Showing results by author "Brian W. Aldiss" in All Categories

Millions of years beyond our time, our Earth has long since stopped spinning—and giant flora have taken over the sunlit half of the motionless world. Here humans are among the very few animal species that still exist, struggling to survive against enormous odds, but they have become small and weak, and their numbers have dwindled to almost nothing. When the aging leader of Gren's tribe decrees it is time for the old ones to go "Up," the younger are left to make their own way below.

Non-Stop is Grand Master of Science Fiction and Hugo and Nebula Award-winning author Brian W. Aldiss's debut novel. Written in response to Robert Heinlein's Orphans of the Sky and published in the late 1950s, it is set in a primitive world, home to tribes of inhabitants who endure their harsh and stunted lives in a maze of corridors. Though legends exist that they're actually on a ship traveling through the universe, no one really believes it.

Roy Complain žije v kočovném kmeni Greenů uprostřed divočiny. Primitivní způsoby společenství však v jeho očích nesouzní s pozůstatky civilizovanějšího života, které nachází při svých kořistnických výpravách do pralesa. Uvnitř cítí zvláštní prázdno, touhu, kterou nedokáže pojmenovat. Má jejich země nějaké hranice? V Royovi postupně vzrůstá odpor k dusivému společenskému řádu a tradovaným vysvětlením věcí kolem něj, která však mají nepřehlédnutelné trhliny.

This collection of nine stories from the Grand Master of Science Fiction charts the course of humanity from the near future onward through millennia. In Galaxies Like Grains of Sand, Brian W. Aldiss tells the tale of mankind's future over the course of forty million years. Each of these nine connected short stories highlights a different millennia in which man has adapted to new environments and hardships.

In the year 2093, human consciousness has expanded to the point that man can now travel to the past using a technique called "mind-traveling." Artist Edward Bush returns from a nearly three-year mind-travel to find that his government has crumbled and society is now under the leadership a new regime. Given Bush's experience, he is recruited by the regime to track down and assassinate a scientist whose ideas threaten to topple everything they've built.

In the middle decades of the twenty-first century, the corporate powers on Earth have established a thriving colony on Mars as an alternative to life on the overpopulated, war-torn, ecologically ravaged home planet. But when the economy of EUPACUS—Earth's collective industrialized nations—collapses, all contact between the two worlds abruptly ceases, and the Martian pioneers are left to fend for themselves.

"Herejías del Dios Enorme" de Brian W. Aldiss es una novela de ciencia ficción ambientada en un futuro lejano donde la humanidad se ha extendido por la galaxia. La historia sigue a un grupo de exploradores que se encuentran con una entidad colosal conocida como el Dios Enorme, que desafía sus creencias y su comprensión del universo. Mientras navegan a través de mundos extraños y encuentran varias civilizaciones, los exploradores se enfrentan a cuestiones existenciales y a los misterios que rodean al Dios Enorme.

Es un relato distópico que presenta un mundo futuro donde la humanidad ha agotado los recursos naturales y la población depende de la tecnología para sobrevivir. La historia se centra en la familia Swinton y su hijo David, quien es un androide diseñado para reemplazar a su hijo fallecido. A medida que David comienza a desarrollar sentimientos y deseos propios, la familia se enfrenta a dilemas éticos y emocionales sobre su relación con él. La narrativa explora temas como la soledad, la identidad y la naturaleza del amor y la humanidad en un mundo dominado por la tecnología.

"¿Cómo se puede reemplazar a un hombre?" es una novela de ciencia ficción escrita por Brian W. Aldiss que presenta un futuro distópico donde los robots humanoides, conocidos como "homónculos", han reemplazado a los humanos en muchos roles laborales y sociales. La trama sigue a un hombre llamado Algy, que se enfrenta a una crisis existencial al darse cuenta de que su trabajo y su propósito en la vida están siendo desplazados por estas máquinas.

War is hell, and the conflict tearing the world apart may be humankind's last. Set adrift on a makeshift raft in the middle of the South Pacific, the sole survivor of a sabotaged space-shuttle flight, undersecretary of state Calvert Roberts is certain his life is coming to an end. But fate intervenes, depositing him dehydrated and half starved on the beach of an uncharted island with a giant M etched into a cliff wall. At first it appears to be paradise, but Eden has a dark side: Here, Dr. Mortimer Dart is playing God.

