NOT A STUNT: SF(7) BRIAN W. ALDISS

This whole SF thing started because I spent most of last January reading J.G. Ballard novels. Even though I knew they would be science fiction and that I officially neither liked nor read science fiction. I had always made an exception of Ballard and Philp K. Dick. Everything else I had turned my nose up at since around 11th grade.

But when I read a book of Ballard's essays and reviews, I had to come to grips with how seriously he took the field. It was enough to make me take another look, especially once I stumbled across Jim Pringle's 100 Best Science Fiction Novels. Here was list covering the years 1949 - 1985, sprinkled with books I had read as a teenager, and with the added attraction of providing a limited set of titles that did not require my trying to make my way through the current field.

Hence, these to date seven blog posts on specific science fiction writers or novels, and a stack of used paperbacks on my desk that would not be out of place on the shelf of the worlds geekiest ninth grader, circa 1975. (I have had more than one friend, who for some unfathomable reason does not read my blog, take a look at this pile and ask, "What is this about?")

One of Ballard's particular enthusiasms was Brian W. Aldiss, some one I had never read although I knew that he was generally considered "good." I have always had a hard time dealing with the fact that he had written books with the titles Frankenstein Unbound and Dracula Unbound. Without ever having cracked one, I had written them off as quickie pastiche novels of the lowest order. But now I want to read them, because I want to read everything Mr. Aldiss has ever written.

Aldiss has three books on the Pringle list: Non-Stop (1958), Hothouse (1962), and, Greybeard (1964). I read them all and thoroughly enjoyed them. But what really knocked me out was a short book I read for extra credit, The Dark Light Years (1964). If there is anything I dislike more than having someone give me a book to read, it is the impulse I sometimes have to fight back to do the same. The Dark Light Years is that book. Really, you ought to read it. It's great.

The plot, such as it is, goes something like this. After centuries of zipping around the galaxies, humankind has found all manner of extra-terrestrial life, but never of such intelligence that we would hesitate either putting them in earth's new Exozoos or using them as target practice. But then we encounter the Utods, beings with several million years of racial memory, along with the ability to man spacecraft. The only problem is that they look like six-legged hippopotami, except for when they retract their legs and resemble giant, recumbent yams, and their vocal system is so complex we cannot possibly master it, although they have an irritating habit of repeating whatever we say. Oh, and they cover themselves with their own excrement. That's the deal breaker.

Man and Utod is is that trainwreck that has been waiting millennea to happen. . We transport a few specimen to earth, put them in a zoo, study them, puzzle over them, hold scientific debates about them, and since we are convinced, wrongly, that they feel no pain, we vivisect them. Occasionally we hose them down, although they clearly do not like it. They are touched if confused when one of the scientists observing them takes a crap in their cage. None of this really amounts to much since by the end of the novel a "Contained War" between Brazil and England has turned into a true intergalactic conflagration, and they are essentially wiped out, along with most of everything else.

One reviewer on Good Reads called this the most depressing book she had ever read. I don't think she appreciates just how dark comedy can be. In the other Aldiss books I read, people take journeys and learn things. The semi-savages living in "quarters" on the giant spaceship in Non-Stop, struggle their way to "Forward" and discover the mystery of their circumscribed lives. The three-foot-tall arboreal humanoids in Hothouse learn that fending for themselves will involve more than simply following the old ways. (Hothouse is actually pretty silly but fun, and you get to discover the surprising role of the morel mushroom in human evolution.) Greybeard inhabits an post-apocalytic England where he must confront the fact that his world will die out, and that what ever shows signs of surviving is beyond his help or comprehension.

In The Dark Light Years, nobody learns squat. Mankind, very much concerned with both the day-to-day problems of being such superior beings as well as concerned about our own future, continues to spread death through the universe as surely as those first Europeans spread small pox and flu to the New World. But all is not lost. London we learn has been destroyed, but there are plans to rebuild. On a limited scale, of course.

THIS IS NOT A STUNT AND DON'T CALL IT SCI FI

There's a lot of ground to cover here, but I am going to try to keep it short.

When I decided to start a blog the one thing I knew I did not want it to be was a stunt. You know, like that woman who cooked all the recipes in Mastering the Art of French Cooking. Or the guy who tried to live with zero carbon footprint. One man read the Bible and aspired to live strictly by its rules for one year. Another read the Encyclopedia Britannica, perhaps because some one else had already laid claim to the Oxford English Dictionary.

