Брайан Олдисс

Олдисс, Брайан Уилсон - английский романист, критик и историк научной фантастики родился в местечке Ист-Дерэм (графство Норфолк) в 1925 году. В 1943-1947 годах служил в Королевских вооруженных силах, затем в течение девяти лет был книготорговцем.

Как автор НФ дебютировал на страницах журнала "Обсервер" в 1956 году с рассказом "Рекорд преступлений".

Его первый роман "Нон-стоп" вышел в свет в 1958 году. В нем Олдисс смело пробует новую версию избитой темы, к которой упорно возвращаются писатели НФ: жизнь замкнутого мира космического корабля, на борту которого продолжают путешествие новые поколения, уже не знающие цели.

Пишет много и разнообразно как по тематике, так и по стилю. За серию рассказов "Теплица" награжден в 1962 году премией "Хьюго". В 1965 году за повесть "Слюнное дерево" получил премию "Небьюла". На сегодняшний день из-под пера Олдисса вышло более сорока НФ-романов; среди них - знаменитая трилогия о Геликонии (1982-1985).

Олдисс уделяет много времени истории развития фантастики. Принимает активное участие в Международном движении фантастов, является одним из вице-президентов Всемирной Ассоциации Фантастов. Вместе с Г. Гаррисоном и Л. Стовером в 1972 г. основал фонд премии "Мемориал Джона Кэмпбелла" для лучших НФ романов года.

Автор ряда критических работ, в том числе известной монографии об истории развития фантастики "Веселье на миллиарды лет", составитель многочисленных и авторитетных антологий, зачастую со своим другом Гарри Гаррисоном принимает активное участие в Международном движении фантастов (один из вице-президентов Всемирной Ассоциации Фантастов).

Является одним из основоположников и наиболее ярким представителем "новой волны", хотя далеко не всегда придерживается их программы.

В СССР почти не переводился и представлен рассказами: "А вы не андроид?" (Сб. "Шутник", М.. "Мир", 1971), "Девушка и робот с цветами" ("Англия", N4, 1971), "Вирус бессмертия" ("Смена", N16 1972), "Кто заменит человека?" ("Техника молодежи", N1,1974).

После распада СССР, в странах СНГ печатался тоже сравнительно мало. Его первый роман был напечатан только в 1991 году:

Олдисс Брайан. "NON-STOP". - М.: Издательский дом "Терра" совместно с ЛИА "Грифон", 1991.

Наиболее известные произведения:

Романы

"Экватор"

"Серая борода"

"Темные светлые годы"

"Криптозой"

"Бек"

"Доклад об А-вероятности"

"Франкенштейн освобожденный"

"Час в восемьдесят минут"

"Звездолет"

"Истолкователь"

"Период затмения"

"Первородное чувство"

Сборники и циклы рассказов

"Галактика как песчинка"

"Пространство, время и Натаниэль"

"Кто заменит человека?"

"Планета неандертальцев"

"Нечто непохоже на будущее"

Перечень далеко не полон.

Brian Wilson Aldiss, OBE, (born August 18, 1925 in East Dereham, Norfolk) is a prolific English author of both general fiction and science fiction. His byline reads either Brian W. Aldiss or simply Brian Aldiss.

In 1943, he joined the Royal Signals regiment, and saw action in Burma; his encounters with tropical rainforests at that time may have been at least a partial inspiration for Hothouse, as his Army experience inspired the Horatio Stubbs second and third books.

After World War II, he worked as a bookseller in Oxford. Besides short science fiction for various magazines, he wrote a number of short pieces for a booksellers trade journal about life in a fictitious bookshop, and this attracted the attention of Charles Monteith, an editor at the British publishers Faber and Faber. As a result of this, Aldiss's first book was The Brightfount Diaries (1955), a collection of the bookshop pieces.

In 1955, The Observer newspaper ran a competition for a short story set in the year 2500, which Aldiss won with a story entitled "Not For An Age". The Brightfount Diaries had been a minor success, and Faber asked Aldiss if he had any more writing that they could look at with a view to publishing. Aldiss confessed to being a science fiction author, to the delight of the publishers, who had a number of science fiction fans in high places, and so his first science fiction book, Space, Time and Nathaniel was published. By this time, his earnings from writing equalled the wages he got in the bookshop, so he made the decision to become a full-time writer.

He was voted the Most Promising New Author at the World Science Fiction Convention in 1958, and elected President of the British Science Fiction Association in 1960. He was the literary editor of the Oxford Mail newspaper during the 1960s. Around 1964 he and his long-time collaborator Harry Harrison started the first ever journal of science fiction criticism, Science Fiction Horizons, which during its brief span of two issues published articles and reviews by such authors as James Blish, and featured a discussion among Aldiss, C.S. Lewis, and Kingsley Amis in the first issues, and an interview with William S. Burroughs in the second.

Besides his own writings, he has had great success as an anthologist. For Faber he edited Introducing SF, a collection of stories typifying various themes of science fiction, and Best Fantasy Stories. In 1961 he edited an anthology of reprinted short science fiction for the British paperback publisher Penguin Books under the title Penguin Science Fiction. This was remarkably successful, going into numerous reprints, and was followed up by two further anthologies, More Penguin Science Fiction (1963), and Yet More Penguin Science Fiction (1964). The later anthologies enjoyed the same success as the first, and all three were eventually published together as The Penguin Science Fiction Omnibus (1973), which also went into a number of reprints. In the 1970s, he produced several large collections of classic grand-scale science fiction, under the titles Space Opera (1974), Space Odysseys (1975), Galactic Empires (1976), Evil Earths (1976), and Perilous Planets (1978) which were quite successful. Around this time, he edited a large format volume Science Fiction Art (1975), with selections of artwork from the magazines and pulps.

In response to the results from the planetary probes of the 1960s and 1970s, which showed that Venus was completely unlike the hot, tropical jungle usually depicted in science fiction, he and Harry Harrison edited an anthology Farewell, Fantastic Venus!, reprinting stories based on the pre-probe ideas of Venus. He also edited, with Harrison, a series of anthologies The Year's Best Science Fiction (1968-1976?)

He traveled to Yugoslavia (while it existed), met Yugoslav fans in Ljubljana, Slovenia, published a travel book about Yugoslavia, published an alternative-history fantasy story about Serbian kings in the Middle Ages, and, most importantly, wrote a novel, perhaps in one way his best, or most accomplished as a work of literature: a dreamy, visionary, atmospheric work of fantasy, but with many SF elements, The Malacia Tapestry,about an alternative Dalmatia, stopped in time, where some of the people are genetically related to dinosaurs (who still exist), some are winged, progress is sometimes attempted but never really achieved, and Turks may attack in the hope of enslaving Venice or Zadar at any time. The book gives you a feeling that, in Aldiss’s words, “we all stand condemned in the terrible forests of the Universe”, but it is, above all, beautiful.

He was awarded the title of Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) for services to literature in HRH Queen Elizabeth II's Birthday Honours list, announced on 11 June 2005.