have become the identifying characteristic of the time. Although Earthworks is quite short, at only 126 pages, it is a richly detailed and fully convincing portrait; disease and illness make the storytelling hallucinatory at times, leaving the narrator and reader questioning the very nature of reality. Fans of Philip K. Dick will be enthralled by this quality. Aldiss is a superb writer at his very best here. It is a real pity that Earthworks is out of print, but I would definitely recommend it for any science fiction fan search out a used copy.

Continuing his very successful (critcally at least I have no idea how well it sold, though the book trumpets that it's an "international best seller") Helliconia series about a planet with a two thousand year long revolution and two hundred year seasons (give or take), he expands and clarifies all the stuff that happened in the first book, which you don't even need to read to understand. So much time has passed since the first book that everything that happened is mostly the stuff of distorted legend if they even remember it at all. This time around he chooses to focus on one group of people over a period of maybe ten years or so instead of the massive scope of the first book and he proves he can pull off both with ease. Court intrigue, suspense, the slow heating of the planet amidst the politics of the planet, it's all there. And just so you remember that Aldiss is a science-fiction writer, he expands on the notion of Earth watching the planet and shows that they'll have more of a role in the series than you would expect. All in all, incredibly detailed planetbuilding by someone not normally known for that sort of stuff, this is the type of book that people label a "classic" and for good reason. Everything works, even the plot technique of showing us the aftermath of something and then bouncing back in the narrative to show us what happened before (and they passing it at some point, it can get confusing if you're not paying attention) works. Even with the heat and whatnot, Helliconia becomes a place you want to live. I know I do. Criminally this book is out of print, something that should be recitified by someone (listening publishers, this series should not only be available in Britian!) but if you ever find it used, snap it up, it might be hard to find but definitely worth the time spent searching for it.

Being a real lover of Brian's SF, I was a bit dubious about readint this, the plot really didn't sound like my kinda thing. The book follows the 'journey' of Perian, a free spirit and his life in the trouble city of Malacia. Magic, war, lust, destiny and life has created this cracker of a novel! It's definately worth a look!

With stories like "Ferryman" (Eric Brown), "The White Stuff" (Peter F. Hamilton & Graham Joyce), and "A Night on Bare Mountain" (Graham Charnock), anthologies don't get any better than this. My only quibble is with the experimental narrative "Thirteen Views of a Cardboard City"(William Gibson) which rounds out the volume with a whimper, not a bang. Otherwise, this is Hugo & Nebula territory.

Once again, a classic in the genre is out of print. If you can hunt this book down, it is worth the read. I haven't read any other generation ship stories before this one, but I found this one to not only be enjoyable but also emotionally compelling. Brian Aldiss is really trying to tell us about the built-in urge to be free and to discover who you really are. the plot is simple: The characters are on a huge ship hurtling through space but have no idea of that fact and simply know the ship as their world. The story unfolds as we discover the truth behind where and what the characters are. If you are interested at in in classic science fiction, then this is worth hunting down.

Written as response to Robert A. Heinlein's ORPHANS OF THE SKY, a novel he felt lacking in emotion, Aldiss' novel is a classic generation starship tale.

The idea that their universe is the inside of a giant spaceship is known but derided in the Greene tribe. They're a barbarous lot. They destroy books whenever they find them. The Teaching, a Freudian inspired religion with its talk of id and ego, values full and immediate expression of fear and anger lest the repression of those emotions curdle into neurosis. A nomadic lot, they seal off the hallway they live in, moving the barricades when they exhaust the "ponics", plants that abound in the ship's corridors. Their power stems from a cache of weapons found two generations ago.

And protagonist Roy Complain is not happy with his life in the tribe. He gets flogged for losing his woman on a hunting expedition into the "deadways" beyond the tribes "Quarters". Chaffing under the Teaching and floggings of his tribe, Complain decides to accompany priest Marapper and three others through the deadways and to the land of the advanced people of Forwards. Marapper expects, somewhere, to find the ship's control room, seize control of the vessel, and end this painful journey through the stars.

In his wanderings, Complain learns the truth behind the other groups -- the mutants, the Outsiders, and the Giants -- rumored to inhabit the ship. Aldiss puts an ironic twist to the generation starship tale, particularly ORPHANS OF THE SKY, when he reveals the exact situation of the ship. By novel's end, Aldiss gives a detailed and ingenious explanation for Complain's world.

It's not necessary to read the Heinlein story, or any other generation starship tale, to appreciate this fine novel. Aldiss gives us believable emotion and, in Complain, a fine portrait of a man growing into a true knowledge of himself and his world.

Mystery/suspense are seated comfortably alongside sci-fi in this story of a community of people searching for their lost past. Answers are hidden securely along the way, and are ultimately fascinating. The world Aldiss creates is strange and frightening, and the characters are memorable as each struggles for stability among chaos.

This book deserves to be rediscovered, from lonely out-of-print land, if only for the awesome premise that Aldiss has created. Europe has been devastated by chemical warfare, and the weapon was psychedelic drugs. The unlikely perpetrator is Kuwait of all places, and that's ironic in more ways than one. Now the whole population is on a multiple personality-inducing acid trip. An aid worker named Charteris was one of the few people not affected, and as the only sane person around, all of the headtrippers think this guy is the messiah. But it turns out that the psychoactive effects of the drug are contagious, so Charteris becomes affected himself and starts to believe that he really is the messiah. As Charteris becomes more and more insane as the book progresses, so does the third-person narrator along with Aldiss' writing style, leading toward complete incomprehensibility.

Sadly, such an incredible premise is buried under a completely misguided writing endeavor. Aldiss has used this interesting idea to merely experiment with writing techniques that were derivative for their time. The book is 100% 1969 and is showing its age. The stream-of-insanity writing style that Aldiss inflicts on us here is a thinly disguised copy of the groundbreaking works of William Burroughs, plus a little of Philip K. Dick. This is even more evident when you consider that most of Aldiss' other works are more straightforward sci-fi. So the incredible potential of the premise is squandered beneath waves of faddish psychedelic writing style and an exasperating parade of made-up terminology (though I admit I like the adjective "vonnegutsy.") This type of writing has been done successfully, and can bend your mind to extreme proportions, but get it from the originators.

The actual plot elements, theme, and character development of this story could fit into a much more focused short story of twenty pages. This tale had infinitely more potential when it started. A real disappointment.

Wow, my brain hurts after reading this. I feel as if my whole civilization has fallen apart due to everyone tripping all the time. When they try to work the machines, men'll fall about laughing. The walls are melting, and I can't decide whether humanity is rotting alive in waves of indecision or poised on the verge of a breakthrough that will catapult us into a new, multi-valued way of perception. I think I just saw a dog wearing a tie. The knowledge that the plane is going to crash haunts me night and day, and I've developed a peculiar aversion to christmas cactus. You don't understand what I'm saying; you DO understand what I'm saying. Both are true, and neither. It's..it's like the SIXTIES: a tragic waste of brain cells AND a step into a new dimension. Aldiss and more...

After the Acidhead War, most of Earth's population is stumbling through an endless acid trip caused by nerve gas. Colin Charteris, in headlong flight from Serbia and the refugee camps where he was exposed, finds everyday objects like Metz cathedral ominous and portentous. A vision of the future catapults him into the company of more-advanced acid cases who call him a messiah for his concept of Man the Driver, resulting in his leading a mad exodus by car across a blasted Europe into a life of complete incomprehensibility. As birds build twisted nests, dogs wear neckties and the new animal slinks through the shrubbery, Charteris forges a new vision of reality, but drops out before the crucifixion. Inside every sane citizen is a madman waiting to run free....