An excellent Aldiss book. It annnotates the history of mankind as told by its replacement. Telling the tale like a geologist would - using million, billion, thousand, and hundred year increments - Aldiss shows how man is the perfect seedling for populating the universe as well as the ultimate vehicle for its self-destruction. Man ruins the Earth, leaves Earth for the stars, tackles the problems of time travel through an intergrated form of speech-like alchemy, rediscovers a still populated Earth but does not belive it to be the Earth of myth, renames Earth as there are already hundreds of planets in the universe laying claim to that distinction, unifies the universe, institutes galactic warfare as a necessary economical device, and destroys the universe in a truely unique battle against man's successor. Time is the constant, and Aldiss makes us aware that we are just a silly soap opera for the infinate to enjoy for but a minute or two.

A series of short stories, each dealing with a specific era in the human development and future histoy. Alldis is known in his intelligent and philosofic works and this one is not only keeping those high standarts , but stands out as a wonderfull, imaginative story of our race , millions of years into the future. super recommended. enjoy.

I read this book as a teenager, and then many other times. It's a story of mankind spanning millions of years. This book is one-of-a-kind, for the gigantic scale on which is projected, the bold imagination, the long silences between flashes of history that let yor mind fascinated for the untold but imagined. And there is a subtle sadness for those million lives, their joys and despairs... but always life flourishes in unexpected ways. Reading this book is like looking at the sky in a clear night and wondering at the immense universe.

The story follows the lives of a small group of human survivors of a nuclear accident. The "Accident", as it is referred to, has made male humans infertile. As the surviving population slowly dies off, the remaining groups of elderly people struggle to find hope in a bleak environment. One group, led by a man called Greybeard, have lived for many years in a small, isolated town along the river. They decide to venture down the river, to seek out the truth of rumors spread by travelers that children and fertile humans still survive in isolated pockets of the land. This is mostly a dark novel, with a few moving moments, and some beautifully descriptive writing. It is short on action.

It was a book of Tim White's fantasy art that led me to "Greybeard". An illustration of an abandoned town, weeds sprouting from cracks in the road, half-ruined buildings covered in ivy - a scene typical of the post-disaster genre. I was intrigued by the premise behind it.

The explosion of radioactive weapons in space has disrupted Earth's protective van Allen Belt, saturating the planet with massive doses of radiation. This has resulted in sickness, deformity and sterility for the human race. In the years following the "Accident" civilization has been in steady decline, as there will be no more future generations.

Algernon Timberlane (better known as Greybeard) was six years old at the time of the disaster. He has grown up in a world that has become increasingly primitive and quiet as people succumb to old age or cancers caused by the fallout. By the time Greybeard is in his mid fifties he is one of the youngest people left in the world. England has become a wilderness thinly populated by tribes of old people living with untreatable ailments. Savage animals, no longer afraid of man, roam the countryside in packs. Some people claim to have seen goblins lurking in the shadows. With each passing year people grow more frail and feeble-minded.

This is the first novel I've read by Brian Aldiss, the man who identified John Wyndham with the "Cosy Catastrophe". "Greybeard" is a novel John Wyndham would certainly have approved of. The catastrophe that shaped this decrepit future is, however, far from cosy. A book like "Greybeard" would be a good way to argue in favour of the need for human cloning. It could well save our species.

One of the best of the "end of the world" books, written by one the select members of the group known as the "world destroyers" back in the fifties and sixties. I began reading science fiction before I was even in junior high, and for me, this was one of the most memorable. It is still one of the best (I can count those I would consider 'the best' on one hand). The atmosphere that Aldiss creates for us begins on the first page, in the first paragraph, in the first sentence. This book will stay with me for the rest of my life. (Several years ago, I managed to find a first edition. Now, if I could just get it signed...)

I don't know , Brian Aldis is a great writer , he wrote masterpieces like "The Long Afternoon On Earth" and "Space , Time And Netaniel" but this book is just horrible.

It's REALLY dated , totaly flat charecters , childish aliens , and the story itself is pretty bad.

I like most of his work , and he does have ingenius sparks sometimes , but this book is lame! For some good read of Aldis you should try "the interpreter" or "The Long Afternoon On Earth".

