Review Summaries

• The award history suggests appreciation for the work’s handling of its subject and the assurance of its expression. Readers can approach it as a concentrated example of the author’s concerns.

Reviews

• Cannot beat Brian Aldiss on a history of science fiction!!

  I read the 'Billion Year Spree' and wanted the rewritten later edition too. I just think these books are superbly researched and intelligently written and by someone who I admire in his own right as a science fiction author!! I especially love the chapter on Mary Shelley. Excellent run down on the genre that everyone interested in sci fi ought to expose themselves to.

• Accessible and complete, but now almost 30 years old.

  Even this extended version of Billion Year Spree is a bit dated now, but there is no more accessible and complete history of science fiction as far as it goes (circa 1986). It's a interesting read and will lead to new and forgotten books to read. I was pleased, as the second hand copy that I bought through Amazon turned out to be signed by both Aldis and Wingrove, one of the nicer bargains have had when buying second hand books on here.

• A Solid overview of the history of SF

  Probably the most concise history of SF there is. You can read it from the beginning, or choose the chapters you like. I've done both on a regular basis.

• Overwritten and unneccessarily defensive

  I'm a casual fan of science fiction - I know what I like and otherwise steer fairly clear of the genre to avoid the inevitable allegations of puerility and geekdom that my wife throws at me for reading novels about spaceships and little green men. Brian Aldiss is a prolific British Sci Fi writer who, as you might expect, cares very much about his genre, and in particular believes it to have been unfairly maligned bypeople such as my wife. While that's probably true, it adversely colours this book in two ways: Firstly, Aldiss writes far too intellectually and "worthily", meaning he comes across as pretentious and (what is worse) dull; secondly, he tends to relegate of material which he thinks isn't "serious" science fiction (but which is generally more entertaining and popular) to other cateogories such as "fantasy" which, to his mind, don't seem to count. I think this is a mistake: Science Fiction at its heart is a poular, pulp sort of genre, no amount of post facto rationalisation will alter the fact that it is Lucas and Spielberg who are the backbone of (cinematic) Science Fiction, not Kubrick and Tarkovsky. It's a very heavy (physically as well as textually), long winded book. Having completed the first three or four chapters (in which Edgar Allen Poe gets a somewhat surprisingly extended mention) I have given up on the project of reading Trillion Year Spree from cover to cover, and now intendto use to dip into from time to time instead. Or, at any rate, just to stick on the bookshelf, comforted in the knowledge that it's there and I *can* dip into it from time to time, if I feel like it. Olly Buxton

• Love this!

  Will utilize papercavalier’s services again. Arrived a lot sooner than expected. You guys nailed it bc my Billion Year Spree is also an ex-library book. It’s so good I’m reading every page twice! This and Anatomy of Wonder are my go-to books.

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