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Brian W. Aldiss Quotes
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Brian Wilson Aldiss, OBE , was an English writer and anthology-editor, best known for science fiction novels and short stories. His byline reads either Brian W. Aldiss or simply Brian Aldiss, except for occasional pseudonyms during the mid-1960s.

Greatly influenced by science fiction pioneer H. G. Wells, Aldiss was a vice-president of the international H. G. Wells Society. He was co-president of the Birmingham Science Fiction Group. Aldiss was named a Grand Master by the Science Fiction Writers of America in 2000 and inducted by the Science Fiction Hall of Fame in 2004. He received two Hugo Awards, one Nebula Award, and one John W. Campbell Memorial Award. He wrote the short story "Supertoys Last All Summer Long" , the basis for the Stanley Kubrick-developed Steven Spielberg film A.I. Artificial Intelligence . Aldiss was associated with the British New Wave of science fiction. Wikipedia  

✵ 18. August 1925 – 19. August 2017
Brian W. Aldiss photo
Brian W. Aldiss: 116   quotes 14   likes

Brian W. Aldiss Quotes

“Why should you be confused just because you come from a confused civilization?”

Brian W. Aldiss

“Poor Little Warrior!” p. 78 (originally published in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, April 1958)
Short fiction, Who Can Replace a Man? (1965)

“What would be the effect of gradually drawing away from the iron laws under which, since its scampering pleistocene infancy, humankind had lived?”

Brian W. Aldiss

“Man in His Time” p. 209
Short fiction, Who Can Replace a Man? (1965)

Law , Drawing

“As long as the chromosome reproduced itself in sufficient dominance, he was immortal! To him, in an unscientific age, the problem did not present itself quite like that; but he realized that there was a trait to be kept in the family.”

Brian W. Aldiss

Let's Be Frank (1957)

Age , Family , Problem

“Why don’t you go somewhere quietly and consult your history books if you have no consciences to consult?”

Brian W. Aldiss

“Basis for Negotiations” p. 122
Short fiction, Who Can Replace a Man? (1965)

Books , History

“Relax, enjoy yourself. Have another drink. It’s patriotic to overconsume.”

Brian W. Aldiss book Greybeard

Source: Greybeard (1964), Chapter 4 (p. 121)

Drink

“Let’s have a toast—to the future generation of consumers, however many heads or assholes they have!”

Brian W. Aldiss book Greybeard

Source: Greybeard (1964), Chapter 4 (p. 112)

Future

“Men left their strange hobbies on Earth and Venus and projected themselves into the pattern. Their entire personalities were merged with the texture of space itself. Through science, they reached immortality.
It was a one-way passage.
They did not return. Each Involute carried thousands or even millions of people. There they were, not dead, not living. How they exulted or wept in their transubstantiation, no one left could say. Only this could be said: man had gone, and a great emptiness was fallen over Earth.”

Brian W. Aldiss

“Old Hundredth” p. 162
Short fiction, Who Can Replace a Man? (1965)

Men , People , Way , Science

“I was hardly fit for human society. Thus destiny shaped me to be a science fiction writer.”

Brian W. Aldiss

The Twinkling of an Eye: My Life as an Englishman (1998) Unsourced variant: "Why had I become a writer in the first place? Because I wasn't fit for society; I didn't fit into the system."

Science

“Most SF is about madness, or what is currently ruled to be madness; this is part of its attraction — it's always playing with how much the human mind can encompass.”

Brian W. Aldiss

"In Conversation: Brian Aldiss & James Blish" in Cypher (October 1973); republished in The Tale That Wags the God (1987) by James Blish

Parting , Madness

“Frank II had been back in the aptly named Mother Country for only a few months when a lady of his acquaintance presented him with Frank IV. Frank IV was a girl, christened Berenice. The state of coma which had ensnared Frank II for so long did not afflict Berenice, or any other of his descendants.
Another tremendous adjustment in the shared consciousness had to be made. That also had its compensations; Frank was the first man ever really to appreciate the woman's point of view.”

Brian W. Aldiss

Let's Be Frank (1957)

Girl , Affliction , Country

“The ability to change should not be despised.”

Brian W. Aldiss

“Basis for Negotiations” p. 139
Short fiction, Who Can Replace a Man? (1965)

Change

“What were several fewer species of animals compared with a hundred-mile advance and another medal on another general?”

Brian W. Aldiss book Greybeard

Source: Greybeard (1964), Chapter 4 “Washington” (p. 110)

Animals

“He had the settled expression of a certain kind of peasant—the kind that accepts, with protest but without malice, the vagaries of life. It is the gift life sends to compensate for the lack of a high I. Q.”

