TAKE a journey into the life and world of sci-fi writer Brian Aldiss with his new collection of essays, An Exile on Planet Earth, published by the University of Oxford's Bodleian Library.
Aldiss, who's also a poet, playwright, artist and memoirist, has written more than 75 books and 300 short stories, including the novels Hothouse, Non-stop and the Helliconia trilogy.
An Exile on Planet Earth "brings together 12 personal and revealing essays" that offer insight into the man and his place in the sci-fi genre.
As Alan Yentob notes in the foreword: "Here we find some brilliant observations and the kind of detail that will delight aficionados of his fiction: 'Cultivating the wilderness, it's what a writer does all the while. What we are fills the fictions we tell, often without our realising it. What one pours out, alone in the room, is much like sessions of psychoanalysis, as one produces things that astonish even oneself.' For those revelations this is a book well worth reading."
The collection shows how the events of Aldiss's childhood have been translated into strange metaphors in his stories, how his identification with exile is a recurring theme and how a world without children (Greybeard) reflected his circumstances after his first marriage broke up.
The hardcover is now in stores and will be officially launched at the Bodleian on March 20 and at the Oxford Literary Festival on March 25.
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[Source: Coventry Telegraph - The Geek Files]
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