Brian Aldiss. Two Examples Of What A Great Writer He Was

Hello there. Hope you're feeling well today.

Barkingside is near Ilford. It's in that area where Essex melds with East London. I won't say there is anything out of the ordinary about the place, It was when I was a teenager a place which bathed in its suburbia and was proud of it.

As a teenage boy though there was one building that was the exception to that normality. The library. It was large and circular. I loved wandering around the place. A lot of my reading education was nurtured there.

One of the books I took out of the library was The Brightfount Diaries. About life in a provincial bookshop in the fifties. Loved it. Knew what I wanted to be in life. A bookseller.

As is almost always the way things moved in my life in a completely different direction. But I never forgot the book or the effect it had on me. Tried in vain to get a copy many years later. The price however wasn't right. Stunningly high since it was no longer printed but obviously had the same effect on people as it had on me. It's resale value reflected the memories.

A few years back I finally got a copy. And did what I rarely do nowadays which is to reread a book. The irony though was that it was an ebook. One of the reasons why bookselling is no longer what it was in the nineteen fifties. I'm happy to say that I did not finish it disappointed, though I'd admit feeling more bittersweet given bookselling today.

Example two concerns the fantasy genre. I like Science Fiction, Am interested in the idea of parallel worlds. But the glories of different world fantasy novels have passed me by. Personally I find them indulgent pieces of comic book writing without the illustrations. You can tell that the Game Of Thrones phenomena has obviously taken a diversion when it approached me.

The Helleconia series though was different, I was hooked. And the reason why I was hooked was that the quality of writing made you believe in the world that was being shown to us.

So the writer of one of my favourite books of all time and of a series of novels that I enjoyed in a genre I normally back away from. Those examples show I hope what a good and wide ranging writer Brian Aldiss was.

RIP Mr Aldiss.....and thankyou.

Until the next time.