Best Selling Books by Brian Wilson Aldiss

WHITE MARS is Brian Aldiss'' Utopian vision of Mankind''s future in space, written in collaboration with distinguished physicist Roger Penreose. Halfway through the next century, an organisation called EUPACUS, consisting of all the leading industrialised nations, has found a way to colonise Mars. They have, however, decided to protect the planet for scientific research. Human beings will live in great, self-perpetuating domes, producing their own food and oxygen, while drawing water from the planet''s core. The option of terraforming the planet, bombarding it with CFCs in order to give it an atmosphere, has been discontinued. Owing to economic collapse on earth the martian colony is cut off from the mother planet (''Downstairs'' as they call it). The head of the colony, Tim Jefferies, sets out to create a perfect society. Some, however, only want to get home, and think that the Utopian ideals (which are all broadcast back to Earth) will only hamper their rescue. An arresting novel of ideals and conflicts WHITE MARS contrasts the warmth of community in the domes with the icy wastes of Mars.

An oddity among Aldiss works - verse translations.

Large-format book of weird/fantasy/science fiction poetry by SF master Brian W. Aldiss, with suitably Gothic drawings and coloured illustrations (reminiscent of Escher''s work but without the trompe l''oeuil effects) by talented artist Mike Wilks.

Helliconia is a planet that, due to the massively eccentric orbit of its own sun around another star, experiences seasons that lasts eons. Whole civilisations grow in the spring, flourish in the summer & then die in the brutal winters. The inhabitants have been profoundly changed by their experience of this harsh cycle.

Science fiction-noveller.

"The moon is a nuclear bonfire, smouldering for 100,000 years after the war to end all wars. Robot slaves toil away on a starved planet, unaware the masters they serve are all but extinct. From the rim of space, a horde of invading primitives brings the message of final doom to the most sublime civilization ever known."--Back cover.

The title story, Supertoys Last All Summer Long, soon to be a major film directed by Steven Spielberg, tells of a young boy who, whatever he does, cannot please his mother. He is puzzled by this, not realising that he is an android, a cunning construct of artificial intelligence - as is his one ally, his teddy bear. It was a story that hugely affected Stanley Kubrick (director of 2001) and Steven Spielberg (who perhaps saw in his forthcoming movie AI (Artificial Intelligence) a complement to his ET!). The other stories in the collection, whether SF, utopian fantasy or dark fable show a master writer at the peak of his considerable powers.

Joe Bodenland, a 21st century American, passes through a timeslip and finds himself with Byron and Shelley in the famous villa on the shore of Lake Geneva. More fantastically, he finds himself face to face with a real Frankenstein, a doppelganger inhabiting a complex world where fact and fiction may as easily have congress as Bodenland himself manages to make love to Mary Shelley.

Three characters - Russian-born Dominic, whose marriage is coming adrift, bankrupt, high-flier Ray Tebbutt, and Peter Petrick, a dissident Czech film director, converge towards the finality of an IRA bomb episode in Great Yarmouth.

Published to accompany the exhibition held at Modern Art Oxford, 8 May - 4 July 2004.

Science fiction-roman.

A tale of alternate worlds and their effect on the everyday life of a man faced with a personal crisis