It seems to me that the practice of the literary memoir is more prevalent in England than in the United States. At any rate, few distinguished English writers seem to escape autobiography. For me, the memoirs of writers I admire hold great interest, despite the usually somewhat mundane everyday lives of authors. There's something compelling about tracing the roots of a writer's imagination, and I also take gossipy interest in the accounts of meetings with other well-known writers that these books usually contain. And, to be sure, famous writers are usually good writers, and their memoirs are more likely to be well-written. The Twinkling of an Eye delivers on all counts: it is a very enjoyable literary autobiography.

Brian W. Aldiss is a giant in the Science Fiction field. His major contributions are of course as a writer of the stuff (he's a winner of both the Hugo and the Nebula, and among his SF books are Hothouse, The Malacia Tapestry, and the Helliconia series). He's also made significant contributions as a critic/historian of the field (his controversial Billion Year Spree (later updated as Trillion Year Spree with David Wingrove) is his most famous work in this area.) But Aldiss has always been part of the main stream, if you will, of post-War British writing. His first book, The Brightfount Diaries, a comic account of working in a bookstore, was certainly not SF, but it was very successful. He worked for many years as Literary Editor of the Oxford Mail. And he had some non science fiction bestsellers in the late '60s and early '70s.

A life is not a story, really. Thus Aldiss does not tell this book in a linear fashion, nor hew to a narrative structure. He opens with an account of heading off to Burma, to join the XIV Army, the "Forgotten Army", is driving the Japanese out of that country toward the end of World War II. Follows a series of chapters, ordered somewhat impressionistically, which tell of his young life, his less than idyllic experience in public schools, and of his somewhat difficult relationship with his parents. He offers a moving account of his early years, and how the birth of both of his sisters affected him deeply. Aldiss continues with a description of his years in the Army, mopping up the Japanese in Burma, then spending a couple of years in India just prior to independence, and in Sumatra. After leaving the Army, Aldiss moved to Oxford, and worked in a couple of bookshops. At this time he got married, sold his first stories, started writing the sketches which became The Brightfount Diaries, and had his first son.

The rest of the book is a bit more episodic. The sections concerning his first marriage, and especially its breakup, are very moving, even as Aldiss is still understandably reticent on the details. The pain and sense of failure he felt, and the agony of losing his children, especially his new born daughter, are keenly portrayed. This dovetails into a period of depression and poverty, coupled with increasing artistic success in his fiction. It seems that Aldiss' marriage to Margaret Manson largely brought him out of his funk. Just as he keenly portrayed his depression over the failure of his first marriage, he is able to convey quite wonderfully his love for Margaret, and the happiness she brought him. The later chapters are mini-essays, covering various aspects of his later life: travels to places like Jugoslavia and Denmark; the United States and China; his feelings about Science Fiction, its history, and worth, and its treatment by mainstream critics; a look back at a critical year spent in Sumatra, and his later return; the writing of a select few of his books, most notably the Helliconia trilogy; his experiences with acting and movie-making, including time spent working on a (never completed) project with Stanley Kubrick (apparently this movie, AI, may soon be made by Steven Spielberg); his relationships with his wife and children and sister; some brief comments on political matters; and finally a fascinating account of his visit to Turkmenistan, which occurred only after he had written a book set there.

I was quite absorbed by this book, and quite moved. I found it fascinating reading throughout. This is a very worthwhile account of the life of a man in this century. Definitely recommended.

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For this novel, in fact, I think 3 stars is a bit generous, although 2 would be too harsh. There are some interesting flashes, but too much of it is philosophising in a preachy sort of way, and when science fiction takes its stand with Chimborazo it seems almost out of place. Most of this novel seems to be set in a desert anywhere on the Earth - I had none of the real alien feel that Mars should give, as so well done by Philip K Dick and C S Lewis in radically different ways, even Ray Bradbury - and who can forget Samuel Delany's 'Triton' - these were real places to visit, really alien and challenging.

And then the people in 'White Mars' seem to be placed there in the ethnically acceptable mix just as they were in 'Star Trek' - a pretty old scenario in present times. I also wonder why so many utopian or alternative societies have to be built on deprived or degraded environments. Even imagined societies I admired immensely, such as Ursula LeGuin's anarchic society in 'The Dispossessed'. About the only way of avoiding the difficulties of evolving a society from where we are today, seems to be by setting it vastly in the future as in H G Wells's 'Time Machine' and W H Hudson's 'A Crystal Age.' To me, I would be much more impressed to have a new social order develop under my nose as I read about it, from the base of our current world and mix of societies.

