New Releases by Brian W. Aldiss

From one of science fiction’s greatest living writers comes an unforgettable near-future novel in the hortatory tradition of Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451, Orwell’s 1984, and Dick’s A Scanner Darkly. Both a searing indictment of a fear-drenched political climate and a visionary allegory that shines a piercing light on timeless human verities, HARM is a powerfully compact masterwork that is sure to be one of the most passionately discussed books of the year. The time is today or tomorrow—or perhaps the day after tomorrow. Paul Fadhil Abbas Ali, a young British citizen of Muslim descent, has written a satirical novel in which two characters joke about the assassination of the prime minister. Arrested by agents of HARM—the Hostile Activities Research Ministry—Paul is thrown into a nameless Abu Ghraib-like prison, possibly located in Syria, where he is held incommunicado and brutally interrogated by jailers to whom his Muslim heritage is itself a crime meriting the harshest punishment. Under this sadistic regime, Paul’s personality begins to show signs of radical fragmentation. . . . On the remote planet of Stygia, a man named Fremant, haunted by memories of torture that seem drawn from Paul’s mind, is one of a small group of colonists struggling for survival on a harsh but weirdly beautiful world whose dominant life-forms are insects. The sole humanoid race on the planet has been hunted to extinction by the human settlers, whose long journey to Stygia has left them unable to understand their own history and technology. Thrown back to a more primitive state, they seem destined to repeat all the sins of the world they fled to Stygia to escape. Is Paul dreaming Fremant as a way of escaping the horrors of his imprisonment? Or is there a stronger—and far stranger—connection between the two men, whose very different circumstances begin to take on uncanny parallels? As aspects of their identities blur and, finally, merge, astonishing answers take shape—and profound new questions arise.

Un acto de inimaginable traicion esta detras de la batalla que abre la novela. Pero junto con el invierno llega la plaga y el Oligarca esta empenado en vencerla, y en vencer a los phagors, los viejos enemigos de la humanidad, que llevan la plaga con ellos.

A collection of science fiction tales, including the story of a robot boy who wants nothing more than to be loved by his parents.

A 21st-Century Utopia Two of England''s most distinguished thinkers have created a bold and startling vision of a new society escaping the ashes of the old. In the not-so-distant future, Man will have begun to colonize our planetary neighbor, Mars. Entrenched corporate and national interests have footed the bill, but a few visionary people attempt to keep Mars free of the hidebound ideologies that have plagued the Earth and turned it into a polluted wasteland of war and hunger. The colony has barely begun to take root in the Martian soil when all communication with EUPACUS--as the industrialized nations of Earth are known--is cut off completely. Environmental and economic stresses have finally spun out of control, and civilization as we know it has collapsed. With no hope of escape or support from Earth, the Martians must overcome the dire obstacles that face them and forge a new alliance for survival. Led by the brave Tom Jefferies, the colonists struggle to build a new way of living based on the search for knowledge, the improvement of human conditions, and the elimination of the hatreds and delusions that lead to misery in the past. Included in an appendix is the complete text of the Charter for an Independent Mars, written by Dr. Laurence Lustgarten, a renowned expert on international law.

It was the first British novel to explore, frankly and with a gleeful honesty, the sexual awakening of a teenage boy. It was regarded as so outrageous that thirteen publishers initially refused to publish it. The Hand-Reared Boy no longer shocks, instead, it stands as the classic novel of teenage self-discovery and the realisation of a young boy of love, and the fact that other people are more than sexual objects.Depicting the preoccupations common to all young boys as they reach puberty, The Hand-Reared Boy is a delightfully funny account of burgeoning sexuality, marked by self-revelation, self-mockery and a complete absence of prurience. It was shortlisted for the Lost Booker Prize in 2010.

In this fascinating collection of essays, one of the world''s preeminent science fiction writers explores a wide range of science fiction and fantasy writers and writings. The contents and themes include a letter to Salvador Dali . . . Mary Shelley and Frankenstein . . . the Immanent Will and Olaf Stapledon . . . the work of Philip K. Dick . . . Theodore Hamilton Sturgeon . . . Orwell''s Nineteen Eighty-Four . . . James Blish . . . Culture: Is it Worth Losing Your Balls For? . . . Wells and the Leopard Lady . . . H.P. Lovecraft''s ''The Music of Erich Zann'' . . . Jekyll . . . the differences between United States and United Kingdom fantasy . . . Anna Kavan as ''Kafka''s Sister'' . . . Campbell''s Soup (Astounding Science Fiction under the editorship of John Wood Campbell) . . . science fiction''s relationship to science and literature in general.

Begins at the birth of science fiction, with Mary Shelley''s "Frankenstein," and studies the development of the genre to its present position in contemporary literature