I remember liking his writing when I was young, but I haven’t read any of it for a long time.
This is sad. He never had the major fame outside the genre that his writing really merited. The Helliconia books, in particular, were an amazing combination of compelling storytelling and remarkably insightful anthropology.
I fondly remember his short story “Old Hundredth”
RIP Mr. Aldiss; you done good. Thank you!
I always admired his collection, “Galaxies Like Grains of Sand.” It’s a rich mixture of tones, but mostly optimistic and humanist. He could deliver mood very skillfully.
He started in the 1950s and was a conspicuously better writer than most of his peers, but also more baroque and not interested in the commonalities of what science fiction was supposed to be at that time. I think he was more admired in his native England than in the U.S. and didn’t give a hang about it.
I have the two issues of SF Express that he and Harry Harrison put out in 1963. They slagged the whole science fiction writing scene with few exceptions. (Harrison did like one writer, some guy by name of Aldiss.) It’s incredible to look back and realize that almost everybody thought that sf was dying a hideous death in the early 1960s. Aldiss and the New Wave upended everything that people understood as science fiction over the next few years. They saved the field and most of the old-timers hated them for it.
SF is a weird little culture.
Frankenstein Unbound is one of all-tine favorite SF books. The Roger Corman movie, though, is pretty bad.
No slap intended at Aldiss, but I’d say the title of “Grand Old Man” goes to this guy.
Gunn (fixed link) is probably the biggest name still living, but many older writers are still alive as seen on this page. (Obviously, the earliest ones just haven’t had a death date entered into the database.)
I’d say Silverberg is still the biggest name of the 1950’s generation.
RIP. One of the biggies from my youthful geeky days. (as opposed to my current, geriatric geeky days.)
Even if his fiction writing were cack (it wasn’t), he’d be a giant for Billion Year Spree alone.
Or Ellison. But I meant of those older than Aldiss.
Or Le Guin, now that I think of it. But yeah, I see what you were trying to say.
She’s 88. Wow, I hadn’t realized that.
It’s SF Horizons. Drat my failing memory.
He’s one of those SF writers I know more for his observations on the genre than his own stories. Is he the one who promulgated the term ‘skiffy’?
I kind of forgot about him as I was reading less SF. I may have started attributing quotes of his to other writers.
No, it appears that it was David Hartwell who first used the term"skiffy" in print.