I am also displeased in that an 'alien' influence seems to be required to 'help' people develop their social skills. Humankind may not be the ideal society we would dream of, but we have achieved enormously and I have confidence that we can keep pushing forward, even through the dark times, into a new and better world and by our own initiative.

In all, I was disappointed in this novel, partly because I have admired so much of Mr Aldiss's earlier work.

The discussion of how to build a better society is central to this book, and it is good. Cut off from Earth by an economic disaster, several thousand Mars colonists are thrown back on their own resources to sustain themselves. The focus is almost exclusively on the Mars of the mind-what kind of society can be formed/should be formed in the isolation of the Martian frontier? The characters endlessly discuss what it means to be human under these conditions. What institutions are necessary, and which ones can be avoided? How are we to raise children? How are we to conduct ourselves in a larger society? How are we to cope with our variegated behaviors when freedom brings us into conflict with one another? These questions and more are raised and raised again.

I don't agree with many of the answers White Mars seems to provide, and so I was tempted to give the book three stars. For example, I don't agree that Mars should be set aside as a scientific preserve. However, I believe the most important thing is that the questions were asked and various opinions aired. White Mars is a valuable addition to the debate on Mars and on how human beings interact with our society.

The science is really beside the point, which also tempted me to give White Mars three stars. The discussion on physics and the quest for meaning at the sub-particle level is half-developed and never really tied into the main story. There's also the discovery of native life on Mars, which is more science fantasy than science fiction. The more mundane science of maintaining a community of several thousand in total isolation on Mars is completely ignored, which is also a disappointment. As an answer to Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars trilogy, White Mars falls so short in this department that I can't even say there was an effort at competition.

At its heart, however, White Mars is a discussion on values and humanity. All other factors aside, this discussion makes the book worth reading and pondering.

Starswarm is not one of Aldiss' better works. If you have enjoyed his other works and like reading far-future speculation, this is a book for you

This wide-ranging survey of Humanity spread throughout the galaxy in the far future tells stories of characters in ordinary (in their time) and extraordinary situations - a nagging wife, preparing for battle, etc. I especially enjoyed the wild yarn of Smith's Burst - it seems fresh and different even decades after it was written. Emphasis is on characters and how they intereact with the worlds formed by their uncountable ancestors. Much material to inspire the artist, not so much for the hard SF fan. One of my favorites, I wish I hadn't loaned it out...

Brian Aldis became a legendary science fiction writer. However, this story is what he describes as "autobiographical fiction". It chronicles the life of British teen-ager Horatio Stubbs, mostly through his boarding-school years during the beginning of World War II. To use a British term, this book is basically a giant "wanking" fest. Young Horatio has an insatiable sex drive. He wanks it constantly. He wanks his brother, his friends, his enemies. He has relations with his sister and the family maid. In boarding school, to make up for the lack of women, the students all wank each other. Despite all the furtive Pseudo- homosexual behavior, the book does have a central theme. It concerns young Horati's love for a much older woman;sister Traven, the nurse aat his boarding school. He persues her endlessly, even after she leaves the school. As is predicable in such stories, his persuit ends in heartbreak. Written in the first person, "The Hand Reared Boy" is a humorous view of the privations of life in and out of school in Wartime Bitain.

This book was pretty good, it had a great setting, great plot, and interesting characters. You want to know why I gave it a 3 out of 5, I did because the author didn't but enough enthusiasm in the end. I think that most kids that like science would like this book because the main people are an astronaut and a scientist. The other fault of this story was that the story never really ended, it just stopped.

Having written twenty-five short story collections to date, Brian Aldiss's recent achievement, "Supertoys Last All Summer Long," is typical of most post-modern science fiction, lacking the "intense and powerful drama of love and intelligence" he mistakenly suggests the book has in his foreword. One would think that after more than thirty-five years of working with movie directors, including Steven Spielberg and Stanley Kubrick, Aldiss's recent accomplishment would borrow some of their subjectivity. Unfortunately, Aldiss degrades the purposefulness of religion (such as is symbolized in "Apogee Again," a short story within the "Supertoys" collection), and human emotion is left to a pedophilic version of Darwinism where "nothing in life is ever enough," not even sex with twelve-year-old girls.