Brian W. Aldiss

“Man on Bridge” pp. 90-91
Short fiction, Who Can Replace a Man? (1965)

Life

“It’s the duty of men in office not to be misled.”

Brian W. Aldiss

“Basis for Negotiations” p. 140
Short fiction, Who Can Replace a Man? (1965)

Men

“I kill from conviction, not to pass a personality quiz.”

Brian W. Aldiss

“Basis for Negotiations” p. 143
Short fiction, Who Can Replace a Man? (1965)

Personality

“Whatever creativity is, it is in part a solution to a problem.”

Brian W. Aldiss

"Apéritif" in Bury My Heart at W.H. Smith's (1990)

Problem , Parting

“Sounds to me as if you want journalists,” Timberlane said.
“No, sir, we require steady men with integrity. This is not a scoop, it’s a way of life.”

Brian W. Aldiss book Greybeard

Source: Greybeard (1964), Chapter 4 (p. 115)

Life , Men , Way

“All over the world there must be far-reaching changes in animal behavior and habitat; if only one could have another life in which to chart it all…. Ah, well, that’s not a fruitful thing to wish, is it?”

Brian W. Aldiss book Greybeard

Source: Greybeard (1964), Chapter 5 “The River: Oxford” (p. 147)

Life , World , Behavior , Change

“If more people had put their fellow human beings before abstractions last century, we shouldn’t be where we are now.”

Brian W. Aldiss book Greybeard

Source: Greybeard (1964), Chapter 7 “The River: The End” (p. 190)

People

“Keep violence in the mind where it belongs.”

Brian W. Aldiss

Barefoot in the Head (1969)

“If we can see our difficulties, there is a way of resolving them, or the hope of a way.”

Brian W. Aldiss

The Glass Forest (1986)

Hope , Way

“Insane? To disobey a law of the universe was impossible, not insane.”

Brian W. Aldiss

“Man in His Time” p. 201 (originally published in Science Fantasy, April 1965)
Short fiction, Who Can Replace a Man? (1965)

Law , Universe

“Most of my poetry lies beyond the SF field, yet here I am corralled into 'SF poetry' as part of this poetry weekend. Of course, some might say, 'you've made your own bed — now you must lie in it!' But, while fully accepting that dictum, I'm not yet quite prepared to lie down…”

Brian W. Aldiss

As quoted in web article "The Brian Aldiss Connection" http://www.zone-sf.com/brianaldiss.html, The Zone

Lie , Parting

“They came, by what means he did not know, from outside, the vast abstraction that none of them had ever seen. He had a mental picture of a starry void in which men and monsters swam or battled, and then swiftly erased it. Such ideas did not conform with the quiet behavior of his companions; if they never spoke about outside, did they think about it?”

Brian W. Aldiss book Outside

Outside (1955)

Men , Behavior , Idea , Thinking

“Did the others here feel the disquiet he felt? Had they a reason for concealing that disquiet? And another question:
Where was "here"?
He shut that one down sharply.
Deal with one thing at a time. Grope your way gently to the abyss. Categorize your knowledge.”

Brian W. Aldiss book Outside

Outside (1955)

Way , Feeling , Question , Knowledge

“You know that if you had been in charge of creation you would have found some medium less heart-breaking than Time to stage it in.”

Brian W. Aldiss

“Poor Little Warrior!” p. 79
Short fiction, Who Can Replace a Man? (1965)

Time , Heart

“I'm lucky that SFWA has such a short memory. I was always the Young Turk, the gadfly. Part of the New Wave, although I didn't fit in there either! I spent years, and two histories, putting the so-called Old Guard in their place, and now I'm one of them!”

Brian W. Aldiss

Locus interview (2000)

History , Memory , Parting

“The shuffle only demonstrated people’s fatuous belief in a political cure for a human condition.”

Brian W. Aldiss book Greybeard

Source: Greybeard (1964), Chapter 6 “London” (p. 170)

People

“Full of years, Sir Frank's body died. The diphtheria which carried him off caused him as much suffering as it would have done an ordinary man; dying was not eased by his unique gift. He slid out into the long darkness — but his consciousness continued unabated in eight other bodies.”

Brian W. Aldiss

Let's Be Frank (1957)

Suffering

“All the time, he hoped they would understand that his arrogance masked only shyness—or did he hope that it was his shyness which masked arrogance? He did not know.
Who could presume to know? The one quality holds much of the other. Both refuse to come forward and share.”

