The autobiography of Brian Aldiss, writer and critic of general and science fiction. Born in 1925 in Norfolk, Aldiss served in the army in India and Burma during the war. Returning to England, he worked in a bookshop, became a reviewer, columnist and writer. He also had a brush with Hollywood and experienced psychoanalysis.
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For forty years the creator of science fiction's most eloquent visions of tomorrow, Brian Aldiss, has turned his distinctive conviction and clarity of thought to the making of his own life.Now approaching his seventy-fifth year, Aldiss is representative of that unique generation who reached adolescence in the early 1940s. Growing up in the rural hells of Norfolk and Devon, the son of a department store owner, he was formed and altered by wartime, serving three years in Asia with the Forgotten Army. Intrigued by science fiction and the near-apocalytic imagery of the Blitz, Aldiss became intoxicated by the beautiful lands, tropical climate and horrific brutality he discovered in Burma and Sumatra, an 'enchanted zone' which would provide the catalyst for much of his later work.Aldiss recalls the camaraderie of the army and the sobriety of postwar England; bookselling in Oxford; marital breakdown and financial impoverishment; life as a struggling novelist and literary editor, when his chief source of income came from selling review copies to Harrods; his seminal role in the 'new wave' of science fiction writing of the 1960s, and the friendship with, among others, J.G. Ballard, Kingsley Amis, Doris Lessing, Michael Moorcock and William Boyd. Versatile, prolific and outspoken, Aldiss writes revealingly on many issues and experiences, from literary inspiration to childhood illness, from mental breakdown to the critical standing of science fiction.
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