In my edition of the book it's pretty obvious that the person who wrote the back cover copy didn't actually bother to read the book itself and just read the last two chapters, since that's basically what it describes (it must be the publisher, because my copy of Barry Malzberg's "Galaxies" is from the same publisher and the same problem is there) . . . which isn't bad, but turns out to be incredibly misleading and makes you think the point of the book is very different from what it really is. What we have here is a slim novel about humans making contact with an alien race and lousing it up pretty bad. Aldiss' theory, in what was becoming a fairly prevalent one among SF authors at the time, was that aliens, not being human, can't be necessarily understood very easily and it'll take a lot of work. Unlike Lem's Solaris, which postulated that we'd never be able to understand aliens no matter how hard we tried, Aldiss states that we could do it if we work at it, but nobody will bother. The bulk of the book is a satire on the human race essentially, dissecting all the little things that make us so screwy as a whole. It's not a very optimistic book, so don't expect any uplifting message here, while most of the humans are fairly decent people, a lot of them do some pretty mean things out of ignorance or just plain spite. And the aliens themselves are sort of dopey, while the whole "communicating through excrement" thing is pretty funny and there's some other scattered neat ideas, as a race they just aren't that interesting. In fact the whole book suffers from good ideas but okay execution . . . the plot itself is almost too straightforward, there are barely any really standout characters (the main characters disappears partway through the book, never to be seen again) and while there's a statement lurking in the story somewhere, it never really coheres into a solid one. On the whole though it's a thought provoking and entertaining read and short enough that you can finish it off in a long afternoon without much trouble. Aldiss is enough of a master that even his minor works offer something to take home and make it a worthwhile read. Definitely worth a look.

In a myriad of SF-writers, Brian Aldiss has always stood out because of his ability to infuse typical genre scenarios with unique imagination and gentle irony, and The Dark Light Years is the author at his best. The plot follows humanity's first contac with an alien race called the Utods, an intelligent, gentle people who think technology is a strange Idea and socialize using their excrements(!). Aldiss turns this scenario into a humorous but but bleak fable about human nature, with lots of sideways glances at heavy philosophical themes like the nature of communication, religion and progress. A great book, halfway between Ellison and Asimov. Thoroughly recommended.

I'll give Aldiss credit for creativity -- this story of far future Earth is full of very imaginative landscapes, flora, and fauna. But there's not much else to recommend it. The speculations on the evolutionary history of Earth are a little too implausible to overlook. And the story line seems little more than a mechanism for introducing more outlandish creatures.

I expect it would be more enjoyable for younger readers, or those who don't demand that the science in their fiction be at least plausible.

As a last note, I should mention that I came across this book as one of Easton Press' "Masterpieces of Science Fiction" series. Given that it is apparently a classic, my viewpoint is perhaps in the minority.

Of all the "New Wave" SF writers that emerged in the sixties and seventies, Brian Aldiss is probably the least flashiest and most consistent. His books have this sort of quiet confidence, as if he already knows they're unique and doesn't need to go about proclaiming it. Most of the time the trick is in the presentation. In this novel we have an Earth millions of years in the future, a planet that has stopped rotating and is thus half light and half dark, a planet where most of the animals have died out and plants have taken over, evolving into all sorts of weird lifeforms, all of which you have to read to believe. Humans are still around but most traces of civilization are gone, they live fairly nomadic and primitive existences. The biggest problem with this book is that the setup is just about all you get, while there is a plot of sorts, it's for the most part episodic and at best ramshackle, lurching from situation to situation. But it's Aldiss' vision of the future Earth, orbiting a sun soon to go nova, and a planet covered in all kinds of fantastic forms of life, that sustains the book. Every time you turn the page something new and bizarre greets you and I'm just amazed the man was able to think of all these things. Granted most of the plot is devoted to showing off these things but when then they're this consistently entertaining I'm not going to argue too much. Honestly there probably is some kind of allegorical aspect to the plot that I'm just missing because I'm too dense but hey, whatever. Fans of pure science probably won't be too thrilled because Aldiss' extrapolations of the far future seem to have little to do with actual science, but as I always say, don't let science get in the way of a good story. This is an absolutely fascinating story that ranks with his better works and while it's not his absolute masterpiece, it certainly deserves to be read.

Here is a fine example of the most adept application of a most adept imagination. In this novel Aldiss not only challenges many ecological issues, but blends them into a wonderful story of evolution, both of life as a whole, and of society. This is a must for any sci-fi/fantasy fan.

The New York Times Book Review said that "Mr. Aldiss is now in competition with nobody but himself." In Somewhere East of Life, Brian Aldiss does the impossible and loses.

What stands out is not that Somewhere East of Life is a bad book (it's not), but that it's decidedly "eh". The chapters fall quickly into place; after the first four or five, every other one is as bland as a flat 7-Up. Moreso than that, Aldiss fails to live up to the potential of the story; getting ten years of your life stolen and made into porn brings to mind several other story ideas that would have made Somewhere East of Life a much better book than it is. Perhaps I should leave it at that; it's a decent story soured by the fact that it COULD and SHOULD be better.

