In 1959, at the World Science Fiction Convention, Aldiss was named “Most Promising New Author,” a distinction he would more than justify in the years that followed through his prolific and wide-ranging body of work.

His innovative and contemporary treatment of traditional science-fiction themes and motifs placed him among the leading figures of the New Wave movement that emerged during the 1960s. Through both his fiction and critical writings, he helped demonstrate that science fiction was a serious literary form rather than mere pulp entertainment.

In 1965, he was the Guest of Honor at the 23rd World Science Fiction Convention, and in 1969 he was voted Britain’s Most Popular Science Fiction Author by the British Science Fiction Association. He received the Ditmar Award in 1970 and the James Blish Award in 1977.

A central concern running throughout his work, explored in many different forms, is the struggle between fertility and entropy, between the rich diversity of life and the tragic silence of death. The tensions between reality and imagination, action and theory, sensation and intellect, and art and creation also occupied him throughout his career, often with remarkable intensity.

Aldiss wrote numerous novels and short stories and was an indefatigable editor and anthologist of science-fiction literature. His novels Frankenstein Unbound, Dracula Unbound, and Journey Without End are available in our catalogue.