Nineteen short stories in the book, and not one can truly be classified as "contemporary." Imitating a determinism not seen since Melvilles's "Bartleby, The Scrivener," the book is Naturalism in a futuristic setting. Protagonists are "almost human," narrators are mere "visual representatives" with gearbox bodies, and final thoughts for each story echoes a familiar "Ah, Bartleby! Ah, humanity!"

Comic relief is the only relief from this book's dreary perception of our future. In "Beef," the Western world is nearly brought to an end because terrorists have destroyed the beef industry. Although completely unbelievable, the story's parodying of our modern meat eaters is quite hilarious. Without the comedy within the book's collection, the overall theme of science-based determinism would be neither consistent nor consistently biased.

The varying lengths of each story promotes reader friendliness; longer stories are often interrupted with shorter ones. Each story also avoids the repetition of a single genre, as love, adventure, horror, and even mythological themes are introduced and played upon. In this sense, "Supertoys" succeeds in creating a very entertaining collection of works, moving from each story to the next like scenes in a movie.

Language in many of the stories gives away Aldiss's talent for detail. A world economy "crumbles like an old man without teeth," nature is a "frozen eyeball, diminished under its eyelid of eclipsing cloud," and love is an experience where "we became solemn, gazing, marvelling, at each other's body, made ruddy by the setting sun." Even in the detail the comedy does not stop as a penis is described as a "little winkle, which responded readily to her grasp." Without mentioning what the object is, Aldiss succeeds in planting its image in our minds--forever and sometimes with a laugh.

Aldiss could have done better. His knack for comedy and grasping so many genres in a single volume is lost to the overemphasis on determinism. The book is far from uninteresting, however, and deserves to be read just for the beauty in its language if nothing else.

That said, the three Supertoy stories are here, and are quite nice. I think some of the imagery in the three are superior to that of the movie, the first in particular (Monica's response to being allowed to breed is incredible). However, there is much more to this book than just Supertoys.

To start off Aldiss apparently hates humanity, or at the very least human vanity and self-centeredness. He also seems to think that humankind will not grow out of these flaws, instead humanity will become more and more self-centered as time goes on, so be prepared for a future that is at the same time utopia and distopia...

Aldiss's writing style does seem to swing between brilliant and not so good, but there is enough brilliant to make up for the rest. III was particularly grim (the image of what humanity does to the inhabitants of Triton will stick with you), and "A Matter of Mathematics" could possibly be made into a decent screenplay. All told, "Supertoys..." is an incredible collection of eerily plausible sci-fi that just about everyone should read once, if not more. (if just to avoid turning the inhabitants of Jupiter's moon Europa into Campbell's Canned ET)

The first three stories have obvious parallels (which Aldiss apparently denied) with Pinnochio (and also the Tin Man in Wizard of Oz and Pygmalion and seal-wife and fairy-wife legends). Maybe I'm reading too much into this (making me guilty of deconstructionism) but I saw a pattern of recreation of old stories. "Nothing in Life is Ever Enough" tells the story of Shakespeares "Tempest" from Caliban's angle. "The Old Mythology" is what its title suggests; a visitor from a future age is present at events (told with a sharp sense of humor) that precapitulate (if that's a word) Greek and Hebrew creation myths. "Headless" is a version of the sacrificed hero described in Fraser's "Golden Bough." "A Matter of Mathematics" is about Plato's cave. In "Becoming the Full Butterfly" the breaking of a divine law results in the destruction of a world by flooding. "Talking Cubes"= "The Picture of Dorian Grey." "Steppenpferd"=the Temptation of St Anthony (I couldn't make a connection to Hesse's "Steppenwolf").
Most of the stories have down-beat endings. Whenever anybody has a good time they get their come-uppance, so it's a pessimistic view of the future. Even "The Marvels of Utopia" is dystopic - at least it's far from Thomas More. In spite of they're enjoyable because of Aldiss's sheer good writing,excellent jokes, wild imagination and page-turning action.I

What happens in a modern society if a light attached to your forehead indicates when you are in love with somebody else? An original idea for a funny novel. Unfortunately the book is a little bit to long, with many unnedeed secondary stories. Suggested to people who still believe UK is a great world empire!