Having first read this book in December 1994 during a period of darkness in my life, I was pleased to find that upon re-reading it, my initial response to the book was not hampered by my (then) situation. The concept of a man dealing with memory loss is interesting to say the least, and even more provoking when the possibility exists where it may be retrieved. Roy Burnell is a comlicated person, many friends, many possiblities, but many regrets and losses as well (does this sound like you? me too), making him a well rounded, very real person. Through an act of his own kindness, ten years of his life are removed, thus making him ignorant of his status in life, and more importantly, his divorce, which preys upon him constantly. Narrowly escaping death more than a few times and in locales that are even more real today than they were when the book was published, Burnell traveses the remains of former Soviet states hoping to catalogue churches, monastaries (where's my spell-checker?), or just about any religion-oriented artifact or structure. Reading the passage about Burnell travelling by train made me think that perhaps the writer Paul Theroux had jumped into the future to make sly observations. I sometimes felt that I had to plod through some descriptions just to make it to the next page, but I always felt rewarded in the end, for it was in Burnells' observations that I was able to see parts of myself. A highly enjoyable book that, while dark and truly depressing at times, will reward the reader literally on the last page.

Generally when you go to read books by authors who are years past their absolute peak works you're not expecting much. Thus far Aldiss has wowed me with NonStop and the Helliconia Trilogy and while this book didn't make me proclaim it as the savior of literature, it's a darn fine novel and can easily go toe to toe with most of the new authors that show up every year or so. The idea here is that poor Roy lives in a very near future in a world much like ours, where he acts as a preserver, taking pictures and documenting old churches and the like before the civil unrest in the area reaches it and it gets bombed into oblivion. In any event, Roy unfortunately gets ten years of his memory stolen by folks who package them into "bullets" and sell them to people who want to experience the lives of other people, currently the newest illegal craze. Roy, adrift and confused, now has to try and put his life back together while dealing with the fact that not only does he have an ex-wife but he doesn't even remember being married at all, while at the same time trying to find his memories so he can get them back. The plot takes a bit of an episodic spin at that point, which is probably the best way to go since it gives Aldiss a chance to show his world off and make some comments about the world we live in. Roy travels from danger spot to danger spot, running into violence and warlords, armies and relics, all the while trying to figure out just what effect the last ten years had on him and just what went wrong with his ex-wife. Definitely engaging, always thought-provoking, this is all too often overlooked in his list of decent books, don't make a mistake and miss this.

In the 21st century, man's use of nuclear weapons has disrupted the natural order of the universe. Space and time have begun to fluctuate, and "timeslips" can suddenly transport whole regions into the future or past. Caught in one of these displacements is Joe Bodenland, our narrator, who suddenly finds himself (along with his nuclear-powered car and watch) stranded in the day of Mary Shelley, Lord Byron, and yes, Victor Frankenstin. Enthralled by the chance to meet the "historical" Frankenstein (a term which, due to the timeslips, may no longer be relevant), Bodenland launches an investigation into the scientist's life that leads to a fateful, existential cat & mouse game with Frankenstein's legendary Monster...and his mate. Involving subplots include Bodenland's brief but intense love with Mary Shelley and philosophical debates with Percy Shelley, Byron, and of course the Modern Prometheus himself, the mad Frankenstein. An intoxicating mix of history, suspense, and glorious sci-fi, Frankenstein Unbound is a fantastic morality tale and an excellent corollary to the Frankenstein legend.

Unfortunatly, I only read the book a number of years ago, but I really enjoy Aldiss' books. Frankenstien is one of several of his works to become screen plays with uneven results. Our hero finds himself time shifted (like K. Vonnegurt's quake) to 19th century Austria where soon meets the proto-hippies, Mary Shelley, Percy and their romantic commune. Soon Dr. Frankenstien apprears with the real monster. My memory of the story is fairly vague, although I recall our hero still has his late model car and digital watch. A lot of twists and coincidences later find our hero and the monster at the north pole searching for the answer, in their fashion, of what is life anyway. It well worth the read to find out.

The planet Helliconia is a world where the seasons are thousands of years long, and the whole story beginns in the winter, where we follow Yuli and his descendants in a L O N G historical epic. The complete works with Helliconia spring and Helliconia summer contains (I think) more than a thousand pages, but I've only finished the winter and half the spring part. It seems to me that the whole thing lacks any meaning at all. The only thing that happens is that generation after generation is born and dies, and that the seasons are changing (oh, I forgot the neverending war whith the other intelligent race, whose name i've forgot). I'm sure that this is a very well written epic, but I found it a bit hard to motivate more than thousand pages of reading, when I wasn't sure there would be any real ending. Forgive me, Brian, for not reading all of it (I thought it was very well written). Perhaps it had an ending after all?

Just as the series began with everything waking up with spring, so it ends with the world once again falling asleep for winter. Definitely ranking as one of the best series of all time, Aldiss finishes weaving his masterful plot, somehow making a book that is in the vein of the others and yet completely different. The matter of Earth is finally clarified and he ties in the destiny of us with Helliconia and shows that the two planets aren't all that different after all. Brilliant stuff and stuff that deserves wide reading, but as I keep saying, some publisher has let this series go out of print. Criminal, I tell you. Someone get this series into the right hands where it belongs! A classic.

