Book description
A most entertaining volume of memoir from a legend of science fiction.
A writer's life can be exciting, unexpected, routine, lonely - and
sometimes all on the same day! Brian Aldiss recounts the highs and lows
of his professional career in this entertaining and revealing book.
Here are his adventures with publishers, booksellers, agents, other
authors, and readers. Here are some of the complex questions of what
makes and sustains a successful modern writer. The tales he tells are
wry, witty, informative - beginning with his first job at the Oxford
bookshop that was to be the setting for his first book of fiction, The
Brightfount Diaries, and ending as he undergoes one of the most
gruelling experiences of a writer's life: the publication of a new
novel, in this case his brilliant Forgotten Life. 'What comes
through..is a man who is gregarious yet private, fun-loving yet deeply
thoughtful, arrogant yet humble.' NEW STATESMAN
'For decades, Brian Aldiss has been among our most prolific and
consistently stylish writers' The Telegraph Brian Aldiss, OBE, is a
fiction and science fiction writer, poet, playwright, critic, memoirist
and artist. He was born in Norfolk in 1925. After leaving the army,
Brian worked as a bookseller, providing the setting for his first book,
The Brightfount Diaries (1955). His first published science fiction work
was the story 'Criminal Record', which appeared in Science Fantasy in
1954. Faber encouraged Brian to pursue his enthusiasm for SF and
published Space, Time and Nathaniel (1957). Since then he has written
more than 75 books and 300 short stories, many of which are being
reissued by The Friday Project.
