Brian W. Aldiss: Man

Brian W. Aldiss was British science fiction author. Explore interesting quotes on man.
Brian W. Aldiss: 232 quotes14 likes

“Amid all the triumphs of our civilization — yes, and amid the crushing problems of overpopulation too — it is sad to reflect how many millions of people suffer from increasing loneliness and isolation. Our serving-man will be a boon to them; he will always answer, and the most vapid conversation cannot bore him.
For the future, we plan more models, male and female — some of them without the limitations of this first one, I promise you! — of more advanced design, true bio-electronic beings.
Not only will they possess their own computer, capable of individual programming; they will be linked to the World Data Network. Thus everyone will be able to enjoy the equivalent of an Einstein in their own homes. Personal isolation will then be banished forever!”

Brian W. Aldiss book Super-Toys Last All Summer Long

Super-Toys Last All Summer Long (1969)

“When the first flint, the first shell, was shaped into a weapon, that action shaped man. As he molded and complicated his tools, so they molded and complicated him.”

Brian W. Aldiss

“Old Hundredth” p. 162 (originally published in New Worlds Science Fiction #100, November 1960)
Short fiction, Who Can Replace a Man? (1965)
Context: When the first flint, the first shell, was shaped into a weapon, that action shaped man. As he molded and complicated his tools, so they molded and complicated him. He became the first scientific animal. And at last, via information theory and great computers, he gained knowledge of all his parts. He formed the Laws of Integration, which reveal all beings as part of a pattern and show them their part in the pattern. There is only the pattern; the pattern is all the universe, creator and created.

“Civilisation is the distance that man has placed between himself and his own excreta.”

Brian W. Aldiss

Source: The Dark Light Years

“The Badlands were extensive. Ancient bomb craters and soil erosion joined hands here; man’s talent for war, coupled with his inability to manage forested land, had produced thousands of square miles of temperate purgatory, where nothing moved but dust.”

Brian W. Aldiss

“Who Can Replace a Man?” p. 19 (originally published in Infinity Science Fiction, June 1958)
Short fiction, Who Can Replace a Man? (1965)

“Perhaps the first fire, the first tool, the first wheel, the first carving in a limestone cave, had each possessed a symbolic rather than a practical value, had each been pressed to serve distortion rather than reality. It was a sort of madness that had driven man from his humble sites on the edges of the woods into towns and cities, into arts and wars, into religious crusades, into martyrdom and prostitution, into dyspepsia and fasting, into love and hatred, into this present cul-de-sac; it had all come about in pursuit of symbols. In the beginning was the symbol, and darkness was over the face of the Earth.”

Brian W. Aldiss book Greybeard

Source: Greybeard (1964), Chapter 3 (p. 91)

“Man was an accident on this world or it would have been made better for him!”

Brian W. Aldiss book Hothouse

Source: Hothouse (1962), Chapter 18

“You were fool enough to think that one hundred and fifty million years either way made an ounce of difference to the muddle of thoughts in a man’s cerebral vortex.”

Brian W. Aldiss

“Poor Little Warrior!” p. 78
Short fiction, Who Can Replace a Man? (1965)

“Many modifications in private and public life took place. Privacy ceasing to exist, all new houses were glass-built, curtains abolished, walls pulled down. Police went, the entire legal structure vanished overnight — a man does not litigate against himself. A parody of Parliament remained, to deal with foreign affairs, but party politics, elections, leaders in newspapers (even newspapers themselves) were scrapped.”

Brian W. Aldiss

Let's Be Frank (1957)

“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)

“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)

“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)

““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)