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Brian Aldiss - I have always continued to write (72/79)

346 views · Published 9 May 2017 · 2:32 · Indexed 22 September 2026

Channel: Web of Stories - Life Stories of Remarkable People · 2017 · Entertainment

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Writer Brian Aldiss (1925-2017) was best known for his science fiction novels and short stories. 'Non-Stop', his first science fiction novel, was published in 1958. His many award-winning titles include 'Hothouse', 'The Saliva Tree' and 'Helliconia Spring'. [Listener: Christopher Sykes date recorded: 2014]

TRANSCRIPT: I continued to write. Whatever has happened, I have always continued to write. Short stories, poems, novels and of course, I've painted – we haven't gone into the painting bit. But the paintings that I did I called isolées, and they were abstracts. And at the moment, it happens there's an exhibition of them at the grand galleries of Goldmark in Rutland.

Alison and I went up and saw it and opened the whole business. Terribly nice people, the Goldmarks. Yes, so, that's the artistic side.

[CS] What do you find in painting that you probably don't find in writing?

Well, there's certainly something that I don't... there's something… something that eludes us, I believe... and I'm talking, not about people exceptionally, but people of moderate sensibility, who find, if they write, if they talk, if they paint, if they act... whatever you do, there is some little corner beyond speech or anything. And it's something that I think that many people mistake for God. I believe it's just an affliction of the human species, and we can't resolve it, not with the best medicine. I think there is something there, and I believe that it's possibly that something... I've often written about it in various diverse ways. It's that that keeps me writing, as though, one day, I might fumble across it.

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