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Brian Aldiss - Travels abroad (46/79)

329 views · Published 17 May 2017 · 4:16 · Indexed 25 October 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 recoded: 2014]

TRANSCRIPT: Margaret and I went about the place and had the kind of pleasant results one gets if one is published in, shall we say, Scandinavia. We would go to Scandinavia and that was a very pleasant time. We would go to Germany and have a pleasant time there. Then... did I go? Yes, I went on my own to Russia, and again, I was amiably treated then. Wherever I went, I found people who were very pleasant to be with.

Anywhere I didn't like? Well, for instance, in Poland… I stayed in a hotel in Poland, and the Poles then took me to see how the town of Poznań had been restored, beautifully restored to what it had been before the war in contrast to the restorations that were being done in Britain at the time, where they were making rather a mess of things. Anyhow, at that meeting in Poland, there was someone who had written a novel, much praised, about the conquest of the whole world... I have to get this straight... the conquest of the whole world by the communists. And everyone thought this was a wonderful book, and they said, well, you can't imagine the capitalists writing this book. And immediately, I could feel myself getting on with that novel – that very novel – to refute them.

So I came back and I wrote a novel in which the communist world have captured not only this country, but the rest of the solar system and elsewhere, and that book is called... a pause for thought... what is that book called? 'Enemies of the System'! 'Enemies of the System'. And of course, yes – it's about the communists taking over. Why not? It's a free world, one can do these things and so that's what I did. And the book was moderately successful more successful, perhaps, in the United States than in England, but that's England for you.

So there we were, and that's just one example of my… my visits abroad. And I spent a long time, in particular in Sweden, where I had a friend, Sammy Lundval. Sammy Lundval published a science fiction magazine, and so I often stayed with him or near him and we had a very pleasant time and I formed a very good opinion, I must say, of Sweden.

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