The earth is recovering from the Acid Head War, in which hallucinogenic chemicals were the primary weapon. Many humans are now suffering from delusions and are unable to tell the real from the imaginary. When a man named Colin Charteris tries to make sense of the drugged-out world, he is taken as the new messiah. As he descends into paranoid visions, he begins to believe this himself.

Some years into the twenty-first century, a newly devised weapon of mass destruction will do far worse than kill; it will disrupt time and space. Suddenly, land, buildings, animals, and people are falling through "timeslips" and being transported briefly back to earlier eras. One of these inadvertent time travelers, Joe Bodenland, is shocked when he finds himself parked outside a villa on the shore of Lake Geneva—and soon after, unbelievably, in the presence of nineteenth-century literary luminaries Lord Byron and Percy Shelley, along with Shelley's very enticing fiancee, budding author Mary.

Welcome to the future European Super-State—one continent united into a not-quite-homogenous whole. Numerous historic happenings and technological advances have ushered us to this new age of solidarity and prosperity, though some of the past's problems still linger: global warming, terrorism, war, rape, murder, Alzheimer's, environmental catastrophe. Despite advances of this brave new tomorrow, it seems people haven't changed.

"We are infinitely rich, yet we mess about with penny-in-the-slot machines," writes Brian W. Aldiss in this autobiographical work written over the course of one month. From his Oxfordshire home, he ruminates on dreams, education, the role of technology in our lives, the rise and function of science fiction, and a variety of other topics. The Shape of Further Things is a window into the life and mind of a Science Fiction Grand Master.

Joe Bodenland has figured out how to manipulate time—a discovery that leads him to Utah and an impossible sixty-five-million-year-old human gravesite. He learns of the existence of a monstrous race of intelligent predators as old as the dinosaur, and of the remarkable "train" the undead creatures use to travel back and forth from a Paleolithic past to a future in which Homo sapiens are enslaved cattle. Joe commandeers the ghostly transportation and rides it back to Victorian England, where he enlists the aid of a powerful ally, the author Bram Stoker, in the battle to secure Earth.

By law, nothing can change in Malacia-a teeming, eternal city of dukes, players, wizards, merchants, beggars, ape-men, lizard-boys, and courtesans-but that is of no great consequence to Perian de Chirolo. An out-of-work actor and unabashed rogue, he is well satisfied with his lot as long as there's coin, eager young women to bed, and the occasional adventure. Perhaps it is this thrill-seeking spirit-or simply the lure of noble beauty-that makes Perian imprudently agree to take part in a mad inventor's illegal experiments, since such foolishness will never be tolerated in Malacia.

What would intelligent life—forms on another planet look like? Would they walk upright? Would they wear clothes? Or would they be hulking creatures on six legs that wallow in their own excrement? Upon first contact with the Utod—intelligent, pacifist beings who feel no pain—mankind instantly views these aliens as animals because of their unhygienic customs. This leads to the slaughter, capture, and dissection of the Utod. But when one explorer recognizes the intelligence behind their habits, he must reevaluate what it actually means to be "intelligent."

Doomed by overpopulation, irreversible environmental degradation, and never-ending war, Earth has become a fetid swamp. For many, Mars represents humankind's last hope. In six tightly clustered towers on the red planet's surface, the colonists who have escaped their dying home world are attempting to make a new life unencumbered by the corrupting influences of politics, art, and religion.

Mr. Mary and his wife are being observed from at least three vantage points as they go about their mundane home lives. G, the former gardener, watches them from a garden shed. Mr. Mary's dismissed secretary, S, watches them from the top room of a brick outhouse in the back. The chauffeur, C, who no longer drives, watches the Marys from the garage.

One million years in the future, the universe has become a utopia for the humans inhabiting it. Having evolved into the race homo uniformis—"man alike throughout"—they share a centralized nervous system and know nothing of war, disease, violence, emotion, or any of the ancient ills that plagued their ancestors. But while en route to a vacation that is light years from Earth, a small group of elite travelers find themselves marooned in the wilderness of the planet Lysenka. And they are not alone.