Aldiss subtitled his book " a tale of homo-uniformis" and this is telling. The book tells of a group of overcivilised spacefarers marooned on a planet where people from their mollycoddled society have been marooned and subsequently gone wild.

The 'natives' represent all the vibrant savagery and anarchistic creativity that the visitors have lost in their over organised, overdeveloped culture.

The two different ways of life meet and interact, with challenging results, both sides leave the transaction changed and shaken up.

This book examines themes relevant to our modern civilisation and the way that we may often feel lost when we come into contact with a simpler, more "primitive" way of life.

The ending is typically Aldiss and satisfying, although I won't tell you what happens...

Of course, this is not Dune. It's a series of episodes loosely bound together, with uninteresting humanoids going to and from nowhere and a cameo human observation space station. It makes one think when the most memorable character in the book is the revenge - seeking phagor. A classic? Classic books have plots.

In this first book of the Helliconia trilogy, Brian Aldiss has created what appears to be a Dune-like epic taking place over many centuries. It certainly is a creative concept. - an Earth-like world with a long orbit in a binary star system, with an extremely long revolution and seasons that last for centuries. Here the "people" of Helliconia have lived a hard life in winter conditions, much like the Neanderthals or Eskimos, and believed that the world had always been that way. But springtime slowly begins in this book, and the people become more cultured and learned with the easier life, but also less healthy and vigilant. This obviously represents the transition in the real world from hunting and gathering to agriculture, or from the dark ages to the renaissance.

These grand concepts are definitely robust, but at the more immediate levels of plotline and character development, Aldiss delivers little more than a very typical fantasy/adventure yarn with a little bit of sci-fi mixed in. There are some creative settings and weird features like animals that are born by eating their way out of their parents, and trees that grow underground during the winter then literally explode into the spring. But these are undermined by a very predictable tale of epic journeys, strange creatures, and complex but courageous leaders, straight from a million fantasy novels. Also Aldiss has a very - shall we say - "outdated" conception of the female characters. The worst aspect of this novel is something that really looks like a tacked-on afterthought. It turns out that Helliconia is being observed by a team of Earth scientists who ludicrously have been hanging around the planet for centuries and making very quiet analyses of this primitive world. This seems like merely a convenient way for Aldiss to provide a detached narrator to the story, and the Earth scientists' presence is hard to take seriously. This first book ends predictably with little to make you running to the following books in the trilogy. The Helliconia tale tries to be a vast epic but turns out to be small in scope.

It must be more than fifteen years since I first got my hands on a copy of Helliconia Spring. I read it in an afternoon. Summer and Winter were gobbled up with equal enjoyment. I go back to Helliconia every few years and row the "Great Wheel" along with the devout to "its rightful port beside Freyr".

The basic premise of the book is an interesting one and is similar to a theory put forward by Carl Sagan in his book, "The Dragons of Eden." In "Dragons . . ", Sagan argues that the innate fear that humans have of reptiles is a genetic remnant of the struggle for dominance that took place between reptiles and mammals millions of years ago. Aldiss explains the human fear of vampires as another relic of the development of the human species, describing vampires as a separate species, evolved from carrion eaters. While that is an interesting premise, the story line meanders too much to be consistent.
He introduces a train used by the vampires to move through time, and the humans capture it and use it to their advantage, ultimately via time loops that are not well explained. The capture of the train is simply too easy, a device this critical would be very well guarded by the vampires and they would have mounted an all-out offensive to recapture it. The ultimate bomb used to destroy the vampires exceeds the bounds of the number of "new devices" that are allowed in a science fiction tale.
I did enjoy the inclusion of Bram Stoker, the author of the original Count Dracula vampire story. The description of this man of Victorian times is without question the best part of the book.
This was not a book that kept my attention. The story meanders and the actions of the vampires in allowing the capture and possession of the time train while they are capable of sucking blood from the neck of the thief was just too much. I finished it, but this is one tale that did not excite me.

I read any books about vampires, and Dracula in particular. When I picked this I had no idea that it was a gothic Sci Fi book....Dracula has a time machine and knows how to use it. Some of the tale seems a stretch even for Sci Fi. But I enjoyed that Bram Stoker is in this book, a nice tribute. Good thing about the book, once you get pass the begining, the book picks up and is a fun read.

Dracula Unbound can be summed up like so: What if Dracula had a time machine? This book has some chilling answers to that question. Not just another vampire novel, this story takes you on a frightening time ride where you realize that what could be a dangerous thing in mortal hands is a devastating weapon coupled with the immortal wisdom of Dracula. Too much fun to pass by, so give it a try!