These are stunts, done with a book deal in mind if not already in place, and, in the best of all possible scenarios, Hollywood will come knocking. Although I doubt that guy who read the OED is holding his breath for a call from Dreamworks. An on-air chat with Terry Gross is a real possibility, and in the most extreme cases, stunters might make it onto Oprah.

So No Stunts, I swore, No Stunts!

Without benefit of any sort of transition -- When I was an adolescent I read a fair amount of science fiction. I think I was more or less done with it by the end of eighth grade.That was when Frank Herbert's Dune was serialized across an unheard of four issues of Analog Magazine, and when I finished it I thought that there could not only never be a better science fiction novel, there could never be a better novel period. (I was allowed to subscribe to Analog because it was the only science fiction magazine that never had half-naked women on the cover.) By college I was telling people, should the topic come up, that I did not like science fiction. Invariably, whomever I told that then felt compelled to recommend the one science fiction novel I was sure to like. "No, really, this is perfect for people who don't like science fiction."

Over the years I would sometimes read something that somehow "transcended the genre." What that meant in practical terms was Philip K. Dick and J.G. Ballard. But Dick now has three volumes in the Library of America, right up there with Emerson and Melville. And Ballard really isn't always science fiction. At least not the ones I read.

Around the first of this year I went on a serious Ballard binge, and of course it is science fiction, at least by his definition. It's an exploration of inner rather than outer space. It got me thinking about the genre again, and reading Ballard's memoirs and essays really got me interested. There, I learned that to call the genre sci fi marked you as a hopeless parvenue. Properly speaking it should be referred to as sf. And I came across Ballard's review of The Billion Year Spree, Brian Aldiss's 1974 survey of the genre. Looking for a copy of that, I came across David Pringle's 100 Best Science Fiction Novels: 1949 - 1985. I was intrigued.

For one thing, I was surprised how many of the best from the 1950's were the ones I read in the 1960's. And since I worked around used books for thirty years, there were very few titles on the list that I could not visualize in their twenty- to thirty-year-old paperback editions.

So I have decided to give them a try, but this is not a stunt. For one thing, I have absolutely no commitment to this project. I do not intend to read them all, and I have no interest in rereading what I've read before, even if it was forty years ago. (Following a disheartening experience in the 1980's, I have always thought that Ray Bradbury novels need to come with the warning lable, Do Not Read Past the Age of 25.) I am not going to try reading them in order, but I do have one fetishistic preference. I want them to be in crummy mass market paperback editions. If I can't find those, or if those editions have exorbitant, collectors' prices, I want my copies to come from the library with broken bindings and lots of stains. And, yes, I will write about them for Potato Weather. Maybe.

But even though I may write about them on occasion, this is not a stunt. I expect no book contract, and if Dreamworks calls, I'm sorry, I can't come to the phone.

GOOD READS

In 2009 I used the Visual Bookshelf application on Facebook to keep track of what I was reading, but for 2010 I have switched my allegiances to Good Reads.

I signed up for Visual Bookshelf the day I joined Facebook and later decided it would be an interesting way to look back after a year to see what I had been reading. It never crossed my mind to write a review or comment in any way. This seems to be a fairly common approach, except most people lose interest almost immediately and keep the same title in their Reading Now position in perpetuity.

I don't remember how I stumbled onto Good Reads back in January, but it turns out it wasn't my first time. When I went to register the site told me I had been a member since 2008. I put in whatever I was reading and had read recently and right away I noticed a higher participation from other members when it comes to reviewing and comments. And the reviews were intelligent and entertaining and continue to be so. That could be because since January I have been on a steady diet of J.G. Ballard novels, and Ballard readers may be more interesting and able to express themselves than say fans of James Patterson, Dan Brown, or Stephanie Meyer. (Although readers of Patterson, Brown, and Meyer may be equally engaged by what their fellow fans have to say about their favorite authors.)

With Good Reads, however, there is a "friends issue," as in I have none. And I don't know how to make them.

Facebook is like going to a party where you already know half the people and it's easy to meet others. At Good Reads it is the first day at a new school and I am stranded on the playground, waiting to be asked to join the game.

So I have decided to make the first move. I have found some one who is also a Ballard reader and operates a small publishing house devoted to French popular culture. He already has over three hundred friends. So what I decided I need to do is spruce up my profile and and pay a visit. The only problem is that my profile includes a link to this blog. If he reads this he might think I'm a stalker, which, hey, if you are reading this, I am not.