Brian W. Aldiss

“A Kind of Artistry” p. 185
Short fiction, Who Can Replace a Man? (1965)

Hope , Understanding , Time

“Many Franks of the sixteenth generation were killed in the muck of the trenches, he died not once but many times, developing an obsessive dread of war which never left him.
By the time the Americans entered the war, he was turning his many thoughts to politics.”

Brian W. Aldiss

Let's Be Frank (1957)

War , Time

“All of which pointed to a moral that they should have learned long before, Arthur thought: Never trust a bunch of lousy politicians to do your thinking for you.”

Brian W. Aldiss book Greybeard

Source: Greybeard (1964), Chapter 6 (p. 171)

Thinking , Learning

“One afternoon in early January, the weather showed a lack of character. There was no frost nor wind: the trees in the garden did not stir.”

Brian W. Aldiss

Report On Probability A (1968)

Tree , Weather

“A later generation could have explained the miracle to Sir Frank — though explaining in terms he would not have understood. Though he knew well enough the theory of family traits and likenesses, it would have been impossible then to make him comprehend the intricacy of a chromosome which carries inside it — not merely the stereotypes of parental hair or temperament — but the secret knowledge of how to breathe, how to work the muscles to move the bones, how to grow, how to remember, how to commence the processes of thought … all the infinite number of secret "how to's" that have to be passed on for life to stay above jelly level.
A freak chromosome in Sir Frank ensured he passed on, together with these usual secrets, the secret of his individual consciousness.”

Brian W. Aldiss

Let's Be Frank (1957)

Life , Secret , Family , Knowledge

“To be a standard shape is not all in life. To know is also important.”

Brian W. Aldiss book Hothouse

Source: Hothouse (1962), Chapter 5

Life

“There was a time, two or three centuries ago, when it looked as if the intellect might win over the body, and our species become something worthwhile. But too much procreation killed that illusion.”

Brian W. Aldiss

“Man on Bridge” p. 92
Short fiction, Who Can Replace a Man? (1965)

Time

“Jagger had gone through there. Harley also went through. Somewhere he did not know, somewhere whose existence he had not guessed.… Somewhere that wasn't the house.…”

Brian W. Aldiss book Outside

Outside (1955)

Housing

““The intelligent have been overwhelmed by the dull. Is that not an invasion?”
“More, I would say, of a self-betrayal.””

Brian W. Aldiss

“Man on Bridge” p. 83 (originally published in New Writings in SF 1, 1964)
Short fiction, Who Can Replace a Man? (1965)

Intelligence , Betrayal

““Are you a religious man, Joe?”
Flitch pulled a face. “I leaves that sort of thing to women.””

Brian W. Aldiss book Greybeard

Source: Greybeard (1964), Chapter 5 (p. 149)

Women

“As Flitch dryly remarked when Greybeard commented on the graveyard, “Ah, they keep a-planting of ’em, but there ain’t any more of ’em growing up.””

Brian W. Aldiss book Greybeard

Source: Greybeard (1964), Chapter 5 (p. 148)

“There has always been a belief in miracles in the popular mind. As L. Sprague de Camp once said, the public would rather be bunked than debunked.”

Brian W. Aldiss

Science Fiction on the Titanic, in Brian Aldiss and Harry Harrison (eds.) The Year's Best SF 9 (1976), ISBN 0-8600-7894-9, p. 205

“All of which makes one feel that the centuries of science upon which our western culture is based have travelled unmarked through the popular mind. A surprising number of people are willing to junk the entire accumulation of knowledge since Ancient Greece after watching Uri Geller perform for five minutes on their twenty-three inch screen.”

Brian W. Aldiss

Science Fiction on the Titanic, in Brian Aldiss and Harry Harrison (eds.) The Year's Best SF 9 (1976), ISBN 0-8600-7894-9, p. 203

People , Knowledge , Travel , Science

“Aldiss’s second law of thermo-linguistics states that what is most popular is rarely best and that what is best is rarely most popular.”

Brian W. Aldiss

Science Fiction on the Titanic, in Brian Aldiss and Harry Harrison (eds.) The Year's Best SF 9 (1976), ISBN 0-8600-7894-9, p. 201

Law

“The greatest human achievement is to fulfil one’s destiny.”

Brian W. Aldiss

Originally published in New Worlds Science Fiction, August 1965; reprinted in Michael Moorcock (ed.) Best SF Stories from New Worlds 4, p. 83
Short fiction, The Source (1965)

“There's a way outside. We're — we've got to find out what we are.”

Brian W. Aldiss book Outside

His voice rose to an hysterical pitch. He was shaking Calvin again. "We must find out what's wrong here. Either we are victims of some ghastly experiment — or we're all monsters!"
Outside (1955)

Way